Tech Play 1 - Blogs

1.

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According to Merriam-webster, blog is defined as a Web site that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also: the contents of such a site”. blogbasics.com defined blog as “A blog is a frequently updated online personal journal or diary. It is a place to express yourself to the world. A place to share your thoughts and your passions. A blog is your own website that you are going to update on an ongoing basis. Blog is a short form for the word weblog and the two words are used interchangeably.” 

A glog is short for graphics blog, glog is the name used to describe a publicly accessible graphical blog. A person or organization's glog is actually an interactive multimedia image that looks similar to a poster, but readers of a glog are able to interact with the content. Glogster is a prime example of a glog. A vlog is a video log. The term can also refer to a blog made up entirely of video blog posts. Vlog posts are created by creating a video of yourself or an event, uploading it to the Internet and publishing it within a post on your blog. Youtube and Vimeo are the examples of a vlog.

All three of these logs are different from typical webpage because they organized by date. With websites, you have more control of your site's files/layout, because you have control your codes directly. Another difference is about how content published. With blogs,glogs, vlogs, it has builtin function in the dashboard to publish content easily with a single button click. But for website, you have to use a FTP software to publish your content. A discussion board is an online bulletin boards where people with similar interests can discuss and debate various topics, and it can be multiple authors, while a blog usually consist of one author’s thoughts.

The affordance of the blog is the ability to distribute your ideas to world at any time easily.

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I researched and played with different blogs (Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr). The common features are all three blog services are free to start. If you want to register as domain, as separate website of course you have to pay domain registration fee. Other than that, blogger gives you 1 GB of space, Wordpress gives 3GB, and Tumblr gives Unlimited space(wow). Blogger provides 20-30 different themes, Wordpress provides 210 themes, however Tumblr provides around 1,000 themes. Blogger has very limited custom plugins, Wordpress has 20,000 free custom plugins, Tubmlr has very limited custom plugins. With Blogger and Wordpress, you can schedule your postings, but you can't do that with Tumblr.

Blog Platforms Comparison	Blogger	Wordpress	Tumblr
Cost	Free	Free	Free
Custom Plugins	Very Limited	20000	Very Limited
Storage	1 GB	3 GB	Unlimited
Themes	20-30	1500	~1,000
Scheduled Posting	Yes	Yes	No

However, I chose to use Blogger. The reason is that my previous coursework was on blogger. I used blogger for my other ETEC courses, and when I build my portfolio, I wanted to have all my work on the same system. If I were to choose one other than Blogger, I would definitely choose Wordpress, because of its ease and flexibility.

2.

Content

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In my school, I am also coaching school's robotics teams, and for Robotics competition, they have to have a journal called “Engineering Notebook”. Students show this notebook to judges to prove that team worked on the design and engineering processes to build their robot. However, we thought about that, and decided to use blogs instead of keeping a notebook that is written and drawn by hand.

Students in teams used blog(wordpress) to make their team presentation about the robot. Students updated the blog everyday, with pictures and videos, and other students contributed the engineering notebook blog via comments. I believe that students in robotics team creating and managing a blog where they examine the procedures applied in the building of the robot, it falls under “creating, applying, and understanding” levels of Blooms Revised Taxonomy.

Pedagogy

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I think using blogs in my robotics team would best fall under constructivism. Students use blog to keep a log of the ideas, their 3D designs, design ideas, fundraising ideas, advertisement, safety measures, building processes, meeting notes. The robotics blog is learner controlled, and students apply new knowledge through their experiences. The blog shows students what they have learned and how they applied this to their learning process.

Technology

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The one of the affordances of a blog is that it saves time for students to make a record of what they do to design, build, program, and test their robot over a period of time. It would be hard to write all these steps, draw all the designs and sketches by hand. Also it is easy to edit, if there is any mistake in the blog, it is easy to fix. Also it allows us to include photos, videos from our regular daily meetings. It is also allowing us to advertise our robotics team to the other people, and get feedback, contribution, suggestions from them via comments features on the blog easily.

3.
Blogs can be used in the classes other than using it as a digital record. Blogs can be used to promote the robotics team to others outside of the class, for example parents, students in the school, sponsors, admins, and public. Blogs can also be used to make how-to guides for other students, parents, teachers. for example creating a step-by-step instruction guidebook on how a specific design works for the robot, or how to program a robot to do a certain task. Students can also use blog to share their future ideas about the robot, and can get comments, feedback from other people to improve their ideas more.

4.

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Building robot is long process. Robotics room is usually technology rich, and we don't have enough students in the room(due to space). The biggest obstacle would be time that creating-maintaning a blog. Building a robot takes a lot of effort to design and build, and it took time away from other works.

Even so, blogging the design and build processes can help if the students need to fix the robot later. It also allows students in the robotics team to be able to visit the blog, and know what other students ideas and thinking.