Blogs impress me as a lot of work, especially if you are the one blogging. My first instinct was to use blogs as a way to get students to write more. My thought process was that if the students’ work was public they would try their best to look smart in front of their parents and peers and thus try harder. I teach at a tech center and we are constantly looking for ways to add English Language Arts (ELA) to our curriculum. Blogs seem like a great fit. I got all excited but then I discovered that our school board had decided some time ago (heavy-handedly) that all blog sites should be blocked. When things slow down for me at school I will begin building my case for unblocking blogs and see if I can get the board to move on this issue. Now that I think of it, blogs can answer the “Postman question” on several levels for me. Here are a few problems that blogs could answer:
- Students don’t have a way to prove publicly and often that they can think and deeply.
- Parents don’t have a easy way to see their students’ work.
- Tech Centers don’t have a way to publicly and often prove they teach ELA within their curriculum.
- Students don’t get a chance to see all other students’ work..
If RSS feeds are not the coolest darn things I have seen in a while, they are certainly the most useful Web 2.0 tool I have seen. I have discovered the hard way that some sites are not really great for feeds due to the fact that I would have to live in front of my computer to keep up with the new content. Examples of bad pages to get fed are weather.com and foxnews.com. My technology current event sites are great for feeds and I love being able to see what’s new on them.
As a tool for teaching, RSS feeds most closely align themselves to Edgar Dale’s “Visual symbols” level of the cone. The stories from the feed are often abstract representations of the point being made. The actual level of the cone involved would be RSS feed dependant due to the fact a feed could be text, pictures, charts or video. The RSS feed could align its self to virtually every cone level.
Some inherent strengths of a Web Log are that the blog is instantly viewable world wide, it allows for comments from readers and it stores past entries chronologically. These strengths inherently answer the problems stated above. There is no other medium that can give stake holders access to student work they way blogs can. Students love recognition and blogs can give a student a stage more consistently than anything else a school has.
RSS feeds/readers can be used to automatically alert students to new material the teacher would like them to experience. For students in remote locations, this would be one way to stay connected. Parents can use RSS feeds to watch their students’ blog and keep apprised of their progress.
Wikis
I wasn’t clear if I was to address the subject of wikis here or on the PBWiki site its self. I’ll do it here and on the wiki. I hope that’s ok.
This was my first time actually using a wiki and I must say, it was quite different than I anticipated it would be. I found that it was actually easier to collaborate than I would have guessed. My group had some very talented members and that made the experience great for me. What surprised me was how helpful having the email notices sent every time there was an edit. The deletions in red and additions in green made noticing the changes easy.
The disappointing thing was that the editing wasn’t as WYSIWYG as I would have liked. Dragging content around involved getting into the code and that’s always a bit worrisome for me. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. I was also surprised that the wiki didn’t look the same at my school as it does at home. I expected a few differences but the text flows around the picture nicely at home and not at school.
I might consider a wiki in my classroom as a prep for future online collaborative efforts my students might find themselves in. I can’t say that I can think of any problems I have that wikis help me solve but I’ll keep thinking.
9 comments:
Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Tom Seleck? :)
Anyways, I really enjoyed reading your response it was very well organized and easy to follow. I completely agree with you that blogs are a great way to encourage both parents and students to take a more active role in communicating with each other. Making it easy for parents to see what their students are doing is a huge step in the direction of much needed parental involvement.
One thing I would worry about though is one student posting and the others just coping their answers. I have been trying to work ahead on my classes and found that it was getting confusing for some of our classmates that I was posting ahead so I found out that you can set your posts to auto post on a certain date and time. This could be a possible solution to a cheating problem, but then anyone turning their homework in late would have to do a totally different assignment.
Argh.. sorry... the previous post was from Katherine M.
I gonna say you don't look anything like Tom Seleck, its just a pic of Tom Seleck on your profile. Thats just me.....
Anywho, I thought you did a nice job with your response. I liked the public idea of kids wanting to look smart. I think that might work, if everyone sees their work I would think they would put more effort into it. I also agree blogs are great for incorporating reading and writing skills. Blogs could be used in every subject, even physical education! Students would be writing more and more and reading more and more, and you know what they say, "practice makes perfect." I believe blogs as a tool in education is a win-win for everyone, and their free! finally, you did a great job related the technology we are learning to Dale's Cones. Great work!
All Blogs are blocked at our school too which is very frustrating when I am trying to multi task while working after school.
Our school allows us to have a classroom blog and will unblock that specific blog address for it. However, I am not sure they would allow each student to have their own blog. I think they can be a great tool as long as you take some precautions.
I can't believe that was your first time using a wiki! You seemed to figure it out in no time. I really like wikis. I think they work great for the type of environment where meeting in person isn't always doable. There are all kinds of different "brands" of wikis out there. So if this one seemed a little awkward there are a lot more out there!
The big question - is that you or a picture of Tom Seleck??
Thinking about blogging with students I like your take on them putting forth their best work. I would also think their work being make public would be of better quality. I think many of us in the public school systems will find out that blogs are blocked and it can be difficult to plead your case and get them unblocked. There are many good reasons to use them in the classroom, maybe through working together we can all come up with sound reasons to allow them in the school settings.
I think it is great that you are going to use blogs at school. I agree with you when you said students will work harder when their work is going to be published for all to see. I notice when my students are creating presentations in PowerPoint and they know their peers are going to be looking closely at their work they tend to put more into it. I also like the idea that parents will be viewing the work because I know parents often feel left in the dark with daily writing and tend to only see final published pieces. Would you have all of your students join the same blogging sites and how would you inform parents about their sites?
Jennifer
I agree with your Postman comment about the Wiki not solving any current problems you were having. I actually came up with a few problems and concerns about running one in a classroom. Trust is a big issue and for 4th and 5th graders that would be a lot for me to trust that they will not change what someone else has done. Maybe if I had all my students working on their own page instead of using it as a group project would be much better in an elementary building.
Jennifer
You guys really think I look like Tom Seleck? ;)
Well, if it is not Tom Sellec you must also think you look like him because that is what the jpg name is :)
-Katherine
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