Weblogs, Part II: A Swiss Army Web Site?
This article was written for the spring 2002 edition of the Berkeley
Computing and Communications, which will be out in paper and web form in two
or three weeks.
The BC&C audience is not likely to know a lot about weblogs, even
though Part I was published in fall 2001. My intention
was to try to entice new users while providing a provocative overview for even
reasonably experienced webloggers, and to tie together numerous uses for weblogs
to create a coherent vision for ways that weblogs can push the Web's capabilities.
Weblogs, Part II: A Swiss Army Web Site?
Chris Ashley, The Interactive
University Project, IST
A previous article [1] described using weblogs as a web-based
writing environment, and as a tool to quickly and easily create, maintain, and
update web sites with minimal coding. Reviewing briefly, weblogs are template-based,
database-driven, browser-edited websites that support information and knowledge
sharing, and community. A very reasonably priced annual license enables the
UC Berkeley Interactive University Project (IU) to run Manila [2],
an application capable of hosting hundreds of weblogs, on an NT server. A Mac
version is available, too. There are also a number of weblog hosting services
from which to choose [3]. The advantages of using weblogs for
web publishing include built-in, journal-like archiving, content management,
and the editing of the content and appearance of a weblog from any networked
computer with a web browser.
It is important to note that weblog software, interfaces, and various tool
plug-ins are in constant and various stages of development and innovation, with
many people thinking of, and figuring out, ways to use these tools. A third
article in this series will explore the kinds of technology percolating in the
weblog world that spell great innovations for the second-generation web [4] (note: I decided later not to write Part III, though if relevant this may still happen).
This second article is an overview of a number of areas in which weblog software
and the weblog model of content production and platform interoperability are
proving to be increasingly useful and powerful, pushing and inspiring innovative
developments for and uses of the Web. These areas include: content, information,
and knowledge management; community building; publishing and journalism; teaching,
learning, and collaboration; and course management systems (CMS). Of course,
while that’s a pretty impressive list, making weblogs appear to be the Swiss
Army knife of websites, it would be absurd to claim that weblogs are currently
able to meet the requirements of each of these areas. The purpose of this article
is to point out how weblog software, interfaces, and workflows are helping to
realize a web of increasing organization and interoperability, ease of production,
improved and flexible information flow and inter-linked accessibility, while
taking advantage of the increasing number of powerful, networked desktop computers.
Content, Information, and Knowledge Management
Because weblogs handle text, images, and other media, they are by definition
a kind of information management system for, “capturing, organizing, manipulating,
and accessing information [5].” Many groups and individuals,
including the IU, are looking at ways to use and improve how weblog can be used
for this. The ability of weblog software to provide automatic and consistent
date-based archiving, persistently assigned URLs, and interoperable workspaces,
has sparked much recent discussion ways that weblogs can be used as content
management systems (CMS) “to manage the content of a web site [6]”,
and for knowledge management (KM) to “consciously and comprehensively” gather,
organize, share, and analyze “knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and
people skills [7].”
There are many examples of weblog use for content management, and just a few
are listed here. The Interactive University is currently using Manila for content
management of all of its websites [8], and many IU staff members
are active webloggers [9]. The Portland Public Schools are
using Manila to host several topic-specific weblogs that organize and serve
a broad variety of teacher resources and information [10].
The Redwood City Public Library has a, “weblog of current web sites and stories
dealing with the interface between technology and libraries [11].”
Amy Wohl has written about how knowledge management, “lets organizations preserve
expertise inside a knowledge management system and share that resource to train
additional professionals as well as to permit workers to access and apply information
that is normally outside of their field of competence [12],”
and looks to how weblogs can be used to gather, organize, and share this knowledge.
John Robb frequently writes in his own weblog [13] about knowledge
management, and has established a Yahoogroup [14] to discuss
it. One particularly interesting idea he proposes describes how an individual
might use a weblog for learning and for the management of acquired knowledge
throughout the school years and beyond into higher education and work, a unique
and powerful take on the concept of lifelong learning [15].
In a related and interesting twist, Jon Udell has written about using a weblog
for project management [16].
Community Building
Weblog communities are encouraged and supported by the ability of writers to
use relatively simple publishing and writing environments that they can own,
by the tools that help readers and writers find each other and connect over
similar interests, and when readers themselves are empowered to write. Although
this might sound very similar to Usenet, the flexibility with which a writer
can move from one topic to another, can expand on topics, can determine the
flow or narrative of a topic, and can archive work, including text, images,
and other media, within a single writing space that the writer owns, is quite
different.
Writing about the difference from other media, Jon Katz says, “Weblogs --
described by one of their creators as the "pirate radio stations" of the Web,
are a new, personal, and determinedly non-hostile evolution of the electric
community. They are also the freshest example of how people use the Net to make
their own, radically different new media. [17].” Dave Winer
emphasizes how weblogs are integral to each other, writing, “a weblog is part
of communities. No weblog stands alone; they are relative to each other and
to the world… My weblog, Scripting News, is part of the weblog community and
part of the community of independent developers, particularly those using scripting
environments. The same can be said of most weblogs that gain audiences; they
connect people together using the Web through common interests. [18].”
And Tim MacDonald elaborates by quoting Cameron Marlow, "Essentially, we're
using the people of the Weblog community as editors of the Web… They're commenting,
distilling and rethinking the entirety of Internet content, and we're hoping
to harness their work into something that is more easily accessible [19]."
Since linking from one weblog to another is a way of creating threads and
building community, a built-in “referrer” tool in Manila that tracks links from
other weblogs is very useful. A number of new tools are bringing even more power
to weblogging. Userland’s Most read sites [20] lists the top
hundred most read weblogs. Each time, for example, a Manila or Blogger weblog
is updated Weblogs.com [21] is notified, generating an up
to the minute, continuous view on the most recently updated weblogs. Other interesting
tools include Daypop and Blogdex. Daypop [22], “is a current
events search engine. Daypop crawls the living web at least once a day to bring
you the latest information relevant to your searches.” Blogdex [23],
“is a system built to harness the power of personal news, amalgamating and organizing
personal news content into one navigable source, moving democratic media to
the masses,” focusing, “on the referential information provided by personal
content, namely using the timeliness of weblogs to find important and interesting
content on the web.” These various tools help track and organize content and
trends, and are ways of bringing readers and writers together.
Publishing and Journalism
Dave Winer wrote that the web, “is a fantastic writing environment,” and that,
“the one revolution that the Internet has totally delivered is a fundamental
change in the way written information and ideas flow [24].”
While the dream of a truly democratic society enabled by the Internet still
remains to be realized, the Web has globally spurred individuals and groups
to become authors, content producers, and information providers for audiences
of all sizes in an amazing range of subject areas. A weblog is an excellent
tool to consider for improving and making easier this kind of service.
An interesting shift occurring is how weblogs have given both practicing and
emerging writers a place to write, publish, and find an audience. This has led
to thinking about how news is produced, the concept of amateur journalists and
peer-to-peer (P2P) journalism, and how this impacts the world of journalism.
Since weblog technology helps writers to find, identify, link to, and write
for other webloggers, over time multiple communities of writers who are writing
for each other coalesce, specializations emerge, and reputations are formed
and solidify. Some webloggers have found themselves with audiences that are
large and reliable, while others might have audiences that appear, spike, wane,
and reappear with the topic, quality, and quantity of writing.
Kevin Werbach has written about P2P journalism [25] as a,
“"brave new media world, where the boundaries between committed amateurs and
working journalists may be difficult to determine.” Werbach quotes Doc Searls
[26], "There are an awful lot of people out there who are
remarkably good journalists who are not formally in the profession,” and continues,
“The authority of Weblogs comes from their readers and from the ease with which
they can be updated, he (Searls) points out. Weblog journalists can refine their
thoughts almost continually. They are constantly talking with their audience,
who are also talking with one another."
JD Lasica writes, “A high school freshman videotaping a faculty strike and
uploading clips to the Internet with his commentary on the situation is, for
all intents and purposes, an amateur news journalist [27].”
In another article he talks with several weblog-using journalists about, “their
take on the phenomenon and its significance for journalism [28].”
Lasica has also published a list linking to several articles written by himself
and others that further explore the, “intersection of weblogs and journalism
[29].”
Teaching and Learning
If it is true that weblogs are useful in the areas of information and knowledge
management, are easy writing and publishing tools, and provide tools and processes
that foster community, then it probably makes sense to look at ways weblogs
might be useful to K-12 and higher education teaching and learning. A growing
community of educators and instructional technology specialists are already
finding ways of incorporating weblogs into teaching, and are using weblogs as
spaces to reflect on, share, and discuss questions and ideas about teaching,
technology, and education in general.
Some ideas for educational uses of weblogs include: teacher and student writing
spaces for announcements, journaling, and assignments; web sites for student
research, projects, portfolios, and assessment; teacher and student P2P writing
and journalism for interactive learning within classes, schools and across distances;
collaborative writing and planning spaces; and the notion of the difference
between on-going, cumulative weblogs and weblogs built for a specific project,
presentation, or resource.
Many individuals are leading the way in this work, and the short list that
follows will provide good starting places to learn more. In Amsterdam, Adam
Curry and Peter Ford run Schoolblogs [30], at which anyone
working in education can create and use their own weblog. Peter Ford, a teacher
at the British School of Amsterdam, also regularly provides thoughtful commentary
and links to good resources at Schoolblogs. David Carter-Tod at Wytheville Community
College in Virginia writes at Serious Instructional Technology [31],
and Terry Elliott, a high school English and drama teacher in Kentucky, writes
TELLIO [32]. Patrick Delaney, a San Francisco teacher, school
librarian, and Bay Area Writing Project [33] Teacher Consultant,
is increasingly pushing weblog use in all of his many roles [34].
John Marden at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has compiled a list
of “Courses using Weblogs” in his weblog A Curmudgeon Teaches Statistics [35].
Course Management Systems
A common criticism by educators of many course management systems (CMS) such
as Blackboard and WebCT is that they are rigid, top-down, hierarchical, and
follow the paradigm of desks in a row with the teacher in front, and that there
isn’t space for student ownership, for genuine collaboration, or for the kind
of work— research, writing, demonstration of learning— required of project and
inquiry based learning. Increasingly, many educators are looking to weblogs
as an alternative.
Given the descriptions above of the many functions and features weblogs have,
it might seem natural to look at them as likely candidates for more a flexible
kind of CMS. Weblog software doesn’t have the complete sets of tools one might
expect of a typical CMS, such as a grade book, chat, and confidential file upload,
but there are at least three lines of thought regarding the potential of weblogs.
First, there is the idea that weblogs can become more like CMSs because weblog
software is a programming environment for which developers can write plug-ins
for new tools. Second, there is the idea that a weblog can be written as an
API (a method by which “an application program can make requests of the operating
system or another application [36],”) so a weblog can be incorporated
as a component of an existing CMS. Finally, a line of thought among some educators
is that since they aren’t interested in the CMS paradigm anyway, and what they
really want for themselves and their students is an easy place to write, publish,
serve various media, and read each other, then the weblog model and its development
path is just fine the way it is.
Conclusion
Weblogs are helping determine what the Web can and will become. Lively and growing
communities of webloggers engage in this process by writing and sharing
about the future of the Web and by demonstrating this future by using these
new tools for a variety of purposes. To use Kevin Kelly's words from The Web
Runs on Love, Not Greed, [37] by working, "out of passion,
enthusiasm, a sense of civic obligation," the true power of the Web will be
realized.
[1] Ashley , C. Weblogging: Another kind of website,
2001 (http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2001/feat.weblogging.html).
[2] Userland. What is Manila? (http://manila.userland.com/).
[3] Google. Computers > Internet > On the Web > Web Logs
> Tool (http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web_Logs/Tools).
[4] Yee, R. The sea change of the Web: What is the Second-Generation,
Semantic Web? 2001 (http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2001/feat.2ndgenweb.html).
[5] School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS), University
of California, Berkeley. What is information management? (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/admissions/learning/info_management.html).
[6] Whatis.com Content management, (http://searchserviceprovider.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid28_gci508916,00.html).
[7] Whatis.com Knowledge management, (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci212449,00.html).
[8] Interactive University (http://iu.berkeley.edu/).
[9] Ashley, C. IU and Affiliate Weblogs, 2001 (http://interactiveu.berkeley.edu:8000/ca/Weblogs).
[10] Portland Public Schools. News and Information For
Portland Teachers, (http://teachers.pps.k12.or.us/teachers/).
[11] Redwood City Public Library. Liblog: A Library Weblog
(http://www.ci.redwood-city.ca.us/library/news/liblog/).
[12] Wohl, A. Life On The Internet: Could Blogging Assist
KM? 2001 (http://www.wohl.com/wa0156.htm).
[13] Robb, J. (http://jrobb.userland.com/).
[14] K-Logs (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/)
[15] Robb, J, K-Logs and Continuous Education, 2001
(http://jrobb.userland.com/2001/11/09.html).
[16] Udell, J. Telling A Story, 2001 (http://www.byte.com/documents/s=620/byt20010524s0001/index.htm).
[17] Katz, J. Here Come The Weblogs, 1999 (http://slashdot.org/features/99/05/13/1832251.shtml).
[18] Winer, D. What are weblogs? 2001 (http://newhome.weblogs.com/personalWebPublishingCommunities).
[19] McDonald, T. 'Bloggers' Create New Kind of Web Community,
2001 (http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/13276.html).
[20] Userland. Most read sites (http://www.userland.com/mostReadSites).
[21] Weblogs. Com (http://www.weblogs.com/).
[22] DayPop (http://www.daypop.com/top.htm).
[23] Blogdex (http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/).
[24] Winer, D. The Web is a Writing Environment, 2001
(http://davenet.userland.com/2001/04/17/theWebIsAWritingEnvironment).
[25] Werbach, K. Triumph of the Weblogs, 2001 (http://www.edventure.com/conversation/article.cfm?Counter=7444662).
[26] Searls, D. The Doc Searls Weblog (http://doc.weblogs.com/).
[27] Lasica, JD. How the Internet is reshaping journalism,
2001 (http://jd.manilasites.com/2001/06/26).
[28] Lasica, JD. Blogging as a Form of Journalism,
2001 (http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=585).
[29] Lasica, JD. Weblogs and the News: Where News, Journalism
and Weblogs Intersect, (http://www.well.com/user/jd/weblog/roundup.html).
[30] Ford. P. Schoolblogs (http://www.schoolblogs.com/).
[31] Carter-Tod, D. Serious Instructional Technology
(http://instructionaltechnology.editthispage.com/).
[32] Elliot, T. TELLIO (http://www.schoolblogs.com/tellio/).
[33] Bay Area Writing Project (http://www.bawpblogs.org/)
[34] Delaney, P. homoLudens (http://www.bawpblogs.org/PatD/).
[35] Marden, J. A Curmudgeon Teaches Statistics (http://cuwu.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$118).
[36] Whatis.com. API (http://searchwin2000.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid1_gci213778,00.html).
[37] Kelly, K. The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed, 2002
(http://www.scripting.com/stories/2002/01/09/kevinKellyTheWebRunsOnLoveNotGreed.html).
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