I have a teacher who asked if students can "blog" in a course and I said I would look into it. I don't see any activities that are labeled blog, but Journal seems kind of close. However, I cannot find any documentation that describes anything about the Journal plug-in and how it works. I hope I did not miss something. If someone could point me to some documentation or describe how the Journal plugin is used, that would be helpful. Thanks very much!
Ken Russell
Bellingham Public Schools
Not about journal, but they can use their personal blog and when they blog they can check/tick the box to attach it to the course so that it is easy to search for blog posts related to that course. The teacher could add the Blog menu block (Bear in mind though that the blog entries are not restricted to that one course, however)
You have no doubt found the empty page here: http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Journal_module
I do not know of any docs anywhere else on Moodle.org.
It depends what your teacher means by ":Blog" and what they mean by "in a course". Mary is right: there is no way to restrict the visibility of blog posts to inside a course. And I have frequently found students forget to do the extra step to associate a post with a course.
With a quick Google search, I found no documentation on the Journal as Plugin.
If you want a "Blog like" function in a course, then will a forum do?
-Derek
Still not much detail Robert, but there was one link there I thought was worth copying over. I've tweaked the docs with a link to AL's post, and maybe someone will add something better.
http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Journal_module
I still think it is sad that everything is couched in "Assignment" type language, and it puts everything much more in a teacher=font of all knowledge and activities into more of a "Black Hat" assessment mode. A nice give and take, formative assessment, leisurely journey towards final assessments is actually more difficult in Moodle. I had great hopes for the blog, but now that is it not tied to courses.
So we have some functionality, but not enough to make it really nice and really easy at a course level to use blog functionality, journal is OK (and has AL pointed out some limitations), assignment is OK, but clunky for this purpose.
What are we left with? Moodle forums, pretty old school and clunky. Teaching constructively becomes a bit more difficult. Not impossible. Just difficult.
-Derek.
A nice give and take, formative assessment, leisurely journey towards final assessments is actually more difficult in Moodle.
What functionality is needed for having that really nice and easy at the course level?
In the middle of end of week tidy up. I probably wrote this with too little caffeine in my blood. I'll respond after my day job is done.
-Derek
@Itamar
Lots of what I value in a course are conversations and self directed learning on the way to the final assessment. Subjects like history, teacher training, media studies, music - they don't entirely fit into the programmed style of a lesson or scorm module.
So you need functionality to support this alternative kind of approach.
Forums are of course quite good for this, but in Moodle they are still a bit dated: click on reply, and you loose the ability to see any of the other posts, you can't save drafts, add comments, or tags. It is not easy to reference another post (ie there is no permalink link) It is good at last to have student role able to insert pictures, but this core activity is still a many many click process.
Groupwork - Self sign up groups don't exist.
If you run a forum in Moodle set to groups mode you must post individually to each group, you can't post a message to all groups at once - in fact it is difficult to post messages so they can be received by everyone on your course in something like a notice board format or maybe a popup when they next visit. They need to either visit the forum, read a sidebar block or check email.
Quick overviews of student interaction in a forum don't exist.
A tool for a student to manage a personal learning journal/blog doesn't exist at course level. There is no way to set up a personal space per individual short of setting up lots of forums/groupings and groups for every member of a course.
File sharing by student role is not easy.
These are just a few thoughts. I'm sure it could be easier. Even a functional way to do a few of these things would help Moodle be easier to use in more free range learning environments.
I know this goes against the grain of the view of Moodle supporting a 'constructionist' style of course. I'm just saying to be constructive in an LMS could be easier. I find it sad that at the moment we are still sorting out infrastructure (outcomes, assignments) and other aspects (forum development, reporting) are on the back burner.
-Derek
What's a non-pseudo-journal functionality and what makes it streamlined in a way that cannot be emulated in the database and dataform modules?
Remark: raise the edit rights for students for book AND cerate groups of one person each can even fulfill this even nicer: a student can print his course notes as a book...
Hi Ken,
The Journal activity, in it's present form, is actually kind of limited for use as a blog, if you mean one in which students will repeatedly add entries. It also will not allow students to see entries made by other students. It is designed for a student to write and then refine their writing. You can read more about it in the text in the picture. From reading the description, you might want to check out and try the OU Blog add-on.
