The Auricle

Stephen Downes' Edu_RSS alterted me to Maish Nichani's article for the Australian Flexible Learning Community on How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences. A nice summary of why an apparently simple solution like a weblog can have a big impact. I like the fact that Maish recognizes that a personal point of view can contribute to understanding. Formal academic writing can have an air of detachment and objectivity that can sometimes, unintentionally, impede understanding. Maish goes on to consider how reflection is facilitated by the chronological nature of weblogs and how byte sized posts keeps readers focused. Maish also contends that it's the above factors which can enable weblog authors to establish a relationship with their readers before going on to consider why weblogs are a relatively underexploited genre. He then goes on to propose a three-step methodology.