I am no longer, as of October 2008 working as a class teacher at Sandaig, so have moved this blog to another server. If you want to comment on this post, pleas search for it there.

02 01 07 2007...

1220

An interesting pessimistc/optomistic post by Will
Yes, there are more and more examples of teachers and students using these tools in their practice, but the numbers of examples of students on the K-12 level whose learning is being transformed by these technologies is amazingly small, at least to me. I mean really, where are the examples of students blogging…and I mean blogging, not just using blogs…and building global networks of learners? There are some, yes, but not enough to make the case that these tools can work in the current school environment.
Which hits a few nails on the head. I certainly feel that blogging has done my classes some good but I don't think their learning is going through a major transformation. I am not too worried though. I am not at all sure if any optimism is possible on the other global events Will refers to, but it should be for educational blogging.
First I think the methods to help children blog in the first place, fitting this into the curriculum and the school day, are developing and need to be explored before we build global networks. This will take time (more time). As a class teacher who is starting the fourth year of blogging with children I am still scratching the surface, just starting to move from giving the children an audience to letting them develop a community. I've seening this happen more this session than ever before.
Secondly as we slowly integrate blogging and a world wide network of children learning together it will hopefully dovetail nicely with A Curriculum for Excellence, Assessment is for Learning and other educational efforts outside the blogosphere which I think are pushing in the same direction. (Maybe extreme-learning too, but I don't know much about that).
Thirdly a lot of the edu blogs that have started up over the last year have been professional development blogs not learner blogs. I do not see the sort of changes that I think Will wants until more children are given the tools, hopefully as teachers use the tools themselves they will start giving them to their classes and then as Will says we
will have our kids leading us further toward where we need to go…
I don't think this will happen in 2007 everywhere, but we already know The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.
I've a few ideas of where I want to go in 2007 and hopefully will be planning them here before long.

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Hi John
I would have to say that if we are just talking about writing, given that there are many more other aspects involved with blogging, it relies upon “audience” and “purpose”. My Google Reader is full of people who are dedicated to this great world of web 2.0, the read/write web – but it is much harder to actually attribute specific educational achievements and progress to blogging. This is generally because some time in May my class and thousands of other children will sit in a hall with a booklet and a pencil and will be tested.
This year I would like to make the most of the blogging global community to give the children more PURPOSE to their writing, to take advantage of the huge AUDIENCE they have when they blog. How this actually happens, well I am unsure…and it feels like there is a long way to go yet.

Tom
Tom Barrett (Email) (URL) - 03 01 07 - 19:46

John,
Good stuff to ponder. I started blogging recently because I thought it might help my teaching- first in making me more reflective, secondly so that I could somehow tap into the enthusiasm I saw in secondary pupils for the new technologies.
I feel sure that blogging has helped me think more about education. In terms of using blogging with pupils -still early days as I am just at the stage of encouraging a couple of classes to use a wiki and a bulletin board.
How do you judge the effectiveness?
It seems to me that we ‘reap where others have sown’ in education. Sometimes secondaries don’t seem to acknowledge the debt they owe primaries. Do you have any feedback about how pupils you introduced to blogging are doing at secondary? Would it be possible to assess how their learning was impacted in the long term? I’d love to know your thoughts on that.
Liz O'Neill (Email) (URL) - 06 01 07 - 20:57

Tom: – but it is much harder to actually attribute specific educational achievements and progress to blogging. and Liz: How do you judge the effectiveness? I don’t know about any real scientific evidence, I can think of a coupe of ex-bloggers that seem to be thriving in Secondary, but they probably would have anyway.
Long term assessment of an activity I’ve carried out in a very ad hoc and spontaneous way is difficult. I can say blogging (and especially podcasting) have given me more enthusiastic pupils who have worked harder than I expected they would on similar tasks without out the technological/audiance/purpose aspects.
Maybe a wee test could be carried out, half the class to review knowledge of a topic by creating a written piece of work, the other half to work together in groups to produce a podcast, quick quiz a week, a month and a year later to see who has retained the most.
I guess it might depend on how blogging is carried out and integrated into the classroom.
John Johnston (Email) (URL) - 07 01 07 - 08:34

Hi John I have recently started a school blog and a personal blog. Maybe the professional/personal blog is an important process for the first generation of blogging teachers to go through?
Having got over the initial logistics of creating the blog I am now looking to where to develop the blog. I think your comments on time to teach the children to blog are very important. Also finding enthusiastic teachers who are willing to give up their already precious time.
Lynne Lewis (Email) - 11 01 07 - 20:30

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hitIminc (Email) (URL) - 30 03 10 - 14:41



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I am no longer, as of October 2008 working as a class teacher at Sandaig, so have moved this blog to another server. If you want to comment on this post, pleas search for it at: http://www.johnjohnston.info/blog.