What value do you see in using a blog either as a teacher or with your students to share ideas?
Blogs can contribute a lot to a classroom's discussion. They can be used for assignments, assessments, classroom participation, debates, Q & A, or just to build relationships. Blogs need to be used consistently and with structure in order for them to work. There needs to be a format for students to follow and it needs to be done a regular basis or it becomes a hassle or discombobulated throughout the year. If there isn't a structure students could become lost and it would be difficult to assess grades if that's its purpose.
How might you be able to use blogs and RSS feeds in your professional life?
Blogs can be used between students and teachers, teachers and teachers, teachers and administrators, teachers and parents, teachers and community members, or all of the above. It is a great tool that can connect people or bring people into your classroom that ordinarily wouldn't have the means to do it. Administrators can see what you are doing in your class and can contribute their input from their cushy desks or golf cart. Parents can respond when they can. People from the community can drop their two cents in on how things are in the real world. For example, maybe you're working on a virtual budget for students who think they can make it on their own without getting a high school diploma. People from the community can respond with a pleasant wake-up call.
RSS feeds are great for professionals because they save time. If you need news or resources related to a specific topic, boom, it's right there on your iGoogle page. You can pass this information onto your students too. Now they can have a page with all the websites they think they need.
For what uses do you see teachers and/or the LMS using blogs in your school in the near future?
In my school, I don't see the use of blogs being used much. Our staff was just given our own webpage to create, and not many teachers are taking advantage of that resource. Blogs could just be another thing to add to the pile of things to incorporate in their classroom. I think a lot of our teachers are stuck in teaching they way they were taught. We need to adapt to how the kids are learning. It's in front of a computer screen. It would be great if we could have mobile computer labs for students to work on. Right now the one or two labs we have can only hold one class per hour.
What uses might you suggest that focus on 21st century skills and higher level thinking?
I like the potential blogs can have incorporating the community around students into their education. They can learn real life skills that they will use daily. When I was in elementary school we had a computer lab full of Macs that were state of the art back then. I was also lucky to have parents that let us use a computer at home during that time. When I would go to school for computer class, I was teaching the teachers and other students what to do. It was great! It prepared me for now.
Schools definitely aren't all keeping up with what students are using outside of school. What student lives without a cell phone today? Soon it will be "what student lives without a Smartphone". Of course, we'll always have equity issues that we'll have to deal with, but the technology is going to become more ubiquitous.
ReplyDeleteThe mobile technology is really great (disclaimer: I have both an iPhone and a laptop), but it also can take over your life. You have to learn to put limits on accessibility. I think many parents are finding the same things with their kids -- they have to make them turn off the cellphone and computer at some point. One of our jobs in schools is to help students learn to manage this influx of digital information coming at them.
Using a blog to communicate with the community has pluses and minuses. It offers that transparency we are all asking for in our public institutions. On the other hand, it opens us up to different points of view on what we are doing. It may even force us to defend our actions and possibly rethink them ;-) I've found that it raises the expectation of accessibility 24/7 (something I've tried to ratchet down a bit).
I understand you point of view about teacher web pages. Where I work we are all given our own webpages as well but as a special education teacher in an inclusive school I do not have a whole lot to add to my personal page as it's all on the math pages already. I feel bad not using it but it would be illegal for me to post the dates up my upcoming IEP's for parents to check in on. So as sad as it sounds because I would love to use my page I don't because I do not know what to put on it, hopefully by the end of this course I will find a few good suggestions.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things to consider is how students can help build that page. We used to talk about web 1.0 where the teacher (or other web creator) put out the content and others just read it. With web 2.0 (now called the read/write web), we can involve others in creating the content (with guidance and moderation of course at the school level). Maybe there is something you can do to have your students post content or comment on ideas. One thing to keep in mind if you do this is the school's internet safety policy. Most schools only allow students' first names to be used with no class added for privacy reasons.
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