Close
Best practices for bloggers
By Clive Young, on 4 July 2011
Blogging said to be generally on the decline but educational blogging seems as strong as ever. Steve Wheeler’s Learning with ‘e’s remains a must read, as is Martin Weller’s The Ed Techie or James Clay’s endlessly inventive e-Learning stuff among many, many others.
But what makes a good blog? At Diverse 2011, Donald Bruce Heider of the Center for Digital Ethics at Loyola University, Chicago claimed the key was trust, and trust has to be built up over time. Trust implies ethical values and the CDE team have produced an excellent guide Best practices for Bloggers and propose several ‘dimensions’ for navigating the medium: transparency, attribution, responsibility, face, text, truth, and citizenship. For each of these the team pose questions to illustrate ethical implications. Example questions are:
- Should I be anonymous?
- Will I allow (and moderate) comments on my postings?
- What about advertising, sponsorship?
- How do I cite sources?
- Should I blog every day/week/month?
- How do I set a tone, and avoid flaming?
- Can I distinguish the personal from the professional opinion?
- How do I deal with copyright?
- Should I ‘correct’ older posts?
The guide provides well-reasoned responses, but invites you to make up your own mind – essential reading for a would-be blogger.
Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/anniemole/85515856/
