Just as a phone conversation is shorter than a face-to-face meeting that may serve a very different purpose, blog conversations may be longer or shorter in duration in order to accomplish different types of objectives. Descriptions of blog life cycles follow.
One month focused topic.
A “discovery team” begins the month long project with a subject expert providing background on a topic over the course of the first week. This can be a result of student questions passed through the teacher, or could be the expert providing an introduction to the topic, or might crop up because someone recommends a blog topic on the Expert Voices Gateway. Over the next two weeks, the teacher/librarian serves as intermediary between the students and subject expert to help students focus on quality questions to ask the expert, and to provide age appropriate materials to help students understand the expert’s field. The final week of the month, the teacher/librarian and students wrap up conversation with the expert. Any lesson plans, activities, or other educational “artifacts” created during the course of the month are housed on the blog for future classes to use and adapt.
One week focused topic
A discovery team comes to the blog in a prepared setting, where the students and teacher have created a set of questions or issues to ask an expert. The resulting answers to those questions become part of the archive. This short term lends itself well to responding to workshops and science in the news.
Example: Bringing the Field Into the Classroom–Birds.
Semester length topic(s)
An undergraduate or graduate class takes a large topic for the course to investigate, each week a different subtopic with required and suggested readings and class “discussion”, guest “speakers” do mini-presentations via the blog.
This can be a way to create and post a course syllabus, provide guest speakers, and carry on conversations related to a topic, including group work in a way that is similar to WebCT or Blackboard but uses a blog instead. Class discussions and debates are archived, can be added to later in the semester, and aggregations of assignments (when appropriate) can be created. Blogs can be used as a supplement to a text, such as using discussion questions at the end of a chapter for blog entries and discussion.
Example:
1-2 Week event related focus
Many organizations hold an annual “ask an engineer”, “National XYZ Week”, or single day events (Pi Day, Earth Day). A blog is a potential publicity/news vehicle for collecting resources, comments, projects, and partners.
Example: Bringing the Field Into the Classroom–Birds.
Sporadic postings of interesting questions collected through a variety of sources
Intriguing questions that often lead to more questions than direct answers can be posted through the blog for a collegial debate by subject experts. These would probably last from a week to a month, and would provide thought provoking comments and a healthy discussion of parties who may disagree on a topic.
Example: How can digital education help the Gulf Coast?
Users can suggest a blog topic
Users can post a topic for discussion at the Expert Voices Gateway page. This would be monitored and refereed. Not every topic will be responded to, and may take several months before a topic is covered once it has been approved, while searching for available experts and other discovery team members.
Multiple discovery teams working on a single project, compiling data
Local school districts, campuses of a university, sister cities, etc. could collect data in their home areas and compile data on template for synthesis and evaluation.
Example: Meeting web kids on their own turf
Aggregations of other blogs related to STEM, on a single topic
One of the Expert Voices blog topics could be a collection of other respected blogs on a given topic, to aggregate many views into one area for discussion and debate.
With thanks to Blythe Bennett, Syracuse University Information Studies.
