eLearning: Blogs for Learning

Via Ten Reasons Why, I came across this summary of a recent conversation about using blogging for eLearning in schools:

The last point is certainly true about blog conversations in general, as I wrote last year in The Tangled Web of Blog Conversation. This point, in and of its self, presents one of the challenges of blogging as a learning tool. Blogs are not just a form of writing, they are a form of communication. Comments, trackbacks, and links are one part of this communication are the more common ways that such communication takes place. But it is disjointed, and it is tangled. Blog communications can be very hard to monitor. I believe that communication is central to elearning, and learning in general. As such, these problems with blog communications also present problems for learning. We really a conversation aggregator that can bring together conversations so that real communications and learning can take place without the frustration of tracking the replies around the web.

Via Peter Ford via Edublog News, BlogBinders is a service that turns blogs into books. Ford discusses the potential for edublogs:

The service automatically builds the book content, just by submitting the address for your blog. Presumably they spider your site to grab the content. It is not yet available for the most popular blogging apps such as Blogger and Movable Type, but support for those is coming soon.

The book pricing page seems very similar to CafePress, which also offers book printing services (without the automated blog conversion system). I wonder if they are related, or whether BB just uses the same supplier.

Make print publishing this easy could have very interesting impacts on ellearning and many other areas. Very interesting.

Via SiT, Zope plans to create a content management system designed specifically for education. In partner ship with Duke University, the system will support LDAP and integrate with other educational systems. Says Rob Page, CEO of Zope:

This sounds like a very interesting project. I will have to look into this again in the new year, when the system will be ready.

In this post by Sebastian Fiedler, there are a number of interesting insights regarding the use of blogs by students as a new form of learning. He first quote from this post by Spike Hall:

Sebastian Fiedler responds by adding that facilitating this "learning-to-learn" can be a challenge:

People are used to certain way of learning. It is not enough to hand over some new technology or tools. People are often resitant to change - and so it is with changing how we learn. Students may need to develop these subskills and attitudes prior to fully embracing blogging as a new form of learning. So students may need to be taught not just how to learn for themselves, but how to develop the attitudes and subskills that may enable to to embrace self-learning tools such as blogging. Very interesting.