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Blogs

By Jay Cross

Learn to blog, blog to learn.

Blog stands for Web-log, an informal personal Website. Thousands of people blogevery day. (Blog is both a noun and a verb.) I’ve blogged for 18 months, and I’mconvinced that blogs are destined to become a powerful, dirt-cheap tool for e-learningand knowledge management.A blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, oftenaccompanied by links to other blogs that the site’s editor visits on a regular basis.Think of a blog as one person’s public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs werestarted by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on theInternet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another’sblogs. A community culture took hold.In 1999, blogging software arrived on the scene, enabling anyone to post content to aWebsite. Generally, blog software comes with a personal Website for those who don’talready have one. The software captures your words in dated entries, maintaining achronological archive of prior entries. In the spirit of sharing inherent to Net culture,the software and the personal Websites are usually free. Currently, blogging is one of the fastest growing trends on the Web. Nearly half a million people have downloadedblogging software.But what’s so special about this way of posting text to the Internet? Blogs arepersonal and unfiltered. Real people, rather than corporate PR departments or adagencies, write them."Imagine Hunter S. Thompson writing about the new Mac operating system," writesCarlyle Adler in

Fortune

Online. "That's the wacky spirit you can expect when youcheck out the online narratives known as Weblogs. While these sites represent boththe best and worst of Web self-publishing (the virtual tour of ugly couches wasn't for us, nor were the angry ex-girlfriend sites), several of the technology Weblogs areworth checking out."

Blogging to learn

Peer-To-Peer: The NextHot Trend in E-Learning?eLearning ForumUpdate: Peer-to-Peer

Jay Cross

is CEO of eLearning Forum, an1800-member think tankand advocacy group, andfounder of Internet TimeGroup.

He is the author of numerous articles andwhite papers on e-learningand businesseffectiveness. Not onlya frequent feature articlecontributor to

LearningCircuits

, Jay also shepherdsthe Learning Circuits Blog.Contact him at jaycross@internettime.com.

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Build a Blog

To start your own blog, go toblogger.com. A blog account isfree! Instructions for buildingyour personal, company, or Not long ago, a blog pointed me to Chris Ashley's article "Weblogs: A Swiss ArmyWebsite?" He writes, "Weblog software and the Weblog model of content productionand platform interoperability are proving to be increasingly useful and powerful,pushing and inspiring innovative developments for, and uses of, the Web. Theseareas include content, information, and knowledge management; community building;publishing and journalism; teaching, learning, and collaboration; and coursemanagement systems.… Weblog software, interfaces, and workflows are helping torealize a Web of increasing organization and interoperability, ease of production,improved and flexible information flow, and interlinked accessibility…."After reading this, I asked Ashley to discuss the role of the e-teacher, meta-learning,and more. Our conversation revealed a half-dozen ways that blogging can supportlearning. Essentially, blogs are a personal writing space to organize our own thoughtsand share information with others.Blogging pioneer Peter Merholzadds, "the power of Weblogs is their ability toimmediately put form to thought. I can get an idea in my head--however [half] baked itmight be--and, in seconds, share it with the world. Immediately, I get feedback,refinement, stories, and so forth spurred by my little idea. Never before was thispossible."Also, blogs are easily linked and cross-linked to form learning communities. A fewdays after we met, Ashley emailed, "It was interesting how the next day you postedon your blog about our talk, about which David Carter-Tod commented on in his blog.One of my colleagues, Raymond Yee, noticed it after we had lunch, and I told himabout our discussion. Then, Yee wrote a post about our circle on his blog. Of course,then I had to comment about it on my blog. It's all an interesting little Web that blogsmake happen so quickly."In another setting, innovative teachers are encouraging students to maintain classand personal school blogs. Enthusiasm grows as students take ownership of thecontent. They write, edit, review, and publish content. They also critique each other and present different viewpoints. Teachers make articles available to readelectronically. Blogs maintained by individual students enable teachers to assesstheir students’ thinking patterns and depth of understanding. In the future, studentsmay learn by assembling personal digital portfolios.Former MTV-vj Adam Curry is working with teacher Peter Ford to offer free schoolblogs andadviceon how to use them. They note that "Children are vain, just likeadults. They desire and require an audience for their thoughts and achievements."they add, "The simple intuitive nature of SchoolBlogs is precisely what's required toallow students to express themselves on their own terms. Children's involvement withWebsites has to be more than a posting of a few pieces of their work on a thirdperson's static Website for a non-existent world to see. There's no ownership in that.School Blogs can give children their own soapbox, their own voice. They becomehabitual writers. They are in control." (SeeWeblog-edfor additional accounts of thepower of blogs in schools.)Although everyone would like to learn a craft by apprenticing to a world-class master,it’s not always possible. Workshops held by master craftsmen don't scale. Bycombining blogs and digital storytelling we get the next best thing, a virtualapprenticeship. TheCenter for Digital Storytellingbelieves that "in the not distantfuture, sharing one's story through the multiple media of digital imagery, text, voice,sound, music, video, and animation will be the principle hobby of the world's people."Imagine learning to teach by observing and learning from stories told by a world-classinstructor.

Sample blogs

The best way to understand blogs is to visit a few.

ElearningPost

Maish Nichani’s blog deals withcorporate learning, community building, instructionaldesign, knowledge management, and so forth. Everyweekday Maish links to four or five interesting

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team blog are at

www.blogger.com/howto

.articles. Sample sources are

Wired, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Syllabus, First Monday, Training,

PBS,and

CIO.

Maish writes a brief paragraph to describeeach link.I no longer read three-quarters of the magazines I once felt obligated to, but I do reade-learningpost religiously to find out what I need to read. It’s also more fun to readfrom a variety of voices--an article from Fortune, a story from Learning Circuits, or awhite paper from IBM.

Research on Learning and Performance

This blog began as a personaltool to capture ideas that I would later add to the e-learning page of my company'sWebsite. As more information about e-learning became available, keeping that pageup-to-date became a burden. Now, every couple of weeks I harvest worthwhile entriesfrom the blog to post. What sort of content do you find on this blog? Whatever I foundinteresting at the time. Essentially, the blog is a clipping service. Love me, love myblog. Some sample content includesphotos and impressions of ASTD TechKnowledge in Las Vegasnotes from a Centra press event (posted during the session)poetry about meta-learninga pithy quote from Cisco’s Tom Kellynotes from a meeting with Chris Ashley at The Interactive University.My blog contains more than a year’s worth of items like those. The content comes insmall bites. How do people retrieve needles from this haystack? Most use the Googlesearch box that appears atop each page.Here are a few other blogs.PersonalEvheadRebecca’s PocketKottke.orgNewsRobot WisdomThe GuardianThe Obscure StoreTechSlashdotDan Gillmor's eJournalDoc Searls Weblog

Bottom line?

For me, blogs highlight useful information that I may never find on my own--or think tofind on my own.Cameron Barrett's blog has taught me more about Web design thanany course.David Weinberger ’s blog mentors me on knowledge management, andoften it has me laughing out loud.Chris Pirillokeeps me abreast of Windows'developments. Recently,Stephen Downesbegan augmenting my understanding of how people learn.I know what you're thinking. Why couldn’t I get the same insight from reading a bookor a magazine? Let me count the ways. First, the informality of blogs makes themengaging. Second, they're a time management tool. Because bloggers read oneanother's stuff, the best of the best rises to the top and eventually appears on thehandful of blogs I read. In addiiton, blogs offer personal and even contrarianviewpoints. Third, blogs are current. For example, and unfortunately, I first learnedabout the World Trade Center disaster onDaveNetrather than CNN.Basically, blogs work.