My final project: Discussing my blog of the future on Jing (in 3 parts)

Hi everyone,

Here are the Jing videos I made for my final project. Sorry that the sound quality isn't the best...seemingly my microphone gave me a bit of a lisp...and a motorcycle drove by right as I was recording. I hope everything is still comprehensible!

Apparently I had some trouble embedding them, so here are the links. Aaaack technology!

http://www.screencast.com/t/fQktj8c9z
http://www.screencast.com/t/DLgzFkgf
http://www.screencast.com/t/AcnFe9Oid

 

My blog of the future: reflecting on my final project

When I look back over the course, what stands out to me the most is the fact that my use of technology in the classroom is largely teacher centered and that totally goes against my educational beliefs. It is not enough for me to become computer and technologically literate, but my students need to be too. Many of the tools we utilized in this course have the potential to make education collaborative and that to me, is what a 21^st century classroom is all about. As Huffaker says in his article on blogging in the classroom, “the uses of technology have a two-fold advantage: they can promote the types of literacy traditionally encourage in learning, as well as the digital fluency needed to prosper in the digital age” (93).

Though some in this class argued that blogging is dead, I still see it as the tool from the course with the most educational potential in my English classroom. As I mentioned in my blog post on blogs, I currently use my blog as a place to post homework and assignments and for very little else. I am clearly not using my 21^st century skills to their utmost potential, and Richardson actually states in his book that what I am doing is not actually blogging (31).

Although I am currently not using my blog as a collaborative tool, using it at all is my first stage of growth. You have to take baby steps before you can run and if I learned anything from Kist’s book “The Socially Network Classroom”, having a 21^st century classroom means integrating things  into school that are relevant to students in the outside world. Because “research and theory have demonstrated the importance of social interaction in teaching and learning” (Ferdig 1) and because my students still frequently read and write on the internet, blogging to me is not yet dead, it just needs to be more interactive. Writing on your own blog isn’t enough, students need to create a community.

I like to think of my blog in its current state as the “short” section of Kist’s book. I am dabbling in technology, but not doing anything that complicated. Next I want to move into the “grande” realm by using my blog as a hub for, at the very least, discussion. And eventually I want to have a blog that I could consider a “venti”.

In the future, I want a “venti” blog that actually allows my students to participate in discussions. I want my students to give each other feedback, as peer critique (when done respectfully) is a very valuable tool. I also want my future blog to display posts from Twitter I want my students to have their own blogs and RSS feeds and to post on each other’s work. I want my blog to display student work for parents. I want my blog to link to podcasts and photo albums. Really, as shown by the fact that we are all using one in this course, the blog is the hub where all of the other web 2.0 tools can come to interconnect and I want to make that happen in my classroom.

Blogging can be the cornerstone of all internet tools by giving students a place to post all of their web 2.0 work. If we were to podcast in the classroom, or use Flickr or Twitter, a blog allows students one place to collect and show all of their learning. From a teacher’s perspective having students keep all of their work in one place is a logistical dream come true and also provides teachers and parents with a clear way to ensure that students are actually working and learning.

Unfortunately education can often become a very isolating endeavor, especially in the English classroom. Students often read and respond on their own and if a student is not inclined to participate in discussions, he or she may not really interact with other students in the class. What is great about blogs is that students become “the cosumers [and] also the producers of content” (Murray 209). I want my classroom blog in the future to be both individualistic and collaborative, where “students can have a personal space to read and write alongside a communal one, where ideas are share, questions are asked and answered, and social cohesion is developed” (Huffaker 94).

While I want my dream of a collaborative blog to happen in the future, I am still acutely aware of the issues with having students using the internet in the classroom, let alone writing and sharing on it. I think that any use of information sharing via the internet requires a class with a high level of maturity. It also takes a lot of prep and management on behalf of the teacher. The risks of posting things on the internet need to be discussed, boundaries need to be set and parent permission needs to be granted. Ferdig in his article on blogging in the classroom stressed the need to explain the reach of blogs to students, so that students “remember that once something is posted on the Internet, communication is irreversible, even if later edited or removed” (3) something we talked about extensively in this course.

However, I was discussing my desire to use blogging in my classroom with a fellow English teacher at my school and she responded, “Oh, teacher X tried to do that a few years ago and what one kid created what was basically a sex website and another continually made racist comments on other people’s posts.” While that is a worst case scenario, giving students access to a blog could obviously be a dangerous thing, however, keeping parents involved would help to diminish the risk, along with the fact that blogs are associated with a student by name and therefore unreasonable behavior can clearly be documented and easily punished.

What I want my final presentation to show fellow teachers is that blogs can be a valuable collaborative tool in the classroom and that they are extremely multi-faceted. A blog can become as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. Perhaps if I were to show my presentation to my co-worker, she would be willing to give blogs a try, even knowing about Teacher X’s failed attempt in the past.

Resources used (outside of the class texts):

Huffaker, D. (2005) The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98.

Ferdhig, Richard. (2004) Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere’. The Journal Online: Technological Horizons in Education, February, 1-5.

Harris, Albert. Web 2.0 and Virtual World Technologies: A Growing Impact on IS Education. Journal of Information Systems Education, 20 (2), 137- 142.

Murray, Liam. (2010) Using blogs to help language students to develop reflective learning strategies: Towards a pedagogical framework. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(2), 209-225.

Blogging and RSS feeds

I had my first blog in 2007 when I wasn't working one summer and decided it would be a good idea to share the things that annoyed me with the world. The result was a blog called "Gets My Goat" which was quickly abandoned about 4 posts in.

 After a bit of a hiatus, I returned to blogging in 2010 when I left for China. Having a blog seemed like the easiest and most affective way to stay in touch my friends and family while I was abroad. It seemed more interactive then email (should my readers want it to be) and it most easily combined pictures/video and text together. It also allowed me to share my stories once instead of having to write multiple e-mails on the same subject. Since then it has simply become a way for me to share big life events with my followers (largely travel based)

my personal blog

As a result of my time blogging in China, I am quite comfortable with the Wordpress interface, so I decided to try out Blogger for this class. Overall, I like Wordpress better as I find it has more options for sharing images and alerts you when people comment on your posts or comments. One annoyance with Wordpress at first was that it isn’t as “user friendly” in terms of embedding videos, but once you get a hang of it (an their “help” section is quite useful), it’s a piece of cake.

In terms of education, a blog was the first thing I have tried implementing from this class. I was lucky enough to get a full-time teaching contract for term 2, which fell right smack dab in the middle of this course. As a result I let my course work slide (sorry everyone), but I did take the opportunity to create a class blog to test out the technology waters. Before having a blog, I largely used technology in terms of using the projector, playing videos and audio clips.

My blog is largely just a homework forum and a way to make students responsible for what they miss in class. Each day’s work is discussed in detail and assignments are posted so students can never use the excuse “but I didn’t know that was dueeeeee!” However, as Richardson points out, simply posting assignments is not really blogging, but for me, it’s a start.

Something I find difficult with a class blog is remembering to update it. Mine hasn’t been updated in awhile as I just got back from a 2.5 week vacation and wasn’t expecting my TOC to take it over. I also find that as of now it is extremely teacher centered, but hope that as I become more comfortable in using it as a classroom tool that I will begin to implement more and more teacher-student or student-student collaboration.

my classroom blog: www.mshaighenglish.wordpress.com

I was inspired to start my blog by this course and also by a teacher at Byrne Creek Secondary who I had TOCd for just before getting my contract. She had an impeccable classroom blog and every student had their own blog as well which was linked to the main classroom blog. Students wrote responses on their blogs and interacted with one another via comments. Blogs really are an amazing way for students to comment on each other’s work, and collaborate, though like many other forms of technology, ensuring that students use the blogs for school and not for harassment is daunting.

I like the idea that Richardson discusses about classrooms becoming paperless as a result of blogs. It’s a cool idea, though I think it works better in theory (as of now) then in practice. I am also not sure how much I would like to have to read all my students’ assignments on a back lit computer thus wrecking my eyes.

Additionally to trying to use a blog in my own classroom, I find blogs to be invaluable resources when lesson planning. I have come across numerous blogs which have helped me focus my units and give me great ideas, one such blog being: . His blog is really a thing to be envied. He allows students to contribute to the main page, embeds his tweets and uses a wide array of technological tools. I am in awe and tried to emulate his blog in some ways.

http://mrturnersenglish.wordpress.com/

But onto RSS… I must say that it is the single most useful tool I have discovered in this course. I follow a few education blogs and some friends’ blogs who are still traveling, but I always find it a pain in the behind to remember to check them. Having an RSS feed has allowed me to know exactly when a post has been made on a blog I follow (be it on Wordpres, or Blogger) and makes it easy to see what I have and have not read.

I can see having a classroom RSS feed invaluable, especially if you were using student created blogs extensively in your class. It is a great way to minimize the time you are checking sites and simply compiling them all together (as Richardson discusses on pg 78).

Should I ever get my students to create their own blogs for use in my classroom, I am excited to try out including the RSS feeds into my Weblog as discussed on pg 81 in the Richardson text in order to really combine all aspects of the class into one location. 

Tweet Tweet

I have long been an avoider of Twitter, the need to post your every thought or move just didn't appeal to me. I wondered, why can't people just use Facebook? Then when "status updates" became a thing, I became especially mystified by the allure of Twitter, it simply seemed unnecessary and a narcissists dream come true. I remember being slightly aghast when I heard that "tweet" had made it into the Oxford English Dictionary as something other than a sound a bird makes.

See my thoughts in video form below:

Though I find Twitter in some ways ridiculous, I can also absolutely understand its informational/educational appeal.I will say that this is the one program this semester that I only signed up for to use in this class and very likely will never revisit out of sheer apathy. Again, this makes me sound like a fuddy duddy, but I just find Twitter too overwhelming. Because I don't check it everyday, or have a smartphone to  send me updates, every time I check it (after a few days, or weeks hiatus) there is so much staring me in the face that I just can't take it. The list of tweets (because many people Tweet multiple times a day), is too immense to handle. I also can't get over people's incessant need to tell me about buying coffee, or walking to the store....seriously, who cares?

The "clutter" aka who is Mae Whitman? I don't follow her...

Thankfully, I found the Twitter interface quite easy to use as most social networking sites are similar. Very quickly I searched how to get rid of retweets (as much as possible) because they were clogging my page, and I just wasn't interested in the majority of them. I can see how Twitter can get really cluttered really fast. Also, as Facebook picks up more and more of the Twitter trends, I have a clear understanding of how hashtagging and @peopling works (does the latter have a technical name?) I do like how the site recommends people to follow based on your current interests, it seems like an excellent way to find actual useful content.

Learning to turn off certain retweets

After all was said and done with the setup, I found some interesting education professionals to follow by going to Aaron's "following" lists and discovered how easy it is to share information via Twitter. I also like how you can sub-categorize people into lists. I can see how awesome it would be to share educational materials/videos/texts with a large number of people in a short time (especially with retweets). I do wish that there was a way to ensure that you could follow people who would only tweet work based materials and not personal things, to once again limit the clutter

Using Aaron's lists to get me started

That being said, I find it fascinating how Twitter has made celebrities semi-relatable. With one click you are able to read your favourite comedian, or artists random musings and to see what they are into and people they are following. It really is an impressive social networking tool and I must say that over 50% of the people I have chosen to follow thus far are people I simply think are funny.

Note that my current Twitter "friends" can be subdivided into two lists

In regards to using Twitter in the classroom, I am cautious, though I found a good website which lists a number of ways to use the site in school : http://www.teachthought.com/social-media/60-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom-by-category/
Part of me thinks that if I wanted a Twitter account for school, I'd have to set up a separate account from my personal one as some of my humour I have /people I am following aren't the most appropriate. The idea of having to have two accounts for something I am already not sold on just makes me annoyed, though again I understand that I am simply stuck in my old ways and that Twitter is a great way to share information with like minded people.

I do have a teacher friend who actively Tweets with her classes, more than anything else as a way to answer students' questions about assignments on a last minute basis. I suppose it is like a less personal phone number. That being said, Twitter is blocked on my school's computers, so it seems like a resource I'd have to use outside the classroom rather than within it.... that is, if I ever succumb. It also seems like lots of the suggestions made on the above site could easily be done using another program and out of principle I'll probably stick with them.

Facecrack

Basically since Facebook opened up to Canadian university students, I have been an addicted member. As I said in my autobiography at the beginning of the course, when Facebook came out, it was revolutionary. As a student it was the perfect way to keep in contact with people you knew, acquaintances you made and to essentially creep on people you wish you knew. When I signed up as a member in 2006, you were able to see everything that any other student posted who went to your school (if you wanted to). How naive were we to not foresee the ramifications of such an open forum?

Taking pictures became more of a necessity because everyone wanted to show the world how exciting their life was and how interesting the things they were doing were. I can't even count the times I have heard someone say "that's my new profile pic" after a photo has been taken.

Over time Facebook has changed, and thank God. The privacy settings that are available now are integral, specifically for us teachers. Though my Facebook has, what I think are pretty high privacy settings, I still use a pseudonym to avoid my students being able to find me. Though I don't think I live an overly scandalous life, I do know that I write moderately inappropriate things to my friends on occasion and in the wrong hands, these comments would be terrible. That being said, overtime, I have learned to filter myself on Facebook and rarely post pictures anymore due to the fact that the site owns anything that is posted. I fear for the presidential candidates of the future; dirty laundry is going to become more and more difficult to hide.

So, if I am an addicted Facebook user, it is clear to me that so are my students. Unfortunately, while they have the know how to use Facebook's tools, teenagers do not know how to monitor themselves effectively in public forums, nor do most of them truly understand the ramifications of their digital foot print. How many more Amanda Todds will there have to be before they get it?

image c/o careerrocketeer.com

The big question then becomes, how can we use Facebook in the classroom? I say we don't. When I was a teenager, instant messaging was a huge deal and I used it most every day. It was a part of my life, but that doesn't mean that it needed to be a part of my school life. 

I know teachers who used to create faux profiles for characters of novels, or historical people on Facebook, and it was student's jobs to ask them questions or to post pictures on their walls etc., but since that time, Facebook has cracked down on fake profiles, so I don't think this is a viable option any longer.

c/o http://img.docstoccdn.com

The only use for Facebook I see now is as a teacher centred blog like entity. It would be a place where homework is posted and questions can be asked and that's about it. That being said, I think that Facebook activities can be done in the classroom without Facebook itself. A teacher could create a poster "wall" for a character and students could post conversations between Facebook characters, but on paper instead of on the actual site. Maybe this takes away the fun, it for sure takes away the technological aspect, but at least it lets students know that teachers are in the know.

c/o http://shop.atozteacherstuff.com

Similarly, Instagram could be used as a teacher centered space, where students can follow what he or she is posting, but I cannot see how I would use it in my classroom constructively. I could see showing images from instagram to students, but not using the site together, however I am looking forward to reading other people's posts so that they can prove me wrong.

Other than those two social networking sites, I don't know much about any of the others. I googled Ning and watched a short propagandist video on it, but I can't understand how it is different from a blog. I suppose you could have a class Ning, but again...the concept confuses me. Do these kind of thoughts mean I am getting old?

Presentation Time

To start off my discovery of Web 2.0 presentation tools, I first had to Google what exactly they were. I came a across many useful websites which not only listed resources for making presentations, but a wide variety of other teacher usable tools as well. One such site was http://www.slideshare.net/rscapin/the-best-web-20-tools-for-teachers-2012-edition, which not only discusses Web 2.0 tools for teachers, but uses one as well.

Slideshare (or any of its other similar counterparts) is a great presentation tool. Essentially Slideshare allows you to embed your presentations into a website more easily, an extremely useful thing for those of us with classroom blogs. It's free to sign up and all you have to do is take your already made presentations (mine are usually in PPT form) and upload them.

I took a Power Point I had made on the characters in Of Mice and Men and uploaded it to Slideshare as an example. It's nothing special, but it gives you the gist.

Of Mice and Men Chapter 2 Characters from smhaigh

Another Web 2.0 tool that everyone loves talking about, and which made every single list of  online "great presentation tools", is Prezi. Personally, I hate it. I get that the flipping and turning and zooming in makes it more exciting to watch than a Power Point presentation, but frankly I find it nausea inducing. I also think that Prezi has become the new cool presentation tool to use and therefore when I want my students to present something in a creative manner, Prezi is their crutch. At this point, it really isn't that creative anymore. I also find that students spend too much time with the transitions in Prezi then actually creating meaningful information. Perhaps I am outdated, but I prefer Power Point. Something I will give to Prezi (that my students showed me this week in class) is that you can add multiple users to one presentation, which essentially means that more than one person can edit a presentation at a time. This is a key feature for when students are working in groups, so that one person isn't doing all the work while everyone else sits around. In that one aspect, I can get behind Prezi.

Below is a Prezi which helps show students what to do and what not to do when making their presentation.

During my Google searching, I found the following website which lists the top 5 tools for students presentations. Aside from Prezi, I hadn't heard of ANY of them, so I decided to check out the sites for more information. As of right now I have a list of about 25 tools I went to explore/test, but I think they will have to wait until summer for a real perusal. For now, I will just explore the basics of the 4 listed on the site.

http://h30411.www3.hp.com/posts/1586395-Five_web_2_0_sites_for_student_presentations

VUVOK

Vuvok seems incredibly similar to Animoto which I explored during the photosharing blog. After looking around the site I really wasn't sure what, if anything set them apart, aside from the fact that Vuvox emphasizes collage over anything else. I Googled it (gotta love Google) to try and get an asnwer and discovered the following, 

At first glance it seemed similar to Animoto, but I discovered that in their Create a Collage section there are a couple of fabulous tools available to creators, and they are: the ability to make selected parts of an image transparent, and other images are able to be layered behind so that a ‘window’ is created through the first image. I love this idea as transparency and varied opacity is a corner-stone of my teaching Photoshop skills, and it is great to see a Cloud based App having that ability, and free too! (http://raphaelite.edublogs.org/2012/02/27/vuvox-multimedia-instead-of-animoto/)

It seems inconsequential, but perhaps that is enough of a reason for someone to use Vuvok over Animoto. Below is one of the featured videos on the site


FLIPSNACK

Essentially this site turns your pdfs into digital books. There are a number of templates/layouts to choose from and the process seems relatively straightforward. While they look cool, I don't know how useful a tool it would be in the secondary classroom. I could see it working as a way to compile a number of students' writing, as a profolio, or as a way to present a creative writing story... but aside from that it just seems cool, but not so educationally useful for me.

BEECLIP (apparently now called Biteslide)

Biteslide seems almost like Flipsnack and Slideshare combined. You can create a number of slides on the website and compile them together into a sort of digital journal. I wasn't impressed enough with the blurb on the website to even bother testing it out. I think it is a more elementary based tool.


POPPLET

This is a brainstorming/mindmapping website, which intrigues me. There is something cool about having students brainstorm digitally rather than the old fashioned way (aka pen to paper). You can map with pictures, or just text and I think this tool could be useful in any subject and at any level. It would be a great way to create sociograms in English class as you can add images, text, post comments and draw within your map. The first step is to name your popplet.

I started making a Popplet and found it quite easy to use on a basic level, but a bit difficult to get the hang of all of the features. Each idea bubble created can be linked to any others, creating a web. But within each bubble an image can also be drawn or added from your computer or other programs (Flickr, Youtube, Facebook). Additionally, each bubble's colour can be changed to show relationships as well. I would like it if there was a tool where the connections could be annotated in order for them to be clearly explained, but as of yet I have not found that tool (if it even exists).

A cool feature of the site is the "Poplet Blog" button, which takes you to a page which gives helpful hints, shows examples etc. One problem I can see with Popplet in general is that it is a little awkward to navigate other people's completed mindmaps. When you see the whole thing it is too small to read, but when you zoom in you miss seeing the relationships between ideas (which is the whole idea of mindmapping). Regardless, I think it is a cool tool that I am excited to explore further.

Below is a good how to video on Popplet for beginners.

Wikis

Until reading Richardson's chapter on wikis, I had never realized that wikipedia and wikis were associated. Perhaps this is because I always think that the second i in wikipedia is an e, but now that I know the connection, that spelling error will surely stop. Now, before I move onto my wiki-education I just want to discuss WIkipedia. I cannot believe that there are 3 million entries on that site! Just to check its vast reach I googled the school that I am currently working at an got this page:

Seemingly the information on the page is accurate, albeit minimal. I was tempted to go in and edit the page to say: the greatest teacher of all time Ms. Haigh taught here...but I resisted.

I think overall it would be naive of us as educators to pretend that Wikipedia isn't a website that our students use constantly in their day-to-day lives. Heck, I use Wikipedia all of the time when I need quick information on an unknown topic, or a refresher before teaching a lesson (types of irony anyone?). However, I think it is still key to discuss with students that while Wikipedia is a great source for information, I still don't believe it to be a reliable enough source to use it for formal research assignments. While it is great that as Richardson says, everyone is "editor in chief" of Wikipedia, this makes it an unsuitable source for quotable information given that the information you are reading could be incorrect at the time you are viewing it (though it may be corrected within the hour). I do find it interesting that major news outlets are using Wikipedia as a source, but perhaps I am still brainwashed by my own teachers years ago saying it wasn't a viable/quotable source for school work.

That being said wikis are clearly an amazing collaborative tool and show how the internet has completely changed how information is shared. The rapidity with which news can be written, edited and added to on a wiki is amazing and a feat that the creator Ward Cunningham should be proud of.

I checked out some of the wikis mentioned in the book and liked what I saw. Who knew that there were so many out there. I particularly enjoyed wikiquotes where I search "poetry" (as this is my next unit in English 11) and collected a vast number of quotes on the subject, some of which I plan to use as a "hook" in my next class.

I also ventured to wikitravel, a site I have frequented many a time, but often after my travels to remember names of places or restaurants for my own blog. Unfortunately for me, I often find out a lot of valuable information about a place I have travelled AFTER I have been there as a result of wikitravel, so in an attempt to turn over a new leaf, I searched Alghero on the site as it is one of the locations I am going to be visiting over spring break. http://wikitravel.org/en/Alghero

unfortunately for me, the page was rather underdeveloped, so perhaps I shall have to revisit it (and add some information) when I return from my vacation.

But now to wikis in the classroom. For me, I don't think I'd use one. I prefer my blog for classroom use, though I find the wiki interface easier for sharing documents. However, knowing my students, I just can't see them editing my classroom page in a constructive manner. Though I do appreciate that you can see exactly what changes were made and by whom, I just think that a classroom wiki used for anything aside from resource sharing, would be a policing nightmare. I could see myself checking my wiki for changes at all hours of the day or night...perhaps this is because my pedagogy is still to teacher centred, but I don't think I am yet ready to get rid of that entirely. That being said I know teachers who live by wikis and I have stolen *cough* borrowed, many a resource from other teacher's wikis, most recently this one on Of Mice and Men: http://mswaraofmiceandmen.wikispaces.com/Lesson+Plans
Clearly wikis are a good place for sharing teacher plans/worksheets.

I also spent some time perusing the Flat Classroom Project Wiki and was very interested with what I found, though I still don't think it's for me. Being able to work collectively with people from across the world is amazing and clearly educationally beneficial, but also a huge undertaking.

If I was to use a collaborative forum in my English classroom, I would much prefer Google Docs. Though I don't actually know that much about it, I have seen it used quite effectively in a few of the classes that I have TOCd and would like to learn more about it in the future.

Although my view above may seem quite pessimistic, that did not stop me from signing up for a wiki, watching a few how to videos and just generally playing around. So far I haven't found anything that is earth shattering (I still love my blog), but this is also due to the fact that the effectiveness of a wiki seems to rely heavily on having a group of people to work on it as a collective and as of yet, it is just me playing around without an audience, or any real purpose.

Image care of: cte-blog.uwaterloo.ca