iSean

i was reading an article today by Landrum, Cook, Tankersley, and Fitzgerald (2002) in which they argue that current teachers find their teaching peers and information they receive in inservice trainings to be more trustworthy than information obtained in peer reviewed journals. isn’t that amazing to read? the teacher down the hall is more trustworthy than The Journal of Research on Technology in Education. obviously, there is a long standing gap between research and practice in education so this finding is right in line with what i probably would have guessed. but this gets me wondering whether blogs are helpful or harmful when they enter this mix.

let me explain . . . a blog tends to be written FAR less professionally than a research article; the blog is more personable (similar to the effect that some voters voted for bush because they saw him as a person they could sit down with and have a beer). most folks who blog are doing so to entertain and/or inform an audience and most bloggers want a large audience or even a growing audience. when i blog, i try and write for everyone who is interested in educational technology topics. on the other hand, when i write professionally i have certain parameters that i know i need to abide by to even be considered for publication. when i blog, i can write in the first person narrative and that helps to create an author who is a real person and not some abstract “researcher” who exists in the peer-reviewed world. surely that is much more valuable to a typical practicing teacher. they can read my blog and read about my experiences with this tool or that strategy and hopefully learn from what i have to say and hopefully they can relate to the problems and issues i encounter so that my chosen solutions are more meaningful. this down to earth nature is true of the vast majority of educational technology related blogs. i don’t dispute that. blogs might be more effective than a peer-reviewed article when it comes to influencing practicing teachers.

then again, i just did a few searches using online educational databases through my university library. i find nothing about the value of blogs in educational research. does anyone else view this as a problem? the ed tech blogging community is growing rapidly by the day. the Stephen Downes RSS feed i subscribe to has hundreds and hundreds of ed tech related blogs being disseminated to all interested parties. so we end up with blogger X writing something about the value of a tool (e.g., blogs) and another blogger will pick up on that point and use it to build a case that makes a new point. in very short time, the blogging community is citing each other and the “knowledge” of the community is growing (i use that term “knowledge” very loosely). but, how do we assess the value of that “research” if none of that information has gone through the peer review process. and, the ed tech blogging community is far too large for the vast majority of what is being written to be considered any kind of peer review process. it’s not. sure, some of the most widely read blogs will undergo some level of review, but it’s still not typically the same rigor that a blind review process can provide.

so, the issue i pursue is whether blogs in a scholarship role are a positive or a negative.

to be continued . . .

Technorati Tags: education, research, online learning, blogging, scholarship, peer-review