Title: Using blogs to support practical teaching of educational technology

Authors: Xiaoling Han

Addresses: Department of Education Technology, School of Communication, Shandong Normal University, No.88, East of Wenhua Road, Jinan, China

Abstract: Practical teaching plays an important role in cultivating inter-disciplinary and application-oriented talents in the domain of educational technology. The purposes of this study are to explore the use of blogs in helping practical teaching of educational technology, and to investigate how to promote students-teacher interaction by using the blogs and the roles of the teacher. 89 students in 30 groups from two classes participated in this study. Two class blogs were used as a communication tool for sharing resources. A questionnaire and the posts on the blogs were used for data collection. The result showed that the use of the blogs was helpful for supporting practical teaching and it was easier for the teacher to track and monitor students' learning processes by using the blogs. Also, the blogs played an important role especially in communicating, recording, sharing, and reflecting. Issues involved in roles of teacher are discussed.

Keywords: blogs; practical teaching; educational technology; Web 2.0; teacher role; resource sharing; educational resources; student tracking; student monitoring; learning processes; weblogs; technology education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2013.055399

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2013 Vol.23 No.3/4, pp.311 - 323

Received: 24 Aug 2012
Accepted: 10 Feb 2013
Published online: 30 Dec 2013 *

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