Blogs help students think for themselves

She says one of the most powerful facilities in weblogs is pinging, which involves a person posting a comment about someone else’s work on their own blog.

They use the ‘TrackBack’ tool to notify the author when they have published the comment, basically inviting them to discuss it.

“It alerts the original author that someone has written about them. That’s powerful.”

Bartlett-Bragg says while not everyone responds to comments on their work, many do, and this is a real bonus for students. —Anna SallehBlogs help students think for themselves (ABCnet.au)

I’m encountering some resistance as I ask students to pick up the TrackBack habit. It’s still very early in the semester, and the new students are just getting the hang of academic blogging. So we’ll see what happens.

3 thoughts on “Blogs help students think for themselves

  1. I always hated track backs, to this day I still can’t do them, I am kind of glad that I’m not required to do them anymore.
    Dr. Jerz, I have a question for you, totally unrelated to trackbacks. Next semester I am hopefully studying abroad in Australia (so far things are looking good :) ) I was wondering if it would be ok if I could still use my blog while I’m (hopefully) over there to keep everyone updated while I’m down under, haha! Plus it would be nice to keep a little diary thing of it, kind of like what Moira did when she was in Europe. Anyways, just wanted to know if that was ok with you (well hopefully if everything goes well).

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