While I was thinking about the role of blogs, I came across an observation (which I can’t locate again), that many Internet users may read blogs from time to time but don’t distinguish them from other kinds of websites. This was certainly true for me – it was only after I started blogging that I realised that kausfiles and Brad DeLong’s Semi Daily Journal, which I had visited quite a few times, were blogs and (at least in Brad’s case) part of a much larger blogosphere.
The experience of reading these sites is different for me as a result. I wonder if others have had similar experiences? And I’d be interested to hear about the relationship, if any, between the way in which people find their way around the Internet and the way that they use and interpret the sites they visit. For example, does a site reached through a portal appear different from the same site found through Google?
This leads me on to a question that has been examined here a few times, that of blogs versus courseware systems such as Blackboard and Web CT. At the moment, courseware systems are more widely used in teaching than blogs, but I’m going to predict that, as general awareness of blogs grows, they will displace special-purpose proprietary courseware, in part because there will be less need to introduce students and academics to the set of social conventions and understandings associated with blogs, while the costs of learning to use courseware must be met be each new cohort of students.
Moreover, blogs automatically facilitate cross-linking and collaboration, which people generally want. By contrast, a lot of courseware is closed by design. Even where courseware is intended to be open, it doesn’t benefit from the collective experience of blogs in making links of all kinds (615 million links tracked by Technorati as of today). Ideally, an open courseware system could be attached to a blog in some way – again this is the kind of area where progress is likely to come mostly from the blogging side, finding clever ways to manage links, rather than from modfiications to courseware.
I’d be interested in thoughts on this, and ideas about other kinds of special-purpose groupware that might be challenged or improved by blogs and similar systems. The general idea I’m reaching for here is that because information is a public good[1], it is more effectively disseminated as a by-product of activities like blogging that build various forms of social capital, and therefore favor open access, than in the context of attempts to create intellectual property.
fn1. The statement ‘information wants to be free’, is a half-truth but the half that is true (once information is created, there is no social benefit in restricting access to it) is probably more important than the half that is omitted (information is costly to create).
John Quiggin 
Wonkette compared jornalists and bloggers to food. NYTimes and SMH are kind of roughage that is good for you vegies and fish etc. Blogs are like a desert, bad for you but good for the soul…
Bill Ives the Guru of KM and Portals also touched on this subject and linked two days ago to a very impressive site Blog Census [One and all Australian bloggers who are linked by Ken Parish are being tracked]
Unfortunaltely, the same fact cannot be supported by other sites such as Blogstreet and even Technorati is neglecting a number of regular bloggers Down Under.
I am naturally biased when it comes to bean counting, as a result, I am partial to Blogpulse
In just over one month since going public, shares in the Internet giant Google Inc. reached an all-time high, recording their largest percentage rise in a single day yesterday. The stock finished trading for the day at US$126.86, a rise of almost 7.3 percent- or US$8.60- and almost double the company’s initial price of US$85. Google Surges As Wall Street Says Buy
[http://www.forbes.com/business/services/feeds/ap/2004/09/28/ap1564834.html] – If registration required pops uo attempt to read the full story through my site … I gather Google has added it to its cached databases.
Wonkette compared jornalists and bloggers to food. NYTimes and SMH are kind of roughage that is good for you vegies and fish etc. Blogs are like a desert, bad for you but good for the soul…
Bill Ives the Guru of KM and Portals also touched on this subject and linked two days ago to a very impressive site Blog Census [One and all Australian bloggers who are linked by Ken Parish are being tracked]
Unfortunaltely, the same fact cannot be supported by other sites such as Blogstreet and even Technorati is neglecting a number of regular bloggers Down Under.
I am naturally biased when it comes to bean counting, as a result, I am partial to Blogpulse
In just over one month since going public, shares in the Internet giant Google Inc. reached an all-time high, recording their largest percentage rise in a single day yesterday. The stock finished trading for the day at US$126.86, a rise of almost 7.3 percent- or US$8.60- and almost double the companyâ?™s initial price of US$85.
(Google Surges As Wall Street Says Buy)
[http://www.forbes.com/business/services/feeds/ap/2004/09/28/ap1564834.html] – If registration required pops uo attempt to read the full story through my site … I gather Google has added it to its cached databases.
The internet works best with many-to-many systems. The best known many-to-many systems are ebay and google. I design many-to-many web/internet engineering systems for a living. Discussion sites have adopted a similar model from slashdot to kuro5hin.
As to courseware; it could work well in a many-to-many web system. Use a courseware site to connect teachers and students together. The institution could provide the framework of the course and curriculum that has to be matched for a degree/diploma to be granted.
And teachers (not from the institution, it could be an open-market) and students could be connected through an ebay like many-to-many site as a way of matching demand and expertise.
The institution would make their money from a fee to have their curriculum undertaken. The teachers could make their money from tutoring students. Students would get their benefit in a degree/diploma from their institution of choice.
It is possible now, the biggest issue to overcome would the possibility of cheating and how you would know that a student does understand the curriculum. This could be done through the teachers with institutions and students rating the teachers/tutors as a form of feedback (ebay like again).
An institution could also ban a teacher/tutor from guiding students on their curriculum as well. That (and ratings) would help make the system self-dampening which is important. Superior teachers/tutors could charge more as well.
It could work. I think that education schedules need to be compressed, that could be a way of achieving it.
I agree with the point about Courseware being difficult to use. My wife gripes to me all the time about how difficult (read “non-linear”) it is to follow the teaching materials.
The associated discussion forum is one of those multi-indented ones, and they have to click on each link individually to read one discussion. Contrast this to the comments section in a blog, which is linear in nature.
Furthermore, it is possible to configure a blog so that material is published on a schedule, eg. daily or weekly basis.
Taking the concept further, student blogging could form part of the assessment. Since, blogging encourages critical and original thinking. To prevent cheating, students could be orally examined based on the material they write on their blog.
In the end, this could lead to a fairer assessment of the students’ learning compared to the traditional 2000 word essay written over 3 hours. I’m not sure if all the educators are ready for this change, though.
Blogging is indeed a fascinating subject. I think the final wash-up will be that it will indeed have some effects, but not as great as spruikers predict. That said, it will create 2nd and 3rd order effects we haven’t thought of yet. For example, it does start to call into question the role of traditional “experts” and the media’s use of such structures.
On the topic of IP, I don’t think comparing blogs with courseware is the appropriate comparison. A better comparison is with IP-based information sources such as Time, National Geographic, newspapers and text books. Those IP-based information sources are more reliable, more comprehensive and less biassed than blogs, generally.
In terms of the technical capabilities that enable blogging, those capabilities actually arose from commercial, IP-based software. Pyra, the firm that wrote blogger, was a commercial firm, and it is now part of Google, which is another IP-based firm. Google’s business is providing relevant information to people. Blogging assists that role by creating larger stores of accessible information.
The stodgy aspects of academic courseware are the marks of second rate software firms. Blogger and blogging capabilities are the marks of the dynamic software industry, which is what it’s all about. In fact, I would argue that stodgy courseware is a pointer to problems in the academic vertical market and the way it approaches software. It is probably second rate.
I should say, too, that my point about Google can actually be read as supporting JQ’s point that blogging provides better information than traditional sources, or at least provides good information anyway. However, I think there’s an important distinction to draw. A lot of that free material is actually views, opinions and advocacy, rather than information as such. Views, opinion and advocacy are part of what we do, living in a community, and are different from information as such.
Also, to the extent that JQ’s post reflects a jaundiced view of courseware, which I would endorse, I think the answer to that problem lies in the sociologies of the way software is developed. Education administration environments tend to see software development as simply a production role that implements orthodoxies provided by subject matter experts, rather than a creative exercise to be driven by innovative software developers.
Hence bloggers developed by first class software people are better than courseware designed to satisfy bureaucratic environments.
Article of Note claiming that today more than 2 Million People are blogging in Amerika: Before Applying, Check Out the Blogs
I was visting a site called something or other ffor some months before I discovered blogging.
Damn, if that NYT article is true, I will never work again.
Along with a few of my colleagues I require students to blog as part of their coursework. I always found webCT to be clinical and hard to use, whereas blogging has a more organic feeling. Another benefit of blogs is that publishing material on the web makes it possible that random strangers will read it. I think that makes students take their writing more seriously.
First, I think that ‘information wants to be free’ sensu speech rather than sensu beer. Second, the comparison courseware/blogging is a bit hard to make. Blogging is aimed to be very open, without any restrictions, which would be hard to achieve in a course setting while maintaining a decent signal to noise ratio.
However, I agree that webCT could improve with some (limited) form of blogging. I am currently doing a course over webCT and I dislike the system, which is very restrictive.
It may also pay to read some things about social software, for example at Clay Shirky’s site (particularly the ones on media and community).
I use WebCT to:
1. Give students easy access to a variety of files
2. Link sites and documents on the web that are useful for the course
3. Post announcements and instructions that would otherwise need to be printed out
4. Conduct discussion
5. Send and receive individual correspondence with students, separate from my normal email
I find that it’s easy to use and serves all these purposes well.
1-4 could be done with a blog, but I don’t see why it would be superior. On the occasions when I’ve got a good discussion going on the forum, it works just like a blog. As far as I’m aware, blogs don’t do (5).
Of course I completely agree about public access. I suppose some students would be intimidated if they thought their comments could be read by a global audience. And someone will always worry that we are exposing the students to stalkers and so on. But in any case I don’t see the restricted access as an essential design feature of courseware like WebCT. The essential feature of blogs is their unplanned ‘diary’ character, whereby new topics are raised each day in response to events. Such a feature might stimulate students to log on more regularly, and might encourage more energetic application of theory to current affairs. But as I said above, the discussion board on WebCT can just about reproduce this anyway.
The real issue is how to incorporate internet discussion into the design and assessment of courses. It’s a wonderful thing when it works well and it should have a place in teaching. In fact I hope eventually to run a web-based undergraduate economics course, centring on blog-style discussion. It would be linked to an on-line ever-evolving text book, preferably edited by John Quiggin.