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.