I'm currently gathering and analysing data on two different blogging studies. The first involved a group of students who are in their third year of teacher training. They had to do a personal research project on ICT in education as a part of their studies, and I set up a group blog for them (which they themselves called 'Idiot's guide to research'). They reported (those who have responded so far) that they really appreciated the extra 'safety net' and that they also benefited from commenting on and reading other people's posts. The limitations were cited as 'not knowing whether someone else had posted a reply' (can be remedied by an RSS alert) and waiting for a response from someone else that is a long time coming (a cattle prod can be applied to remedy this problem).
The second blog study was called MentorBlog and was funded as a small scale project through the Peninsula CETT (Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training). Here we set up two groups of students, those who would blog with their mentors (and possibly not come into contact with them at all) and those who would maintain a conventional face to face mentorial relationship. It's too early to summarise findings as we are only half way through the interviews, but there are some interesing emerging themes. These include affordances of e-mail and blogging as 'immediacy', the ability to reflect, and 'bringing some distance to the relationship' when it gets a little too intense and 'overbearing'.
So, I shall press on and find out more about this wonderful thing we call blogging....
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