Why Blog?
Much of the popularity of blogs is that you decide their content and purpose. Whilst behaving like a news site, where most recent news appears at the top of the page, this one simple feature can be put to any number of uses, including:
- Personal notebook.
- A reflective Learning Journal for yourself or a class.
- Departmental news.
- Personal profile raising.
- Prospective student outreach.
- Improving management and co-worker transparency
- Public or University of York-oriented marketing.
...but they are also easily used for ...
- Exposing unfinished ideas to one's peers at an early stage in order to get early feedback or input.
- Explaining one's research papers to a wider audience, beyond one's peers and fellow practitioners.
- Finding new collaborators or being found.
- Making feedback easy - blogs normally have comment fields whilst papers in repositories don't
- Dissemination - being found for "niche" search terms particular to your field
Examples at York
Further Reading
- Blogs in Plain English ( 4 minute video introduction to blogs )
- 7 uses for Blogs in Higher Education
- Blogs in higher education - some ideas about their benefits and downsides
- Top 50 Higher Education Blogs
- To blog, or not to blog? The academic's conundrum
In the video below, Scott Moore talks about his use of blogging for teaching. Via ( http://www.crlt.umich.edu/oct ).