A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> The convergence of mobile technologies into student-centered learning environments requires academic institutions to design new and more effective learning, teaching, and user experience strategies. In this article we share results from an mLearning design experiment and analysis from a student survey conducted at the National College of Ireland. Quantitative data support our hypothesis that mLearning technologies can provide a platform for active learning, collaboration, and innovation in higher education. In addition, we review mobile interface and user-experience design considerations, and mLearning theory. Finally, we provide an overview of mLearning applications being developed in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland including, Virtual Graffiti, BuddyBuzz, Flickr, and RAMBLE. <s> BIB001 </s> A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> YouTube, Podcasting, Blogs, Wikis and RSS are buzz words currently associated with the term Web 2.0 and represent a shifting pedagogical paradigm for the use of a new set of tools within education. The implication here is a possible shift from the basic archetypical vehicles used for (e)learning today (lecture notes, printed material, PowerPoint, websites, animation) towards a ubiquitous user-centric, user-content generated and userguided experience. It is not sufficient to use online learning and teaching technologies simply for the delivery of content to students. A new “Learning Ecology” is present where these Web 2.0 technologies can be explored for collaborative and (co)creative purposes as well as for the critical assessment, evaluation and personalization of information. Web 2.0 technologies provide educators with many possibilities for engaging students in desirable practices such as collaborative content creation, peer assessment and motivation of students through innovative use of media. These can be used in the development of authentic learning tasks and enhance the learning experience. However in order for a new learning tool, be it print, multimedia, blog, podcast or video, to be adopted, educators must be able to conceptualize the possibilities for use within a concrete framework. This paper outlines some possible strategies for educators to incorporate the use of some of these Web 2.0 technologies into the student learning experience. <s> BIB002 </s> A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> ABSTRACT Web 2.0 has the potential to dramatically affect educational practices in a variety of ways. Within the field of art education, students and teachers can utilize Web 2.0 to further student understanding and art-making. The potential for students to create the Web is an aspect of Web 2.0 that is particularly well suited for an art classroom. Through examples from teachers and from the author's own practice, this article details potential uses of delicious, flickr, blogs, podcasts, and wiki. Through these technologies, students may collaboratively build knowledge, develop a deeper understanding of their own artworks and those of other artists, and interact with artworks in new ways. <s> BIB003 </s> A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> Can You Post a Nugget of Knowledge in 140 Characters or Less? AS YOU KNOW, I rely on many resources to write this column, including various blogs on technologies in higher education and my faithful resources from Educause. I am most interested in tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, social networking, and learning. In the communication area, digital immigrants pride themselves in using email, participating in asynchronous discussions, and sometimes even venturing into the world of online chats. But to digital natives, email in particular is so yesterday, or, as stated in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "email is for old people" (1). Digital natives tend to communicate in the moment using IM (instant messaging), text messaging, blogging, expressing themselves on social networking sites, and now sending tweets. NO, I DID NOT MAKE UP THE WORD. A tweet, a posting of 140 characters or less, is the mainstay of an online application called Twitter. This product, first introduced in 2006, is a communication tool aimed at digital natives. According to Educause Learning Initiative (2): "Twitter is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/IM tool...." Wikipedia defines Twitter as "a free social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts...) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific" (3). Digital natives can meet the creator and hear about the idea behind micro-blogging in a video interview with Biz Stone (http://uk.intruders.tv/Interview-with-Twitter-co-founder-Biz-Stone_al33.html). Digital immigrants may prefer to read about micro-blogging and Twitter at the PBS Media Shift site (www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/05/digging_deepertwitter_ founders.html). Just so you do not think I am crazy, the New York Times, the BBC, and Al Jazeera are all experimenting with Twitter, as are political figures John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. So, if you want to communicate with and update a circle of your closest friends, family members, research colleagues, clinical preceptors, or students, then you might want to explore Twitter. But you must be succinct; 140 characters is not a lot of space. So How Does It Work? After setting up an account (http://twitter.com), establish a profile and determine if you want your tweets to be public (appear on a pubic timeline page) or protected (open only to people connected to your profile). You can invite people to your account. Then, as your "friends" connect, their tweets and yours will appear on your Twitter page. To do this, you can use the web or connect to your instant messaging account or mobile device (your phone or your PDA). How Is Twitter Used in Higher Education? A quick look at various higher education blogs indicates several ways to use Twitter with your students. One idea is to communicate with students about the great ideas - the nuggets of knowledge - we glean while attending conferences (2). (I like this idea as I often attend informatics conferences.) For example, I can send the entire class a quick note about speakers or talks they may want to visit later or tell them about specific ideas I got from a talk (that would also serve as a reminder to me after the conference). I also like the notion of using Twitter like instant messaging to tell students about an important change in plans (class is cancelled/there is a change in their practicum sites) or to communicate with a large group of colleagues, like preceptors, who may not have their email readily accessible while working. On the PBS teachers' blog, there is a good example of how a teacher uses Twitter with middle school students to teach collaborative writing skills. Each student is limited to 140 characters or less and there can be only 140 posts to tell the story. The collaborative writing assignment is based on the Twittory framework (http:// twittories. … <s> BIB004 </s> A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> Although Web 2.0 technologies have been recognized as effective means of conducting group learning activities, a critical and challenging issue of Web 2.0-based learning is the lack of mechanisms for promoting information exchanges and sharing among participating students. To cope with this problem, an intelligent blog system is proposed in this article to assist teachers in conducting group learning activities on the Internet. In this system, a promotion mechanism is provided to encourage the exchanging and sharing of information and learning resources by collecting and analyzing the frequently asked questions and the historical contents selected from relevant discussion forums. On the basis of the experimental results, the system is proven to be able to fulfill the need of the students and the teachers and also very helpful for enhancing students' learning efficacy. <s> BIB005 </s> A REVIEW OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - Opportunities for Teaching and Learning <s> Weblogs and Microblogs <s> The coming era of Web 2.0 focuses on users' active online participation and interaction. Among such interactive media, the blog is one representative tool of online knowledge construction. The purpose of this study is to explore the behavioral patterns and the depth of knowledge construction when using blogs for teachers' professional development. This research combines quantitative content analysis, sequential analysis, and qualitative protocol analysis. We studied how 470 teachers used blogs to conduct instructional knowledge interactions prior to the intervention of teacher educators and analyzed the teacher's behavioral patterns and the depth of knowledge construction. On the basis of the discovered behavioral patterns, we see that although blogs can serve as a channel for teachers to share teaching information, the aspect of knowledge construction is limited. We point out these limitations, and provide suggestions on how teacher educators can guide interactions during training. We also suggest how sy... <s> BIB006
A blog (weblog) is a web page where the owner writes personal commentary, or opinions, to which readers have the ability to leave comments BIB002 . The owner of the blog directs its content with dated postings of items in reverse chronological order containing text and images. The blog may incorporate a number of features such as links, taglines, permanent links, blogrolls and archives  . A blog owner requires motivation to post regularly placing increased pressure on educators using the technology. However various applications such as RAMBLE and Google's Blogger Mobile enable bloggers to easily send messages and images directly to their blog from their mobile phones BIB001 BIB001 . Blogs can provide a shareable student writing space or be used as a mechanism to record a student's progress. They can also be used as a digital display of a student's work and achievements BIB002 . Blogs have the potential to improve the correctness, completeness and innovations of achievements by students BIB005 ). BIB006 suggest that blogs can also be a way for teachers to share information and experience, though in their study the use of the blog for knowledge construction was limited. BIB003 experience with implementing blogs in a university however were mixed. Blogging "small nuggets of knowledge", typically in postings of 140 characters or less, which can be read on the web or on mobile devices is known as microblogging BIB004 . Examples include Twitter (where each posting is known as a tweet), Jaiku, Tumblr and Pownce. Yammer is a "private" microblogging tool. It restricts user access to a community by an email domain name. Instructional uses include as a tool for effective professional development and collaboration (Grosseck and Holotescu, 2008) ; making announcements as well as collaborative story writing BIB004 ; and enhancing the social, cognitive and teacher presence in an online course  ).  argue that while these type of social media tools may facilitate student collaboration they need to be simple and purposeful.