Architelago

Just got details on papers to be presented at the Philippine E-learning conference this August 25-26, 2005, via the Yahoogroups e-mail from Dra. Suplido, our dedicated PeLs Director (but due to my limited knowledge of attaching files in Blogger, couldn’t yet post the PDF file here!).

I would be honored if Dra. Suplido can grant us an interview here and share her experiences about blogging in education. She will be capping the conference with her demonstration of Blogs as a tool for self-expression, knowledge-sharing and community building.

I’m encouraged to see from the program outline that through Dra. Suplido’s discussion, blogging will get its formal acknowledgement in Philippine e-learning society as a potentially powerful, online collaboration tool for use in the classroom.

True, there are quite a number of Pinoy bloggers out there using blogs for advocacies and community building (just check out the iblog site, and you’ll see).

In the academe, our esteemed PeLs President, Dr. Benito Teehankee, provides us with a great example of blogs as a tool for teaching. His first entry sounds as noble as it is useful: “..I’ve started blogging to share my thinking on how management can be a force for the common good” . The number of comments on the blog show that Dr. Teehankee’s writings have an appreciative audience. Dr. Teehankee, I’d be honored if you can appear on Architelago as one of my guest bloggers!

Dr. Janet Torral of Digital Filipino.com also has her own blog Behind the Scenes, which blends her work as an educator with a host of her other interests and advocacies. Dr. Torral’s blog strikes me as both content-rich as it is marketing-savvy. Creative use of content here means enticing readers who are also consumers of products.

Hence, bring in the advertising bucks while imparting useful knowledge is definitely using ICT creatively, as well as responsibly.

I’m sure there are more blogs about Philippine education out there. If you believe that to share knowledge is to serve, please come forward.

I’ve been writing for some time now about blogs and CoPs since I first launched Architelago last May 2005, and earlier on in 2004 as seen in my other blog,Shub.

Outside of the research interest I’ve had in blogs, I’ve really benefitted a lot from the self-reflection that blogging encourages me to do. My blog has been an archive of facts and feelings on these topics; its public nature lends itself well to being a soap box for knowledge sharing.

So from what I’ve gleaned from the forums and in the program, I’ve seen modest evidence that my blog has stirred others to think about the tool’s great uses in education. And that I’ve echoed other Pinoy early blog adopters’ thoughts. At the very least, blogging has served as my creative outlet. But there are signs that blogs may serve as an alternative venue for cooperative learning activities, somewhat like a kapihan in the free-forming, online congregation that it serves.