Blogs as writing and research tools in the academic process

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

This is a response to Steve Rumsby's really interesting entry on blogs, wikis and note taking. Read his entry, it's really interesting.

Hi Steve. I'm currently experimenting with developing academic work in my blog. This is so that we can identify the next stages of the development of our e-learning architecture. That is to say, an e-learning architecture that is appropriate to Warwick's 'research-based teaching and learning'. You might have seen entries appearing by me that are essentially loosely connected sets of notes on the reading that I am doing (in preparation for a PhD on the nature of creativity). In some cases these are well worked out critical asessments, and in other cases they are just assemblages of quotes (must get one of those scanner-pens). But as you say, our blogging system doesn't quite offer the meta-tools to bring this note-taking process together. The 'write follow-up' function is good, but is missing two key things:

1) the ability to write an entry that is a follow up of more than one entry – the essential summarisation function;
2) a means for viewing a model of the linked entries.

We may also need to consider more detailed categorisation.

So we are just starting to think about this, and have in principle accepted that in the medium to long term we may do some development on it. I'm hoping at some point (when I can actually have time to do some dev work) to create a Flash diagramming tool that will present a model of the relationships between entries. We already have the xml feed that this will be based upon. However, now that you've brought OneNote to our attention, i'll have a look at that and see what else we can do.

The link to WiKi's is also something we are exploring, and we are piloting a use of SiteBuilder in which PhD students will get to develop and ePortfolio, and importantly, blog about the process of developing the ePortfolio.

At the weekend i'm doing some blog induction sessions that will intro grad students to the system, so i'll report back on my findings.

Robert O'Toole : 15 Oct 2004 10:00 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem