THE CURRENT STATE OF EDUCATIONAL BLOGGING
Each year we conduct a survey on how educators are using blogs. Our goal is to document the trends in educational blogging.
We started the annual survey because we’re frequently asked for detailed information to help educators:
- Convince school administrators to allow blogging.
- Understand the benefits of blogging and how blogs are used with students.
- Know more about which blogging platforms are commonly used by educators (and why).
Here’s what you told us in 2015! You’ll find our survey questions for this year’s report here!
- Key Findings
- About the survey
- Who are the respondents
- How blogs are used
- Benefits of blogging
- Blog platforms used
Key Findings
This is our fourth annual report of the state of educational blogging.
Device Usage
There has only been a slight increase in one to one devices in the 4 years we’ve surveyed educators (52% selected Yes in 2015 compared to 44% in 2014, 45% in 2013 and 41% in 2012).
35.9% of respondents with one to one device programs are BYOD and 25.7% of respondents with one to one device programs are provided by the school or school district.
PC laptops were the most commonly used devices (37.4%) in one to one device programs followed by iPads (35.4%), Mac Laptops (27.5%) and Chromebooks (26.3%).
The current trend in one to one programs appears to be an increased use of laptops (PC, Macs or Chromebooks) with a decreased usage of tablets.
Blog Usage
The majority of respondents told us they mainly used their blogs for class blogs (40.7%), class blogs with individual student blogs (20.2%) and for student blogs (14.9%) and many also had their own personal/personal blog (14.6%).
Based on student blog usage from Edublogs.org, 52.5% of student blogs are public and can be viewed by anyone and 47.5% of student blogs are private restricted to specific readers.
The ways respondents said they used the student blogs include for assignments/assessments (36.6%), reflective blogging (33.7%), collaboration / discussion (23.5% ), practice reading and writing skills (21.8%), encourage peer learning and support (19.3%) and digital citizenship skills (17.7%).
While most class blogs were used for: assignments and class news (48.4%); share information with families (40.3%); and share links and resources (34.2%).
Blog Platform Used
Most respondents used Edublogs (60%), followed by Blogger (11%) and then WordPress.com (10%). Given that the survey was shared to all Edublogs users, we know this most likely doesn’t accurately reflect true usage statistics, but the survey was open to users of all platforms.
It’s quite common for educators to host their blogs on several different blog platforms. Edublogs (21%) was the most common second main blog platform used, followed by Blogger (14%) and WordPress.com (12%).
About the Survey
This is our fourth annual report of the state of educational blogging.
This year’s survey was conducted from November 2 – December 31, 2015 and a total of 777 respondents took part in the survey.
The survey was promoted via Twitter, Facebook and through blog posts. We encouraged replies from educators regardless of what blogging platform they used.
You can check out the questions we asked here.
| Year | No. of Respondents | Read Report |
| 2015 | 777 | State of Educational blogging 2015 |
| 2014 | 587 | State of Educational blogging 2014 |
| 2013 | 378 | State of Educational blogging 2013 |
| 2012 | 259 | State of Educational blogging 2012 |
Who are the respondents?
We started with basic inquiries about our respondents’ background to learn more about their role and their educational institution. Respondents were able to select more than The Current State of Educational Blogging – The Edublogger: