Summary Writing 8

Supporting Learning with Weblogs in Ecience education A comparison of Blogging and Hand-written Reflective Writing 
with and without Prompts

                Writing learning protocols leads to greater learning gains if the writing is guided with prompts.The selection of the writing medium (weblog or paper) appears to play a subordinate role as compared to instructional support by means of prompts. Weblogs can even show worse effects than paper-and-pencil writing if not supported by prompts. This should lead to some caution, when employing weblogs as a new tool for traditional learning protocol approaches. Future research needs to focus on the specifics of how writing weblogs for learning can be supported by teachers. the options for managing learning protocols not only as text but also in the form of drawings, mind maps, audio or video, and for linking them with the option of mobile learning. Also, we have to assume that the length of the intervention was too brief for the learners to become accustomed to their weblogs or to turn them into an integral part of their “personal learning environment”. In addition, prompts were presented as a writing instruction in advance.