seminar
Web 2.0 in Education: A Case Study of Using Blogs with a Postgraduate Class
The purpose of this seminar is to describe a study which explored educational applications of blogs with a class of postgraduate students in The University of Hong Kong. Rather than using learning management system to support learning of the class as it was the ordinary practice in the program, the facilitator-researcher organized blog-based environment where students were accessing course material, posting reflections, featuring artifacts created through the learning tasks, commenting on each others contributions, and otherwise participated on regular basis throughout the semester. The blog environment contained connected community of interlinked blogs belonging to individual students. The study results strongly suggest that when appropriately managed by a facilitator blogs have potential to effectively support teaching and learning activities, and lead to increased students engagements and learning. The experience from this study also suggests that in order to maximize teaching and learning opportunities, a blog system can be effectively expanded by variety of other Web 2.0 applications.About the speaker(s):
About the speaker(s):Dr Daniel Churchill is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. Dr Churchill specializes in areas of educational technology in classroom teaching and learning, instructional design, design of e-learning environments and multimedia design. He has been involved in education for many years at secondary schools, technical colleges, a polytechnic, a teacher training institute and a university. His experience involves classroom and on-line teaching, instructional design, multimedia design and academic staff development. Currently, he has strong interest teacher thinking and technology integration, learning objects, student-centered learning environments, Web 2.0 and use handheld technologies in learning (mobile phones and portable digital assistants).