Wow – my first time ever blogging and I feel like I am typing into a black hole, not knowing where the words are going to end up and who will see them. Even with the detailed instructions provided to us, I had trouble finding the buttons, there was not a clean match between the written description of where to look and what I was seeing, and through it all I have no inkling of where I am at in any hierarchical organization of the blackboard site. I apologize for the mini-rant, but is this an inescapable result of using blackboard or would there be a more straightforward way of setting up such a blog for our own hybrid courses? (I am willing to entertain the notion that I am an “old fogey” and that our students will actually find this incredibly easy to navigate, but I am honestly worried about the time I would need troubleshooting just helping students through what I am experiencing.)
OK – despite not knowing if this will make the light of day, let me weigh in with a more particular substantive comment. I am having difficulty sorting out the “operational” difference between a blog and a discussion board. Both are asynchronous in nature (i.e., it is not a “live” chat or real time back and forth texting) allowing for posting a comment and responding to previously posted comments. Are blogs by definition public, while discussion boards are by definition open to a specific set of “subscribers.”? If this is the key distinction (and again, I may be completely off base) then for a course, there would be very few times I would choose blog over discussion board – it would be like putting a live streaming webcam in your face-to-face classroom.
Well, I will look forward to finding out more, and feel free to take me to task on my naivete!
Tom, thanks for your post. We’ll discuss these issues–blogs vs. threaded discussions; public vs. class-only; the Blackboard blog tools vs. other blogging platforms–in our group meeting tomorrow. By the way, this blog is totally separate from Blackboard.