Technical features, affordances and pedagogy – analysis of BLOGS

Table 1: Technical features, affordances and pedagogy – analysis of BLOGS

Features of the technology	Affordances (activities and practice)	Affordances (examples of pedagogy and designs)
Chronological order	Order information was gathered supporting developmental thinking.	A Blog enables students to answer 'Big' problem questions and share their ideas, thoughts and  research with a wider community. Although it is usually written autonomously it sets a basis for collaboration (a modern 21st Century design to teaching and learning) where by students learn from each other. It can be used in Problem Based Learning and is exremeley relevant in an Inquiry based approach. Research – Students are able to validate and sift throught relevant information and save it to a draft. They learn how to organise their own thoughts and think about what they are learning.     Creativity; Students are provided with opportunities to make their Blog creative and individualised. They can add gadgets, photos, videos, link information  and create a powerful interesting blog. More individualised learning is catered for.   Developing critical thinking skills: Flexibility in the use of a Blog allows learners to save, store and go back to information allowing for reflection, critical thinking and further engagement.   Assessment practices: Teachers can see over time how student thinking develops, assisting in ongoing assessment. Teachers can use assessments based on individual progress of learning and gives teachers the ability to see student understanding. Works with assessment for, as and of learning. Broadens their range of thinking through interaction on a global scale   Adaptability: Its adaptability allows teachers to better meet the needs of each individual learner and the needs of the students. It provides deeper 21st century skills development.     Collaboration: Bloggers can ask questions of their readers and look for alternative ideas to their own.Students are actively and skilfully conceptualising, applying, analysing, synthesising and/or evaluating information gathered. They have the ability to question information and to ask the other person to really think about the information they have given (reflection).   Individual learning: Students can add, delete and create at anytime and anywhere allowing for more students to follow their own learning journey from school, at home or anywhere.   Students must ensure that they do not make their blog ‘too busy’ with the use of widgets. This addition can get them analysing the usefulness of widgets having to think about what is appropriate for their own blog. They may even look at others to see how they have gone about adding widgets opening themselves up to reflect and critique others ideas.
Contain photos, video and audio	Allows for creativity from the learner and extends learning.
Can be text, video or audio	Users can use preferred learning styles to give information to visitors
Can be edited and updated	Allows for reflection and further engagement
Can be accessed anywhere and anytime	Students can access from mobile devices, laptops at anytime. Feedback can be given via these options
Allows users to save drafts	Information can be stored and retrieved later to update and complete.
Allows full coding rather than just plain text so that posts can have hyperlinks to other pages in the main website or to other posts, or to another website or blog, etc	Demonstrate further knowledge and understanding. Link to other information
You can show links to other favourite blogs or websites	Link to further information and collaboration between blogs with peers. Users can link information they find interesting or important allowing for individual learning.
·         Easy for visitors to navigate and find things of interest to them ·         Allows comments on individual posts by visitors (user interactivity)	Asynchronous posts allows for feedback from peers and teacher. Communication from  and with others as well as peer review
·         Has bookmarking facility so visitors can recommend posts to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Stumpleupon, Digg, etc therefore helping with bringing new visitors ·         Has a sharing facility so visitors can forward posts by email to a friend ·         Has a tag cloud so visitors can see the most popular topics	Collaboration in a variety of ways. Allow visitors to find information. Share with more people (collaboration and knowledge construction)
·         Addition of widgets and gadgets	Allow for creativity and individuality.