University of Western Sydney – College of Arts

School of Education Blog  “21 st Century Learning”   Link from SoE home page uws.edu.au/education

What makes a blog a blog?  Web-log: like an online public diary / outlet  Regular, self contained posts  Each post usually has a topic / theme  Need to be fairly current (at least one per month)  Open to public comment  Can be text + video + images + links etc but primarily text-based.

Why a blog for SoE?  Desire to provide an outlet (like most blogs) that was: Public Topical Useful Highlighting the school research output  To create a forum on education research, via the commenting functionality

Potential Problems  Initial excitement followed by steep decline in interest:

Potential Problems  Initial excitement followed by steep decline in interest  Confluence not suitable – which system to use?  Do we have enough material and authors to maintain the blog?

The plan  Schedule of blog authors Created & maintained by Assistant to HOS Each author given time and reminders to provide their post HOS expectation of timely submission  HOS to write first article & moderate all articles & comments  School e-learning technical officer to provide support

The System – wordpress.com  Free online version  World’s #1 blogging tool (~ 14 million blogs)  Ease of use  Simple approval system  Stats, plugins, trackbacks etc  It’s a community!

Why did it work?  Ongoing executive support  Careful planning and scheduling of posts  Clear reason for existing  Large pool of authors  Constant stream of quality source material  Ease of use  Promotion