There are a few books about blogs in NUS Libraries. Most of them deal with either personal blogging or business blogging. Yes, blogs are being used in public/customer/corporate relations and in marketing. However, I couldn't find any books on blogging in education, which surprised me because we are an institution of higher learning.
To rectify this anomaly, I sent a request to purchase new books. I'd never used this service before, so I wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised when the library notified me that the book I requested was available in the Central Library. Kudos to the librarians in NUS!
Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms looks to be an easy read. Just skimming through, I can see that Will Richardson explains new concepts in plain language. He gives a quick overview of each tool, goes through how to set it up and shows how they can be used in the classroom. Although many examples are from the K-12 (primary and secondary school) environment, I believe the concepts are applicable to higher education. The content page gives you some idea of what Will touches on:
- The read/write Web p. 1
- Weblogs : pedagogy and practice p. 17
- Weblogs : get started! p. 45
- Wikis : easy collaboration for all p. 59
- RSS : the new killer app for educators p. 75
- The social Web : learning together p. 89
- Fun with Flickr : creating, publishing and using images online p. 101
- Podcasting and screencasting : multimedia publishing for the masses p. 111
- What it all means p. 125
- Epilogue : the classroom of the read/write Web p. 135
I see that there's already a request for the book. Better make use of the upcoming long weekend to read this and return it to the library so that others can get their hands on it! Oh yes, the call number: LB 1044.87 Ric 2006.
P.S. Some of the links mentioned in the book can be found at Will's wiki. It's too tedious to copy URLs from a print source.