CMSs vs. blogs

Deitering, A. & Huston, S. (2004). Weblogs and the “middle space” for learning. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 8(4), p. 273f.>

"Nearly five years into the twenty-first century, the impact that technology has had on the practices of higer education remains uneven. With the widespread adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) technology is certainly omnipresent on college camapuses, but teaching and learning have not been fundamentally altered by the spread and innovation of these tools. Some writers and researchers have begun to look to blogs, which are flexible and wasy to use, as tools for realizing the promise of computerized and computer-assisted education (Godwin-Jones, 2003 and Oravec, 2003)."

"This paper takes a critical and comparative look at CMS and blogs, paying particular attention to how these technologies can be used to create a 'middle space' between fully online and traditional courses (p. 6)."

Wow! Imagine if pre-service teachers had experienced blogging in their university education classes?!! My experience with WebCT has been both positive but also negative. I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of on-line classes and find the discussion boards useful....but I find that the class is still organized around lectures and the same format for research papers. Blogging would be so much more useful.

What do you think?!!


References:

Godwin-Jones, R. (2003). Emerging technologies: Blogs and wikis. Language, Learning and Technology, 7(2), p. 12f.

Oravec, J. (2003). Blending by blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives. Journal of Educational Media 28(2/3), p. 225f.