Category: Weblog Theory

Mark Bernstein posts a thumbnail of the way he takes notes on conferences. I was at last years BlogTalk trying to use my weblog to report. It didn’t really work: there was too much hassle fiddling with the software and not thinking about the words. I am using Tinderbox for some time now and it…

I sometimes stumble across a weblog that has a wonderful name. Do you know a weblog with a cool or funny name? Help me to collect these here.

Mark Bernstein quotes a question by Karin Tzschenktke from the BlogTalk press conference: How do we keep weblogs from becoming merely a channel of propaganda? Mark thinks this is an interesting question but answers by speculating about intrinsic motivations of weblog authors, that fundamentally are against propaganda and that the attention economy will filter most…

Adrian Miles jotted down his experience of the blog panel at EdMedia 2004 in Lugano. He concludes: Key outcomes: a high level of interest in the possible use of blogs, confusion about how or why you would use them, questions and problems about how to encourage, foster and nurture their use with disinterested or resistant…

I just heard an e-learning expert demonizing the platform discussion (e.g. “Which Learning Management System is best?”) while at the same time suggesting to evaluate Microsoft e-learning products. Then I found this other quote someone called Björn from a discussion thread on Peter Baumgartners weblog: … every system claimed to the-one. I find that boring…

Here is a summary of experiences with using a Wiki in a educational project. Obviosly a Wiki structure has some advantages over a weblog system (more focussed on content creation and hypertext structure). A Wiki is better suited to generate a set of encyclopedic pages, while a weblog works better as a messaging and news…

Martin Spernau’s comment on “accidental learning/teaching/sharing” got my attention. There is are lot of “non-intentional” aspects in communication and we tend to discuss and regard only the “intentional” aspects (just think of body language for example). But “by accident” is not a strategy. You can’t do anything willingly “by accident”. So I’d rather think of…

I am just sitting on the train back from Nuremberg to Cologne after a day of intense discussion and thinking. I met new people and I appreciated to have had a chance to learn a lot. Most of the people seemed to have a more general interest in the subject and were not trying to…

Another article about how much counter-productive is multitasking. Because we’re people, we don’t swap out the content of our brains as easily as a computer does, and we definitely don’t swap in the old state when we’re ready to return to the original task. […] Gerald Weinberg, in Quality Software Management, Vol. 1, Systems Thinking…

Stephan Mosel pointed to a new weblog initiative at the University of Minnesota. This project offers a free weblog to every university member. This now makes three places in US that offer central weblog services to every member: Harvard University: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ Stanford University: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/projects/blog/ Univeristy of Minnesota: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ Peter Baumgartner asks why german universities do…

I am going to participate in the BlogWalk 2.0 workshop in Nürnberg on 28th May. I think there are about 15-25 people invited. In contrast to the BlogWalk 1.0 event in March this time it appears to be focussed on weblogs in education. There is also a BlogWalk 3.0 event already scheduled for 4th July…

Lois Ann Scheidt and Elijah Wright:Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs [DOC] Conclusion: One pattern clearly emerging as a result of this research is that individual webloggers do not tend to make substantive structural changes to the layout of their sites. This confirms one of the predictions / observations leading to this study: that ‘significant’…

Here is a paper (PDF) by Bonnie Nardi, Diane Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht and Luke Swartz about motivations for weblogging: We discovered five major motivations for blogging: documenting the author’s life, providing commentary and opinions, expressing deeply felt emotions, working out ideas through writing, and forming and maintaining communities or forums. These motivations are by no…

Will Richardson has done a very good job tracking the discussion about student blogging.

Will Richardson of Weblogg-ed.com has collected the most recent posts from different locations about the “weblog in education” discussion: A number of threads about the value of blogging in the classroom have been floating here and there lately, many of them here. For context, some of the more relevant posts are Reading and Blogging here…

Ton Zylstra has photographed all the creative outputs of the BlogWalk sessions from 19th March 2004. There is a lot of ideas to consider.

An unidentifyable blog author explains the value of knowledge sharing: If you have ever taught, then you already know that teaching is certainly the most effective way to master knowledge.When I was a young software developer, I also did some training in C++ language and object-oriented programming. Although I knew enough about C++ to do…

James Farmer discusses once again the benefits of weblogging in education. He concludes: … in a setting where expression, collaboration, peer support, successful class dynamics, risk taking, sharing and all these recognized characteristics of effective learning are fostered, then personal publishing allows for a revolutionary form of expression and exploration between learners in the same…

In an article in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Anita Blanchard, Assistant Professor of organizational psychology at the University of North Carolina, shows how Behavior setting theories can be applied to describe interaction within online communities. [via Emerging Communications]

Jay Cross compares two blogging styles: journal and reference book. He suggests to further develop the weblog practice (and suggests his own blog as an practice example): The structure of most blogs accommodates their writers more than their readers. It’s time for bloggers to share their goals with their readers. Those goals should inform the…