Experiences of Adopting In-class Blogs in the Teaching of Hands-on

1.Methodology Blogs have found their use in education. It further concludes that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning.

1. First of all, the instructor creates a blog for the lab class at the outset. Every student of the class is required to create a blog for the lab when the semester begins.
2. Instructor blogs are they serve to deliver lab sheets and hand-outs in electronic version.
3. Students are encouraged to read the instructor blog before class meets so that they can get themselves prepared.
4. When finishing a lab in class, students are asked to submit their results at their own blogs immediately and make a notice by placing a link at the instructor's blog where the lab is made public.
5. students can to check into their classmate’s blogs to see what other people have written.

The blog is so responsive that instructors can make quick and informed judgments on which students to walk to and initiate further interactions with.

Dialogue-Based

Getting student feedback in a lab setting helps engage with students and creates a real dialogue.

Status Tracking

Blogs are a versatile administrative tool to track the status of the computer-based lab students conduct. Blog posts replace the paper sheets for students to turn in their lab works.

Figure 1. The formation of social learninig circles by creating not just trackback links but also dialogus links in blogs.

Social Learning
- The intrinsic structure of blogs enables social learning.
- Blogs is a form of Social Media ,Share opinions, experiences, viewpoints and Collaborative Learning .
-Blogs have the potentials to upgrade personal learning to social learning.
-Social construction of knowledge through social media such blogs help explain why assessing other’s work may be conducive to social learning.
-For the purpose of promoting critical and analytical thinking, after a student has read another’s posting, she is asked to leave comment to that posting. We call it the creation of “dialogue links” that are different from the trackback links.

2. Survey Results

Sample :
two undergraduate classes, namely Java Programming Language and Programming for Internet Applications, with 38 and 35 stduents respectively

Result :

48% respondents agree that the blog helps interactions among students enrolled in the same class , 18 % don’t agree and 34% have no opinions.

79% respondents agree that the use of in-class blogs helps keep the students interested and motivated in learning, while the remaining 21% have no opinions.

As to the impact of in-class blogging on learning effectiveness, 86% respondents think it is positive while 1% think it is negative and 13% have no opinions.

As to read classmates’ blogs when a take-home assignment problem is hard, 84% respondents answer positively while 3% answer no and the remaining 13% have no opinions.

Student uphold the principles of respecting intellectual property and refuse to duplicate, 79% responds positively while 6% confess they do duplicate at least some of others’ ideas that are posted on their classmates’ blogs and the remaining 15% have no opinions.