Advisor

• Dr. Min Liu

Degree

• Masters

Abstract

Weblogs, one of the Web 2.0 applications, are popular among this Internet generation. Nevertheless, researchers have just begun to study their affordances for education. This report reviews the literature published in the past five years on using weblogs in teaching and learning and identifies most prominent characteristics of weblogs. It finds that weblogs have the potential to support teachers’ pedagogical strategies in terms of knowledge construction, social development, new literacies, reflection, communication and collaboration, and home-school connection. This report also compares contemporary educational blogging services, Edublogs and 21Classes, to provide practitioners some insights about how to practice blogging in their classroom. This paper concludes with an emphasis on teachers’ roles in technology integration and discusses future direction for research on academic use of weblogs.