Model Classroom Blogging

In an article for Learning and Leading with Technology Anne Davis discusses how teachers should first model blogging for their students before asking them to begin their own blogs. This can be done by creating a classroom or teacher blog. This is one suggestion that has been left out of many of the blogging in the classroom articles and resources I have found. Anne Davis suggests this as a first step to:

• Familiarize students with blogging
• Create an atmosphere where the student feels safe sharing and discussing their thoughts and ideas
• Provide students with examples of good blog entries and practices
• Start the discussion and lessons on blogging and internet safety

I think this is an important and valuable idea for incorporating blogging into the classroom. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, a classroom or teacher blog can serve as the hub for students blogs. Teachers can continue to use this blog throughout the year to communicate with the stakeholders in their classroom and provide prompts or other springboard entries for their students blogs.

At the end of the article she lists resources educators can access to find out more information about blogging in the classroom. The resource I found to be the most useful was one from a poster presentation Anne Davis and Ewa McGrail gave on the lessons learned from blogging in the elementary and university classroom. The presentation gives a list of blogs from elementary classrooms, both by teachers and students. I also found the information about how to start blogging in the classroom useful. She goes over safety issues and how to introduce blogs to students.

Anne Davis also keeps a blog that can be found here. She has written some interesting entries on blogging and pedagogy, such as this one. She has also given presentations and started a wiki on the subject of Blogs and Pedagogy.

References:

Davis, Anne. (2008). A vision for classroom blogging.(BLOGGERS Cafe). Learning and Leading with Technology, 17(1). Retrieved April 19, 2009 from Academic OneFile.

Davis, Anne and McGrail Ewa. (2007). Lessons learned from blogging with elementary and university students. Retrieved April 19, 2009 from http://neccposter2007.googlepages.com/home.

Reading and Writing with Blogs

"Perhaps that most significant instructional potential of blogs is student engagement." (Bull and Kajder, 2003, 35)

Glen Bull and Sarah Kajder wrote an article for Leading and Learning with Technology that explores how blogging can be used to scaffold struggling readers and writers. While the article is aimed towards blogging with struggling students, the benefits and activities discussed can be applied to any students in any classroom.

The article argues that by providing a multi-genre, multimedia workspace blogs can engage students in writing in ways that paper and pens cannot (Bull and Kajder, 2003). The article lists that following benefits of blogging:

• Economy - blog entries must be written well to be concise and readable by the viewer.
• Archiving - the archiving of the blog entries allows students and viewers to see the progression of thought and progress
• Feedback - viewers provide feedback for student work; the audience is authentic and, thus, motivates the students
• Multimedia - students can post various types of work to blogs - text, links, photos, digital stories, music, artwork - the possibilities are endless
• Immediacy - the publishing of the entry is immediate and the students see the outcome of their work
• Active Participation- not only is the student participating on their blog but they can also leave comments on their peers' blogs and participate in the larger blogging community (Bull and Kajder, 2003)

In addition to listing the benefits of blogging, the article goes on to discuss potential uses for blogs in the classroom. While it discuss many different activities that span many subjects, the activities that interested me the most were:

• Exploding Sentences - students revise sentences from previous posts (theirs and their classmates) and add rich descriptive words and details. I think this is a great writing activity that helps teach vocabulary and complex sentence structure.
• Literature Circle Discussions - takes the in class literature circle discussions and continues them in the blogsaphere. This activity would give students more time to discuss books and their characters. It would also allow for the potential for literature circle to span beyond the classroom to include multiple classes at multiple schools.
• Photoblogs - students writing captions for photographs. This would be a great way to incorporate art and photography in the language arts classroom. In addtion, it lets students practice summarizing and capturing thoughts into concise sentences.

While I though this article gave some great benefits and ideas for blogging in the classroom, I would have liked links to examples of the activities being used in the classroom. This would have given me a better idea of the acticity and a person to connect with to ask questions and find out more information on specific activities.

References:

Bull, G. and Kajder, S. (2003). Scaffolding for struggling students: Reading and writing with blogs. Leading and Learning with Technology, 31(2). Retrieved from http://itlab.coe.wayne.edu/jalshaibani/docs/reading%20writing%20blogs.pdf

Transforming the Classroom Conversations

I learned about a series of webcasts titled Innovation in Education through Tweeter @ncara. The first installment of the series is three conversations, featuring Alan November and his book Web Literacy for Educators, on "transforming education to meet the needs of the 21st century learner" (Promethean Planet). The first installment consists of three 15 minute webcasts titled Empowering Students with Technology, Reinventing Schools, and A New Literacy.

I listened to the first one because I though the theme of Empowering Students with Technology went right along with what I have been exploring. The webcast started with the discussion of why technology was not taking off in schools. Alan November presented data obtained through surveys conducted at his seminars and conferences. Principals blame a lack of funding and superintendents cite a lack of training, while technology directors and teachers point to a lack of vision (November and Magana, 2009). I found this interesting and it really hit home with me when Alan November said, "you can have technology all day long, but unless there is a compelling vision that adds value all the technology in the world will not help you" (2009). The data also showed that the stakeholders mostly agreed the people responsible for changing the implementation of technology in the classroom was the school leaders (November and Magana, 2009).

Who are the school leaders?

I want to be one of these leaders. This is what I need to strive for in incorporating web 2.0 tools into my classroom - setting a vision for what I want the outcome to be.

I encourage to go an listen to the webcasts yourself. I listen to the first two and will be back when the third one is released.

How will you lead?

Stay tuned to the webcasts; future sessions will feature Marc Prensky, Ron Clark, Dr. Debra Pickering, Dr. Grant Wiggins, and Dr. Robert Marzano.

References:

November, A. and Magana, S . (2009). Empowering Students with Technology. Retrieved March 11, 2009 from http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.16956

Promethean Planet. Retrieved March 11, 2009 from http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.16956