Many teachers are using blogs in the classroom, exploring their unique potential to engage learners through sharing their work with a real audience. A recent article in the online journal Computers in New Zealand Schools: Learning, Teaching, Technology gives an example of using blogs in a primary classroom from the teacher’s point of view. Gillian May started blogging with her students at the beginning of this school year and through her article she unveils some of the unique advantages that this had for her as a teacher and her students. Some of them include:
· Strengthening home – school connections, by enabling families to have access to student learning.
“Our class blog has changed the way our classroom operates and it has improved the link between home and school beyond our wildest dreams”.
· Enhancing student engagement, by motivating them to share their learning with a real audience.
“It gives the students ownership but more importantly it gives their learning real-life purpose that means something to them.”
Sara Kajder talks about the potential of emerging technologies such as blogs to provide students the opportunity to write for a real audience, share their learning and become active members of online communities (Kajder, 2007). Not many years ago, the web was a place where people could find and retrieve information. Now, the read/write web gives everyone a voice and instead of passively consuming information we can actively create it through online collaboration (Richardson, 2006).
As teachers, we have the responsibility, but also the power to teach students how to effectively and responsibly take advantage of these opportunities that the read/write web offers. Teachers don’t need sophisticated computer knowledge to do that. As Gillian May said
"Prior to June 2010 I had no experience with blogging. I was introduced to the idea at a professional development session, and decided that I might have a play with setting up my own class blog”.
Trial and error is probably the best way to do it! As we experiment with new tools and as we observe the advantages, especially with student engagement and motivation, but also with parents' involvement in student learning, we get further motivated to continue. Of course, the more we commit to it, the more sensitive we need to become on consequent implication, such as privacy, security and ownership; the web provides many opportunities for professional development about these issues. Lifelong learning - isn't it?
Resources:
The Global Transformation in Education addresses the forces of change that are causing educators globally to rethink what education for today’s students should involve. Mark Treadwell author of The Perfect Storm discusses the collision of three “storms” that are now rocking the world.
Read more…
National has agreed to a radical development in the education system - charter schooling - in a surprising part of its support deal with the Act Party.
A combination of Friday night excitement, passionate change agents, twitter and of course lots of humour: this is #pencilchat. Once again, education tweeps from all over the world united their voices in a twitter chat, but this time they added big doses of irony and sarcasm. The topic is simple and its message is deep: imagine that you living several years ago when pencils were beginning to be introduced at schools. What are the benefits? Most importantly, what are the implications for teaching, learning and schooling in general?
As much simple as this may look like for today’s world, it couldn’t be that simple back in the day... Now, replacing the word pencil with the tools of today’s world, computers, mobile devices and other innovations that still don’t have a natural place in most educational systems, this is how peculiar and funny the whole debate about using ICT in the classroom might look like in the near future.
But this is our aim as change agents after all. We want future generations to enjoy teaching and learning in an environment that is meaningful and relevant to the real world. We want them to find difficulty in understanding why there was so much debate regarding the blend of ICT in teaching and learning, just because the seamless implementation of all these tools will be a natural and undisputable thing to do for them. There will be a time that discussing about educational use of ICT will be as funny and weird as #pencilchat.
You can follow and contribute to #pencilchat anytime. The community is growing with thousands of tweets sent over the last three days! Here are some of my favourites:
