Teacher blogs can enhance student learning and connectedness. Blogs allow teachers and students to generate ideas and reflect beyond the classroom. While blogs have potential benefits, they have not been widely adopted. Blogs began as a way for people to easily post thoughts online for others to read. Today, many companies incorporate blogging into their technologies through advertising. Blogs have progressed slowly in education but remain an untapped potential for collaboration between teachers and students.

1. Teacher Blogs

2. Innovation Web blogging has existed in some fashion for more than fifteen years (Thompson, 2006). Educators in K-12 and higher education can use blogs to amplify and/or to supplement student learning and connectedness to the class. Blogs can serve the role of generating ideas within a community of learners and expanding the focus beyond the classroom (Yang, 2009).

3. Need Educators should use blogs as a medium for enhancing critical thinking and a place for reflection among them and their students. The idea has lots of potential benefits, but has not diffused properly or extensively.

4. Research Web blogs began as an idea that allowed people in all walks of life to post their thoughts and other information effortlessly on a web page for designated people to read.

5. Development The intended audience is anyone who is socially, academically, and/or professionally related to the author, who had an objective for viewing the author’s comments regularly on a web interface.

6. Commercialization Like many innovations, blogs evolved mainly as versatile free-ware. There were not many companies entering the market at that time. Links.net (Thompson, 2006) launched in 1994 as one of the first ventures into blogging. Today, there is no obvious front-runner company involved in the creation of web blogs. Instead, many companies are adapting their own technology to accommodate blogs as one of their products, mainly driven by advertising.

7. Blog Innovation Timeline 1992 – First Blog-type website launches on the new World Wide Web (WWW) 1995 – The popular Links.net launches as first website devoted specifically to blogs by Justin Hall. Also, Microsoft FrontPage is released. This is important because people could now post blogs without knowing html coding. 1999 – “weblog” is shortened to “blog”. Also, RSS Feeds are created to allow users the ability to follow blog posts more conveniently. 2002 – Ads begin to emerge on popular blog sites. 2004 – blogs launch creation of “podcasting”. Flickr site is launched for photo blogging. 2006 – Launch of Twitter takes blogging to a whole new level 2007 – Reports of over 110 million blogs globally (Thompson, 2006)

8. S - Curve

9. Perceived Attributes According to Rogers (2003), laggards are living somewhat in the past and make decisions based on the past and are frequently suspicious of change. The laggards in education will likely be teachers who have been doing things a proven way for a long time. The teacher who has taught many years may become set in his/her ways and be either oblivious to change or simply non-compliant. An example would be a teacher who has used an old-style overhead projector. The teacher still uses the overhead despite having a new laptop and interactive whiteboard newly installed in the classroom.

10. The overhead is somewhat clumsy, sometimes distorted on the screen, and lacking in graphics. However, this has always worked for this type of teacher, and it may be difficult for them to see new innovations. To move these teachers into the interactive whiteboard, there should be convenient hands-on training offered among his/her peers. There should also be a plan set in motion by the administration to let the teachers know that overhead projectors are being phased out and will be removed from each classroom starting on this or that date.

11. I expect that the innovators and early adopters in the education field to be those that are generally fresh out of college and may have already embraced similar technology while attending school. As college students, many have already maintained a personal blog or used social networks and would likely be very interested in maintaining a professional teacher blog to add to the leaning experience for their students. The early adopter tends to be someone who is sought out as a resource. I suspect that a model experienced teacher, possibly even a veteran teacher, who is always taking on new tasks or leading committees, would be able to embrace teacher blogs and help it launch in his/her school and/or school system.

12. The innovators in education need to realize that there will always be innovation in phases, and there will always be laggards. I think that combining the efforts of the innovators and the early adopters in a timely manner will bring in the late adapters and laggards. Once they see that students are beginning to learn more efficiently and are keeping up with today’s technology, the rest will fall in place.

13. Innovation Approach I feel that a decentralized approach would work best for adoption of teacher blogging, because “the innovation does not require a high level of technical expertise” (Rogers, p.399), is popular with the public, and would be more cost efficient. The change agents would include teachers, school administrators, educational technology leaders. The change agents must first develop a need for the change, build rapport with clients, diagnose problems, help client achieve their goals, put plan into action, stabilize, and build a terminal relationship (Rogers, 2003). Using and maintaining web blogs have already met critical mass in society. This can be seen in societal use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

14. Potential The use of blogs has progressed slowly but remains an untapped potential in both K-12 and higher education settings. Instructors and students may author blogs jointly as a collaborative effort. Blogs give a medium for instructors to review, check, and give feedback on students’ work. Instructors and students can bridge their posts with other relevant blogs, and blog history shows a conceptual progress that has taken place throughout the course term, and it provides a date/time stamp for record keeping (Al-Fadda & Al-Yahya, 2010).

15. Collaboration A recent study concluded that blogs show a positive outcome when used for pre-class reading Al-Fadda et al. Students can use the blogs collaboratively for encouragement amongst each other. Another such study determined that the role of blogs can create a professional development environment that triggers diversity, interactivity, and accountability among a community of teachers (Hou, Chang, & Sung, 2009). Blogs may also be used as a combined effort with portfolios to aid with professional development needs among faculty.

16. References Al-Fadda, H. & Al-Yahya, M. (2010). Using web blogs as a tool to encourage pre-class reading, post-class reflections and collaboration in higher education. US-China Education Review. 7(7). Carvin, A. (2007). Timeline: the life of the blog. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17421022.

17. Huei-Tse, H., Kuo-En, C., & Sung, Y.T. (2009). Using blogs as a professional development tool for teachers: analysis of interaction behavioral patterns. Interactive Learning Environments. 17(4), 325-340. Johnson, T.J. & Kaye, B.K. (2004). Wag the blog: how reliance on traditional media and the internet influence credibility perceptions of weblogs among blog users. J&MC Quarterly. 81(3), 622-642.

18. Kim, H.N. (2008). The phenomenon of blogs and theoretical model of blog use in educational contexts. Computers & Education. 51, 1342-1352. Rogers, E.M. (2003). Diffusions of innovations. (5th ed.). New York, NY. Free Press. Thompson, C. (2006). The early years. http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/ Yang, S. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology & Society. 12(2), 11-21.