[WEB4LIB] RE: Use of Blogs in Instruction? | Student-Recommended

[Shane Nackerud]

The University of Minnesota Libraries have been hosting blogs for the 
entire U of M campus community through our UThink:  Blogs at the University 
Libraries project found at:

         http://blog.lib.umn.edu/

We've been running the project for about 4 months now and so far 455 blogs 
have been created, and over 400 faculty, staff, and students have used the 
service.  U of M community members can easily create a blog with their 
central authentication Internet ID and password.  Users are literally up 
and running in less than 30 seconds.  We created the service to allow for 
team or class blogs, where multiple authors can access and modify a single 
blog, and many students and professors have taken advantage of this:

         http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ratli008/summer04/
         http://blog.lib.umn.edu/enge0385/BIE5475/
         http://blog.lib.umn.edu/coop0197/onelife/

Many other professors have expressed an interest in using UThink for class 
blogs in the fall semster.  We have also successfully integrated our SFX 
service into UThink so that researchers can easily post SFX citations to 
their blog(s) from an SFX menu 
(http://blog.lib.umn.edu/radh0003/research/).  We have been in "test" mode 
for most of the summer, but UThink has already created a buzz on campus for 
the libraries. The project has opened a lot of doors for the libraries, 
including our recent publishing of the "Into the Blogosphere" online 
collection (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/) in partnership with the 
Department of Rhetoric.  Other departments on campus have already contacted 
us with other publishing ideas for UThink thanks to the success of "Into 
the Blogosphere."

Blogs in education is indeed a big field and it is my hope that libraries 
can begin to take a more active role in their creation, dissemination, and 
archiving.  And like I said, they can open a lot of doors for libraries 
that are willing to take the plunge.

Shane

At 05:54 AM 8/11/2004, you wrote:
>I've just recently installed the COREBlog Product on our Zope WEB server
>which uses forms to add data and configure the WEB blog.  We use this as
>our new News page.:
>
>http://www.library.appstate.edu/blog/news/
>
>   I also have a test page at:
>
>http://www.library.appstate.edu/webmaster/coreblogtest/
>
>The test page shows more options that are available with this Product
>including the built in search option and comments turned on.  The
>Product is from http://coreblog.org/ .  By the way, Product has a
>special meaning in Zope.  Products, for the most part, are essentially
>addons to implement a new service, add special features, or enhance the
>WEB tool.
>
>
>Thomas
>
>
>PS:Below is an excerpt of a recent email from one of our librarians
>announcing a WEB cast on blogs:
>
>
>
>
>If you are interested in attending a web cast on blogs (web-logs) in
>higher education,...The live session will be held October 5, 2004 at
>1:00pm
>
>  A full description is at:
>
>https://www.academicimpressions.com/web_conferences/weblogs.htm
>
>
>P.S. If you are interested, here are some examples of blogs in
>library-land and higher ed:
>http://blog.lib.umn.edu/jveldof/calculator/
>
>http://www.librarystuff.net/2004/08/answerbag.html
>
>http://www.weblogg-ed.com/
>
>And in case you want to start a blog (for your team, for example) there
>is an easy to use blog-product already in place on the library’s
>web-server. Our news page (http://www.library.appstate.edu/blog/news/)
>runs with that product.
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 00:49, D.H. Mattison wrote:
> > August 10, 2004
> >
> > Use of blogs in higher education is a very big field. A couple of sites 
> that
> > I visit from time to time and recommend for resource mining are:
> >
> > Weblogg-ed: Using Weblogs and RSS in Education 
> (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/).
> > Clicking the Educator Weblogs link will take you to a long list by name of
> > educators who use or maintain blogs.
> >
> > EBN: Educational Bloggers Network (http://www.ebn.weblogger.com/)
> >
> > Weblogs At Harvard Law (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/), co-edited by Dave
> > Winer (Mr. RSS 2.0 and other distinctions) and Donna Wentworth, is also a
> > fascinating glimpse into the integration of blogging into the teaching of
> > law (at least that's what I think is supposed to be happening).
> >
> > Since I like to think wikis offer an effective alternative in some
> > educational situations to the rather rigid blog format, take a look at
> > http://edtech.coedit.net/EducationalWikiList for some ideas, as well as 
> this
> > refereed article on wikis and their applicability to distance education
> > (http://www.irrodl.org/content/v5.1/technote_xxvii.html).
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > David Mattison
> > Victoria, BC, Canada
> > dmattison at shaw.ca
> > The Ten Thousand Year Blog http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress
> > Tiki Wiki Hut http://www.davidmattison.ca/tiki
> >
> >

-----------------
snackeru at tc.umn.edu
625-7880