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Farmer and Bartlett-Bragg

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Blogs @ anywhere: High fidelity online communication
James Farmer
Institute of Teaching and LearningDeakin University, Australia
Anne Bartlett-Bragg
Faculty of Education,
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Since early 2001 several institutions and many individual teachers have incorporated blogging
into their online pedagogicalstrategies. During this time, weblog (blog) publishing
technologies have evolved towards accessibility and ease of use and the technological barriers
preventing adoption have, to a degree, dissolved. Blogs and their associated technologies are
arguably heralding the most significant technological development in online teaching and
learning since the introduction of enterprise level Learning ManagementSystems (LMS)
(Downes 2004).
This development is all the more significant as a result of the communication dynamics
inherent within blog technologies. Whereas an LMS stores and presents all information on a
centralised and hierarchical basis, bound within the subject and the organisation, blogs are
distributed, aggregated, open and independent. Through the use of blogs, it is suggested thatteachers and learners are becoming empowered, motivated, reflective and connected
practitioners in new knowledge environments. The balance between individualised and
centralised technologies is restored.
The application of weblogs in an education setting will, at best, have a limited impact if due
consideration of these developing communication dynamics are ignored. This paper includes abrief review of some of the institutional and individual blog projects that are taking place in
higher education. In doing so it examines the different types of blog environments that are
being used in terms of their communication dynamics and subsequent impact upon teachers,
learners and pedagogy. Further, a more detailed examination is made of the use of blogs in
teaching and learning incourses at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). In light of
these studies and examination, possible approaches to implementing blogs in institutional
settings are outlined in the form of an alternative Online Learning Environment. In addition, a
study to be undertaken in 2006 examining the impact of blogs on teaching and learning at
Deakin University will be described.

Introduction: Blogs,RSS, email and bulletin boards
The precise details of the history of blogging are not entirely agreed upon, beyond that the medium as we are
currently most familiar with began around 1996 and involved the regular posting of ‘items’ in reverse
chronological order on a webpage (Blood, 2000). It is this visual representation, incorporating other such
features as links, comments, taglines,archives, permanent links, blogrolls and more which has largely
dominated discussion about the nature of blogs and their potential use.
While these features are extremely significant aspects of what makes up a blog, arguably the most important
developments in this area have had little to do with visual representation and form, and much more to do with
the facility for the development of individualdigital identity and an XML language known as RSS. Through
blog technologies now available, individuals are able to simply represent themselves online and as an
abbreviation of either ‘RDF Site Summary’ or ‘Really Simple Syndication’, RSS allows users to literally
subscribe to a web page and receive complete or summarised new content. This can be done either through
an application similar to anemail inbox known as a news aggregator or a web-based environment most
commonly described as a ‘river of news’ aggregator (Winer, 2005).
RSS has allowed for the introduction of an entirely new mode of communication and interaction with
information artefacts. As, almost without exception in higher education, online asynchronous communication
has taken place either through email or discussion...