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 21st 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 21st 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 21st 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.
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