Collaborative research blogging trial

I would like to experiment with using blogs for collaborative research and so I have decided to use the next issues topic to make this happen. We start this topic tomorrow.

TOPIC:- Discuss the impact that WWW technology is having on business.

PROCESS - setup and test the technology

3 lessons

Each student will set up a blog account and a test/personal blog at blogger.com

· Care will be taken that settings are adjusted so that anonymous comments can not be made.

· Students will ensure that they have a syndication feed for their blog

· Students will be instructed not to identify themselves or others i.e.. personal safety issues

· Students will be instructed not to make comments that might be defamatory or libellous

We will test by making some blog entries using the web interface and also by making entries using email.

3 lessons

Each student will set up Feedreader as their aggregator with each class members syndication feed. This means that they will all share their research.

More test blog entries will be made.

We will try to comment on someone elses entry.

Now we should be ready to do the research and record and share our progress.

2 lessons

Students will setup a new blog specifically for this collaborative research project along with feeds from all of the other students in their aggregator.

----------------------------------

TOPIC RESEARCH STAGE

2 lessons

We will watch a few videos in class on the topic. Students will use their blogs to react to these videos.

6 lessons

Students will research the topic using the internet. They will make a blog entry on any relevant url quoting the url and giving a brief summary indicating how this url relates to the topic.

Students will comment/discuss/debate/question/affirm/reason on other students blog entries (urls and their summaries).

I will subscribe to all student blogs and will make comments on at least 6 student blog entries per lesson

Students should aim at making either a single blog entry per lesson (45 minutes) or comment on at least two other student's blog entries and conducting some searches for suitable material.

----------------------------------

SUMMARISING TASK

2 lessons (double lesson)

After the research period, students will produce a personal mindmap of this topic during a double lesson period.

TIME ALLOCATION

I have not idea about how long to make this exercise go for. I will monitor and adjust. Times are best guess at this time and frankly quite crude.