Edublog

An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.

Weblogs have existed for close to two decades. However, it wasn't until the second half of the 1990s that weblogs began to grow in popularity. In 1998, there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs (so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997). In 1999, there were 23 known weblogs, and Pitas http://www.pitas.com/, the first free build your own weblog tool, was launched. Also in 1999 weblogs changed from a mix of links, commentary, and thoughts, to short form journal entries. An early recorded use of the term "edublog" can be traced to a webring called the Edublog WebRing, founded on January 30, 2002. The new use of weblogs are largely interest driven and attract readers who have similar interests. In 2004, there were an estimated 3 million blogs and as of July 2011, there are an estimated 164 million blogs.

The Edublog Awards, the international and community based awards programme for the use of blogs and social media to support education, runs annually online across a range of platforms. The Awards were founded by James N. Farmer in 2004.

There are several uses of edublogs. Some bloggers use their blogs as a learning journal or a knowledge log to gather relevant information and ideas, and communicate with other people. Some teachers use blogs to keep in contact with students' parents. Some bloggers use blogs to record their own personal life, and express emotions or feelings. Some instructors use blogs as an instructional and assessment tool, and blogs can be used as a task management tool. Blogs are used to teach individuals about writing for an audience as they can be made public, and blogging software makes it easier to create content for the Web without knowing much HTML.

...
Wikipedia