It has now been ten days or so since I attended the BlogWalk 2.0 collaborative workshop about weblogs and self-organized, informal learning in Nuremberg, and I still haven't jotted down my notes. Actually, I didn't even really take notes, so I'll try to sum up some of the aspects we discussed, and provide hyperlinks to other BlogWalker's blog entries on the subject.

In the morning, the discussion group I took part in discussed possible uses and problems of self-organized learning with weblogs in institutional settings. Actually, educational institutions and (or?) their learners were seen as having a much more traditional approach to learning, than I thought they would. Some of the aspects we discussed were that institutions tend to think of weblogs rather as publishing than as learning technologies, while individuals seem to be able to make more use of weblogs in informal learning settings.
There was some consensus, that in a general sense, institutional learning often seems to be largely connected to certification (credit points, grades, and diploma). This causes two major problems when it comes to self-organized learning thru the use of personal publishing technologies in educational institutions: Learners have a motivation towards passing a test oder getting a good grade, whilst there is not necesseraily an intrinsic motivation towards the how of their learning, when it comes to quality and meta-cognitive learning strategies.

The other problem we discussed was, whether it is not really possible or wanted to give grades to a learner's weblog, due to the reasons that it does not really seem to be productive for the learner if he's expected to blog about reflecting her learning strategies, and that there can hardly be a grading criteria as well.
Students, however, were reported to be not really willing to invest time and achievement in a project, when there is no criteria connected to it whether they will pass a test or get credit points, or not.
I think this touches some problems abouts the implementation of self-organized learning strategies in educational instituions on a much broader scope, because it is not really unique to the use of weblogs as a personal publishing and educational technology.
Generally, the presence of a technology alone will not automatically imply it's use in educational institutions and by their learners, even if it does seem to be beneficial to (self-organized) learning. Assuming this is the case with the use of weblogs for reflection, communication, and open community buiding (described as the blogging metaphor, see also BamBlog: "Structures in Weblogs I" about structure, rules, and relation), we would have to find approaches of finding out what exactly some of the benefits are, and how the can succesfully contribute to an institutionalized course.

Since this blogging metaphor could be described as emergent practises of self-directed learners, I would assume it to be some kind of a practise like, maybe on another scale, writing a summary of a text, creating a mindmap, or researching literature. All of these practices emerge from learning in institutions while trying to solve a curricular task of some kind or the other. So, if the end jutifies the means, some learners will start using some of the techniques they have learned, and incorporate them into their own self-directed learning strategies and practices (see also Sebastian Fiedler: 'Is self-organization in learning always the problem of somebody else?' and Oliver Wrede: 'BlogWalk 2 - First impressions' for other perspectives on this subject).
In order to establish the use of weblogs in educational instituitions, I would assume that a general of atmosphere of self-directed learning, and support of it (through facilities as well as educational counselling) would either have to be present, or you would have to have a good reason why your instituion would want to focus on it (I could think of many reasons here, but I guess this would be rather lengthy, reminder to myself: check literature on this subject).
I have done some exploratory blogging in German about this in the BildungsBlog: 'Offene Weblogs versus institutionelle Hierarchien?' and 'Erfahrungsbericht Weblogs im Bildungsbereich'.

Now, if certain tasks which have to be fullfilled in a course require the use of self-directed learning-techniques, for example, you could possibly combine teaching and using basic metacognitive learning techniques with the actual learning topic the course actually is about, mabye through some curricular requirements.
Learners could possibly have to research on a given subject and have to make notes, summaries, and maps on not only the content they find, but also how they found it, what they found useful, and why, in order to compare the results with other participiants, for example. I wonder if weblog-based learners' journals could be established that way in a structured environements which incrementally 'withdraws' continually while learners learn how to organize, reflect, and communicate their learning, by finding their own ways how to do it. But maybe I'm getting wayy out of tracks here, because this here ended up being more open thoughts than an actual summary of our morning discussions (not even to mention the remaining day).

So let me know if I missed something or if there's something you'd like to ask, add or clarify. I'm as keen as I am confused on this subject. ;-)

Some other Photos and summaries from BlogWalk 2.0:
Sebastian Fiedler: BlockWalk 2.0 impressions
Ton Zijlstra: BlogWalk 2.0 in retrospect
Martin Röll: Reflections on BlogWalk 2.0
More BlogWalk 2.0 voices