Torfaen Weblog Project

BLOGS DO THE BUSINESS

One councillor is using her own weblog to connect residents with events and issues in her own ward

Councillor Stella Creasy, from the London Borough of Waltham Forrest, started a weblog to gain an Internet presence without having to get to grips with sophisticated technology.

Blogs are much simpler to create than conventional websites. According to the IDEA's new Connecting with Communities module for councillors, you can have one up-and-running ina round 30 minutes and updating them is just as easy - but can be - time consuming.

All that is required to set up a blog is an Internet connection and a browser such as Internet explorer. PC Magazine has a useful online review of weblog services, two of which are Blogger.com and TypePad.

You can view Stella Creasy's weblog at www.leabridgelife.blogspot.com. Other useful sites:

www.blogger.com;
www.typepad.com;
www.moveabletype.org;
www.pcmag.com

Launched by the Local Government Association, www.councillor.info shows councillors how to manage their blogs on the IDeA website at www.idea.gov.uk.

Taken from the IDeA Modern Members magazine Issue 14 New Year 2005.

Learning Vs Education - Interesting Articles from a US blog about the learning/education debate

The weblog-ed.com (www.weblog-ed.com) site carries interesting articles and links relating to learning on the Internet, learning via blogs, and blogging in general.

It refers to interesting threads running through a lot of blogs at the moment revolving around what learning is (apposed to education) and what the future might bring in terms of "Personal Learning Environments" (PLE). And the underlying question here is what role do schools and teachers play in all of this.

The following are some quotes relating to this learning Vs education debate.

Opinion one sees a World where, because we now can, we manage our own learning and build our own communities:

It's just you, your community, and the web, an environment where you are the centre and where your teachers - if there are any - are your peers. It is, I believe, the future - and where, one day, the next generation of Blackboards and WebCTs and Moodles and Sakais will make their mark.

Opinion two suggests it's a world of personal aggregation of learning feeds created by the user or shared by a teacher. It's the connection of people and ideas where

"the learner actually learns through the creation and development of posts, the linking, synthesising and pinging of other posts and by commenting on yet more posts on other blogs."

Whilst opinion three writes that we've got to keep focused on the learning and not the technology:

...I don't think learning has changed. The act of learning (how our brain stores, recognizes, and retrieves knowledge) is fairly stable. Our external environment is not. As a result, over the last 30 years, many situations have developed in society that challenge established approaches to learning. Static is replaced with dynamic. Content is replaced (or at least augmented) with connections to ensure that people stay current. My whole intent with connectivism is to present the need to design a new approach and view of learning - one that is not hamstrung by classrooms, but is a thread that runs through the entire fabric of life. Learning as natural as breathing, as constant as a beating heart.

http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2006/01/12#a4492

Another Blog from the JISC Project

SCVS WEBLOGS PILOT

The Weblogs Project For the next six months the SCVS e-learning Project takes the form of the ACL-funded Weblogs pilot, a pioneering project to evaluate the use(s) of weblogs in learning, e-learning and, in our case, community development. SCVS's pilot will involve its Community Development Trainees in about six months of monitored and moderated 'blogging', during which they will gather evidence for their NVQs and contribute to a final report to ACL/BECTA. It's an exciting and unusual project.

http://scvsweblogs.blogspot.com/

Check it out.

Blogs - a Global Audience and Appeal

Weblogs (blogs) are picked up very easily by search engines and web directories. In fact there are search engines purely designed to pick up web logs alone, including Googles Blog Search.

Within a couple of days of this blog being posted to the World Wide Web I was contacted by a marketing representative in Spain who emailed me some links and documents on how to use blogs in e-government and e-administration.

He runs a couple of his own blogs relevant to e-government which can be viewed below:

http://www.k-government-en.blogspot.com/

http://www.k-government.blogspot.com/

Torfaen Weblog project

For more information on the weblog project check the project specific domain on Torfaen's Online Community Portal Webster.uk.net:

http://www.webster.uk.net/weblog

The page has a host of information about weblogs, blogging, the project and links to relevant blogs, software on how to creat blogs and information about good blogging.

Podcasting - Audio Blogging

Podcasting is a method of publishing audio programs via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers. Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, which uses a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file.

Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio shows," and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically. Most podcatching software enables the user to copy podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. From the earliest RSS-enclosure tests, feeds have been used to deliver video files as well as audio. By 2005 some aggregators and mobile devices could receive and play video, but the "podcast" name remained most associated with audio.

"Podcasting" is a portmanteau word that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player. Aware of that misleading association from the beginning, some writers have suggested alternative names or reinterpretations of the letters "p-o-d", without winning much of a following. Another little-used alternative is "blogcasting", which implies content based on, or similar in format to, blogs.

Some podcasting examples

How to create your own blogs:

Learn all about blogs and host your own free with blogstream.com

Check out this free teen blog

Leading search tool for bloggers

Create your own blog with Blogger.com

The blog tool kit

Blogging for everybody

Livejournal.com

MoveableType

Word Press

Civiblog

What is a weblog or blog?

A blog is simply another word for a weblog, there is no difference between the two.

Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's reports that "Blog" tops their list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was the most looked-up word on its Internet sites this year.

A BLOG or WEBLOG is a personal website:

containing mostly news ("posts") regularly updated in the form of a diary (most recent posts at the top of the page), with most of the posts also arranged in categories, set up using a specially-designed interactive tool, usually created and run by a single person, sometimes anonymously.

A BLOG's Posts:

are usally text (including external links), sometimes with pictures and, more and more often, sound and video.
can be commented on by visitors.
are archived on the blog and can be accessed there indefinitely.

So a BLOG is much like a "personal webpage, except that:

is easier to set up and maintain and so much more active and more frequently updated.
encourages a more open and personal style and franker viewpoints.
greatly encourages discussion with visitors and other bloggers.
sets a standard worldwide format for blogs.

Do you want to get involved in Torfaen's weblog project?

Webster.uk.net in conjunction with JISC and Becta Aclearn is currently running a research project looking at the use of weblogs as a learning tool within Torfaen.

A weblog (more commonly known as a blog) is a website that contains an oline persoanl journal with reflections, comments and hyperlinks (to other blogs or external websites). Example of a weblog (blog).

We are looking for people within the community to assist us with the weblog project over the next couple of months. By combining the themes of citizenship and e-government we will use weblogs to allow community learners to engage and interact with local government. This we hope will encourage democratic engagement and online communication and interaction.

In addition, as part of the project we aim to encourage and assist local councillors to use weblogs to communicate with their electorate.

If you are interested in getting involved in the weblog project or would like further information please email us at: geraint.rowland@webster.uk.net.

Weblogs (Blogs) within Torfaen as an e-learning Tool

I am currently undergoing a research project looking at the use of weblogs (blogs) as a tool for e-learning (electronic learning) within the local community.

Are weblogs currently being used as a learning tool?

What level of e-learning is taking place within the different communities of Torfaen?

How could weblogs be used to enable learners to learn in new and better ways?

elearnspace blogging article

What is a blog?

A weblog (now more commonly known as a blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order).

Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs, and corporations. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author, to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are non-interactive. The totality of weblogs or blog-related websites is often called the blogosphere. When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.

Torfaen's Online Communtiy Portal webster.uk.net as a learning tool

Check out Torfaen's online Communtiy Portal www.webster.uk.net a community ICT project part funded by the European funding to increase the use of computers and the Internet within the county.

Within the portal there are a host of pages about local clubs and societies as well as a selection of local businesses and pages relevant to the public sector.

A couple of newly added pages relevant to learning include:

www.webster.uk.net/weblog

www.webster.uk.net/e-learning

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Do you work in community learning or the education sector within Torfaen?

I would like to hear from anyone involved in community learning within Torfaen. Please contact me if you are on geraint.rowland@torfaen.uk.net.

Weblogs as a learning tool

I am currently undergoing a project to look at Weblogs (Blogs) as a potential e-learning tool to be used to assist the communtiy learning within Torfaen.

Do you believe weblogs can assist e-learning and if so, how can this be done?

Torfaen Weblog Project

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006