LEA GROUP - CONNECTING ASPECTS OF BLOGGING IN THE CLASSROOM

Blogging in the Classroom

AREAS OF FOCUS:

E-portfolios

Intergration

Assessment

Through these areas of focus an overarching concept : This can be put simply as follows: "through intergration of ICT with curriculum areas and various contexts within the classroom, combined with the ongoing building of portfolios, provides a sound base for assessment to take place effectively".

How many children are blogging in the classroom?

This is taken from a worldwide summary. From an online survey of teachers around the globe.

"The red pencil" blog site by vivek khemka his experiences at work include running a school in the UK (k-10), helping set-up 3 schools, curriculum development, teacher training and of course teaching. Designing Assessments,a critical key in running an effective classroom, is one of his strengths.

Vivek Khemka has exposed me to (through his site) the feature of SNAPHOTS!! this is so exciting as when you run over the links, it gives you a quick insight to what it details..

THIS WILL BE VALUABLE for assessment of childrens blogs!!!! it will give the teacher a quick glimpse of the relevance to the students research.. without having to open every single one!

HOW TO INTRODUCE CHILDREN TO BLOGGING?

Whilst pondering a question in previous post (Effective Assessment): How can we introduce Blogging to children, that does not completely overwhelm them? ie gently. I came across this fantastic example, for young children, that uses "talking teddies"

Morag McDonald works in Tighnabruiach, a small village in Scotland. To get her young studetns blogging she sought out help from colleagues that lived in another area. A blog and a pair of teddy bears in the picture are videoconferencing for the planning stages of their collaborative blog.

She explains that "Pupils in the primary schools involved will write for the teddies to tell the teddies' parents in the other primary school what they've been up to". This collaborative Talking teddies, is a fantasitc way to introduce young kids to blogging.

Effective Assessment

I started to think about all that I have learnt and really wanted to detail how this may look in the classroom. With all that I have read and understood I wanted to outline exactly how I understand this working.

Finally, after much research I have come to the conclusion that using a blog to track student progress will be effective and I will need to try this out in practise in my future teaching career. There is a lot of justification for using blogs rather than pencil and paper.

So my idea is this: (relevant in any context, I will use a science experiement.. set at level 4-5. Each student will sign up for their own blog on Blogger.com. They will be responsible for posting an entry of at least three sentences every day to their blog describing their progression throughout the project (including the proposal/planning process). Each student will submit a proposal for approval that outlines:

1. What scientific field their experiment is based in.
2. What their experiment will attempt to prove or disprove.
3. Who originally performed their experiment.
4. What the original outcome of the experiment was.
5. How they will reproduce the experiment.
6. How they will convey their final findings.
7. How long their experiment will take.
8. What supplies they will require for the experiment.

Upon proposal approval, each student will be allowed to undertake their experiment process. Because different experiments will require different lengths of time to complete, the deadline for each student will be determined by the student themselves (and graded according to how well they have allocated and managed their work time). Upon experiment conclusion, the students will be expected to create a final write-up and reflection that details their findings and hypothesizes on errors, improvements, and areas for possible expansion for the experiment in the future.

The unique use of blogs is taken advantage of by allowing the outside world to see exactly what steps each student has taken in their experiment recreation (not to mention the students themselves having access to this information) which enables the audience to then judge the validity of the recreation almost immediately after each step has been taken (rather than after the entire experiment has been concluded).

Brenda Dyck used blogger.com in her classroom, she I created a blog for each student. Their blogs would be their workspaces and they would be places where students could write their thoughts after daily classroom discussions, and they would be jumping off points for future classroom interactions. She read and responded to students' blogs, and post questions and resources, to encourage students to explore their questions about their topic.

What about assessment challenges? She raised the question "How do I take a qualitative-based activity like a blog and turn it into a quantitative grade?" A couple of examples she provided were : how well students' blogs integrated the concepts and principles from class discussions and activities and how effectively students' writing conveyed their understanding of the problems and myths surrounding their topic.

I agree and this will be relevant in any examples of childrens work, not just isolated to the use of blogs. I also think that the teacher needs to realise the reality that not all children will be able to convey there understanding in this way and be completely overwhelmed by this concept.

It is important that we understand the needs of ICT literacy and ensure that we are not scaring our students away from the use of computers. Some suggestions are outlined in a lesson by Meredith Broderick. She initiated a blogging project with her students, while being introduced to Internet grammar and information literacy.

I think this is helpfull to the developing of ICT literacy and children are better able to navigate sites, and continue to develop knowledge through continual usage.. and this knowledge will continue to grow throughout their lifetime.

WHAT CHILDREN THINK

Nelson Central school has provided some explanations by young children and their knowledge of blogs. This gives a great insight to drive assessment and gathering before views. The teacher can reflect on new learning as it occurs. Some children have a a lot of knowledge and others are vague. The teacher maybe able to assess based on what the children knew before. This is a great example of how this can be implemented in any classroom.

Some suggested ways to Assess childrens blog sites.

Tech learning addresses some ways that we can assess children's learning through their blog sites is to:

• Start slowly by asking students to post once a week in response to a specific assignment This allows evaluation of student writing over time, not just in one high-pressure testing situation. How can I evaluate the different explanations children have about their understanding and interpretation of what they are discovering while using ICT?
  
• Involve students in their own assessment. Assign a written self-evaluation students can submit before giving term grades where they reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. This may depend on how close the links are with the integration of a particular context of learning, as to weather the assessment will be the usage of the ICT through their blogs, or the contextual learning itself. How can I manage both?
  
• Build rubrics that evaluate quality, not just quantity, this can encourage substantive discussion in student message board communication.
  How can I effectively keep track of students communication with each other, as they are helping each other (teaching each other) how can I be informed of this new learning.
  
• Use models. Bookmark examples of well-written blogs.
  Should this be related to specific areas? could children search and find these on their own and discuss what they learn? and children could possibly pull out ides that will fit with them and help guide own blog sites.
• Consider where children are been taken to in their learning How is this evident in their sites? we can do teacher and student conferencing and check points to establish this in class discussions about how children's themes are coming to life.

Why let children Blog?

Rachel Boyd in the has proposed a question in the moving forward blog site has created a thread titled Why let children blog. She has created a you tube video to share that show the effectiveness of children using blogging and some benefits that come along with it. It is an audio, visual presentation that details some of the skills children aquire through blogging. Check it out.

Blogging: Reinventing Teaching and Learning in the Information Age

A workshop was centred around these issues in Australia.. at Casula School https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/

They note that blogging is a recent use of technology that allows teachers to create online discussions for student use. As a recent use of technology, available research and examples of best practice are limited. So that means that assessment may be limtited also, However, I am sure through my research I will uncover a path that will lead onto many other roads.

The four-hour workshop began with an overview of the successes and failures of blogging professional development for the teachers and schools from the presenters’ school district.

Participants in the workshop were introduced to blogging terminology, tools and resources. The workshop gave examples of teacher moderated blog sites, thus reducing the risk of students posting or viewing inappropriate material. It then concentrated on participants making their own blog sites. It is important to set guidelines.

This does bring up the issue of the time it will take a teacher to locate and view all children's blog sites?? I am sure that the speed of the findings (as the tree will be rapidly, growing many branches during the process, like the students brain filling knowledge) will be moderately faster than the eyes of the teacher.

Data Collection Techniques for Technology Assessment and Planning

Clausa School in Australia Provides some data collection technigues for technology assessment

They highlight tools and techniques useful for documenting the impact of instructional technology at the school and classroom level. It detailed the use and development of data collection tools such as online surveys, focus groups, classroom observations, and artefact analysis of student work and included the collection and reporting of basic user data on technology’s impact on teachers and students. This data is particularly useful in documenting ‘current status’ in a strategic technology plan and/or creating a baseline assessment of how technology impacts teaching and learning within a school or district.

This allows for the documentation using creative tools and provides the teacher with a picture of where the children are at. But, it makes me think about, what if children are way ahead, how can this be detected?

Blogging: Reinventing Teaching and Learning in the Information Age
Blogging is a recent use of technology that allows teachers to create online discussions for student use. As a recent use of technology, available research and examples of best practice are limited. The four-hour workshop began with an overview of the successes and failures of blogging professional development for the teachers and schools from the presenters’ school district.
Participants in the workshop were introduced to blogging terminology, tools and resources. The workshop gave examples of teacher-moderated blog sites, thus reducing the risk of students posting or viewing inappropriate material. It then concentrated on participants making their own blog sites.

How do teachers gather reliable assessment information through children's blog sights.

Having a individual blogs created as part of a class/school wide umbrella, is valuable. Children can record learning, make suggestions to others and generally explore aspects of a topic that we may be covering in the classroom and most of all share this information. So how do teachers assess that children are able to do this effectively and are able to create a sense of connection with the information and that is is used in meaningful ways?

Terry Freedman addresses the need to "Ask the children" and through assessing children's own blogs.. i think it is vital to, ask the children. This is an essential part of assessing ICT. Its is not straight forward and does need a considerable amount of considerations.

http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1173.php

He suggests to use blogs to facilitate feedback from your students to you, and from them to each other, and from them to parents. This is connecting children with their families, making learning more valuable and real.

Children can take charge of their learning to be assessed and by Involving them in any surveys that I undertake. Not just answering the questions, but helping to come up with the right questions in the first place.

Through their sights teachers can gather information about task the teacher may set, such as, Ask children to create how-to guides and posters for using the educational technology equipment and software. This will help the teacher gather how much is understood by the students.

Students could write articles for your school website, newsletter etc.

"Making the pupils your partners rather than trying to merely "do it to them" can help to create a much richer educational experience for everyone" (Freedman, 2007).

Investigating Emerging technology.. Kids and their blogs.

An emerging technology that enhances learning is that of children creating their own blog sites. It provides opportunities documentation of learning and also provides children to reflect on what they are learning and invites parents and teachers to better gain an understanding of where they are at.

I will be focusing on Assessment and how this can be done effectively and to meet certain purposes. Blogging in the classroom brings multiple scenarios. Emma is initially focusing on integration with the curriculum and Laura is focusing on children's portfolios. We will be connecting our findings and showing clear links to our Emerging Technology: Blogging in the classroom.