"Using Weblogs in Scholarship and Teaching" by Trey Martindale and David A. Wiley

Martindale, Trey and David A. Wiley. "Using Weblogs in Scholarship and Teaching." TechTrends 49.2 (2005): 55-61. 16 May 2009. (link)

“Using Weblogs in Scholarship and Teaching,” written by Trey Martindale and Dale A. Wiley, provides a descriptive overview of blogs and the value they can have to both professors and students. Focusing on the ease of usability, Martindale and Wiley assert that blogs are the perfect tool to enhance learning since they do not require technological prowess.  The article touches on the topics of professional development through blogs and their uses in scholarship, as well as instructional blogging – a section in which both Martindale and Wiley comment on their individual experiences with using blogs in their respective classrooms.

Trey Martindale is a professor in the Instructional Technology and Design program at the University of Memphis, and by way of practicing what he preaches, Martindale maintains a blog called Trey’s E-Learning, discussing formal and informal learning environments.  David A. Wiley teaches Instructional Technology and Psychology at Brigham Young University and discusses “openness, open education, and open content” on his blog, iterating toward openness.  To me, the appeal of this article is the great deal emphasis it puts on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, a factor that is neglected in all of my other research.  Martinedale and Wiley agree that the reason blogs can be so effective in time management and increased productivity value is because of the immediate availability of information.  Through the use of RSS feeds, blog readers can “quickly survey the blog landscape and receive notices of new content from a collection of blogs, as well as a wide variety of sources like online newspapers and other periodicals” (57).