Jul 20 2008
A Roll Out Plan to Develop Teacher/Student Blogs - 2008
REQUIREMENTS: TEACHERS WHO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TEACHING THE NEXT WAVE OF EMPLOYEES WHO WILL NEED 21ST CENTURY WORK SKILLS IN ORDER TO BE COMPETIVE.
TEACHERS WHO BELIEVE THAT OUR DEMOCRACY RESTS ON THE NOTION THAT WITHOUT AN EDUCATED WORKFORCE, OUR COUNTRY’S ECONOMY AND STANDARD OF LIVING ARE AT STAKE.
- Identify the core group of teachers who are already familiar with the virtual world. The school principal must be involved in the training process in order to model “new learner fear” and take the place of teacher/coach/simultaneous learner with faculty.
- Include IT specialists within this core group.
- Decide on the goal. Does the teacher want to be the sole proprietor of the blog thereby controlling it, its content and exposure or will students own the blog as a response “notebook” to classroom assignments.
- A teacher can start a blog to increase stage 1 awareness and improve written response from students. A teacher can also get students to develop the blog based on his/her needs. This process would involve exploration of widgets, design, outreach etc.
- A teacher can get students to set up their own blogs which will be a chronicle of student work in response to classroom expectations. For instance the English teacher have students set up an individual blog that will respond to all English assignments throughout high school. In this case the blog will become an interactive tool between the teacher and the students. In addition this blog will show the progression of students thought, communication, rationale, and growth in web 2.9 skills over time. I call this stage 2. In this stage the blog will become a portfolio which the student can take with him/her after graduation and maintain as a historical memento to be referenced later in life. Perhaps the student gets an interview with a college to review admission, this portfolio of work can be referenced electronically and perhaps clinch the scholarship and college admission. Is this cool or what?
- The Principal of the school should set up professional development time devoted to blog development. The first few meetings will be devoted to general introductions using a video data projector and laptop. Walk through the process using Edublogs which is a very user friendly tool.
- This training room should be open daily with prescribed times during which teachers can come in and work with a trainer to ask questions. This training room would accommodate different learning curves.
- As teachers feel more comfortable, they will be able to leave the training room and return to their computers to develop their blogs.
- The core group of trainers or specialists will then be responsible for doing door to door sales asking if teachers have questions and need help.
In the above model, all teachers with be exposed to the technology plan. Over the first 5 week period all teachers at the high school and middle school level working with computers in their classrooms will be encouraged and trained in the beginning level of web 2.0 technologies.
Blog development will be shared with parents so as to bring them on board with the idea.
This training and outreach should occur weekly during scheduled Faculty meeting time and involve door to door salesmen and women who belong to the core group, and will go around meetingasking if teachers need help in their classrooms as they develop their blogs,
9 responses so far
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Sounds like you have a clear vision of the way blogging will help prepare students for the real world. The key to the success of this project is the Principal of the school. Second is supporting the teachers. I like the “door to door sales” reference. As a classroom teacher that has tried to motivate students to write blogs, I know how challenging this can be. Just providing the access to technology does not translate into pages and pages of content online. Many of my students have MySpace pages, and more. Blogs are not exciting to my students. It was seen as just another worksheet to them. My mistake as planning. Look for engaging projects. Connect with another classroom outside the US. Take a Global View theme and challenge bloggers to learn about other cultures.
If left to their own likes, my students would have blogged about how they loved pitbulls dogs and their favorite NFL or NBA star. I am sure there are some educational value in this, but…
Find an essential question, develop a engaging theme for a project, and make sure all the teachers and students see that the Principal blogs on a regular bases. Finally, support all the teachers. It has never stopped amazing me who can catch fire with this blogging strategy and engage the students. Shift happens.
Hi Una,
I agree that once the notion of blogging is established it is vital to give the students purpose in their blogging. In 2007 at my old school we introduced all 120 students in the senior unit, (grade 5-6), to blogs as a space to create what we termed a Passion Project. If you are interested I have a wiki that I use to support presentations about the projects at http://projectingpassionately.pbwiki.com/FrontPage . It tracks the progress of the projects from their genesis to the end of the year including a discussion of the tools used and links to some of the projects.
Once you have your core group of teachers who are willing to head the project you will be on your way. The biggest problem we have had is convincing teachers that using web 2.0 tools in the classroom is not just fun and games, but there is real educational value to the students. Most teachers forget that our students do not know a world without the internet, computers, cell phones, iPods, and other technology that often intimidates the teacher over 25 years of age. They do not want to show their students that they are lacking in the area of technology so they resist using it, rather than allowing students the opportunity to share their knowledge with them. There are a number of shorts that we have used to help teachers understand how quickly our world is changing and the important role that they play in helping their students successfully thrive. Teachers don’t change behaviors quickly, but to begin a most important conversation about the role of technology in the classroom and the need for the teacher’s support they are a starting point. http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=40c570a322f1b0b65909&page=1&viewtype=&category=
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=799aaa845e1c2e8a762b&page=1&viewtype=&category=
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=6f2c2eba77f39993d118&page=1&viewtype=&category=
The above people have made valuable comments. Even if you are the only core teacher, start blogging with your students. To get everyone comfortable I would start with simple prompts eg 5 goals for the year. The interactivity starts to extend beyond the classroom and as the commenters above have mentioned linking up with other classes and bloggers gives that authentic audience and encourages improved learning outcomes.
At our school we started with two teachers interested in blogging and 6 months later we have 65% of our teaching staff of 28 blogging. You can see us http://hawkesdale.globalstudent.org.au
I love your plan
21st Century Learning Has Multiple Avenues to increase learning and gain proficiency and expertise
Part 1
Technological foundations for learning
NEA, AFT Report Outlines Ed-Tech Problems
By Michelle R. Davis
Back to Story
Though a growing number of schools and classrooms have access to computers and the Internet, much of it has not resulted in significant changes in the way students are taught, concludes a new report conducted by the two national teachers’ unions.
Released in June by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the report is based on a survey of nearly 2,000 K-12 public school educators from across the nation and examines technology use in schools throughout the country. The study found that despite long-term investments, significant disparities in school and student access to technology still exist, particularly in urban schools. And schools that do have a high level of access to the Internet and other instructional technologies such as laptops often are not using those technologies in ways that significantly improve student learning, the report says.
“There’s a technological highway, but for far too many it’s a one-way highway,” says Reg Weaver, the president of the 3.2 million-member NEA. And often, Weaver says, even when a classroom is connected to the Internet, it may have a limited number of computers, or equipment that is unreliable.
The survey found that 83 percent of educators reported having five or fewer computers in their classrooms, and that more than half reported having no more than two computers.
“In schools, we find that they’ll give kids old equipment, but still say they have a computer,” Weaver says. “But the outside world no longer deals with this kind of equipment.”
That is the case despite years of spending on efforts to connect classrooms to the Internet. Congress established the E-rate program in 1996 to connect schools and libraries to the online world, and the initiative has spent more than $19 billion to do so.
The report shows that many schools still have not figured out how to use technologies such as Internet search engines, educational software, and computers in innovative ways. In fact, most educators surveyed said they use computers regularly, but primarily for administrative tasks, such as electronic gradebooks or keeping attendance records.
More than three-quarters of educators surveyed said they use computers for administrative tasks daily, and about half said they use them to communicate with other educators daily. But only 40 percent reported using technology to monitor student progress, only 37 percent used it for research and information gathering, and only 32 percent used it to teach lessons. Fewer than a fifth said they used technology daily to post student and class information on the Internet or to communicate with parents via e-mail.
New Approaches Needed
Despite those figures, 89 percent of respondents said they considered technology—which was defined in the study to include a wide range of tools from computers and software to VCRs and audio recorders—essential to teaching and learning.
“Why aren’t we seeing technology transforming education?” says Keith R. Krueger, the chief executive officer of the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking. “While teachers are feeling more and more confident with the technology they have, they’re layering it on top of what they’re already doing, not doing things in new ways.”
Ken Kay, the president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a Tucson, Ariz.-based advocacy group focused on infusing 21st-century skills, including media literacy, global awareness, critical thinking, and problem-solving, into education, says the report points out how critical it is for all students to have access to computers and other technology, both at school and in their homes.
While the unions’ study found that the number of computers available for student use in the classroom often did not differ significantly by location, the software, technical support, and condition of equipment were more likely to be inadequate in urban schools in comparison to rural and suburban schools.
Heidi Glidden, the assistant director for the educational issues department at the 1.3 million-member American Federation of Teachers, says that in urban areas, technology is often viewed more as an extra, not an integral part of teaching and learning.
“A lot of times in the urban areas, it’s viewed more as a perk,” she says. “It can’t be seen as an add-on.”
The report encourages use of laptops and other portable computers and technology for teachers and students, and it urges more creative methods to increase student access to computers both inside and outside school.
Technical support and professional development for educators is also key, the report says. While almost all educators in the study reported that their districts required technology training, much of it appeared to be geared to administrative, not instructional, uses. Only slightly more than half the respondents felt that they had adequate preparation for integrating technology into instruction.
“There’s not as much training on how to infuse this into everyday instruction,” Glidden says. “We need to figure out how to do this.”
21st Century Learning:
Part 2 (0f 3): STUDENT OUTCOMES:
The elements described in this section as “21st century student outcomes” are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.
1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
2. Learning and Innovation Skills
* Creativity and Innovation Skills
* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
* Communication and Collaboration Skills
3. Information, Media and Technology Skills
* Information Literacy
* Media Literacy
* ICT Literacy
4. Life and Career Skills
* Flexibility & Adaptability
* Initiative & Self-Direction
* Social & Cross-Cultural Skills
* Productivity & Accountability
* Leadership & Responsibility
21ST CENTURY SUPPORT SYSTEMS:
The elements described below are the critical systems necessary to ensure student mastery of 21st century skills. 21st century standards, assessments, curriculum, instruction, professional development and learning environments must be aligned to produce a support system that produces 21st century outcomes for today’s students.
1. 21st Century Standards
2. Assessment of 21st Century Skills
3. 21st Century Curriculum and Instruction
4. 21st Century Professional Development
5. 21st Century Learning Environments
Here is a visual representation:
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/rainbow/rainbow_web%200710.jpg
My considered response to Una (to avoid the potential abattoir)
Part 3 of 3
Summary
In order to properly respond I felt I must first establish a context for what is needed. (see parts 1 & 2)
Your stated requirements: Teachers teaching to 21st Century work skills
Needed to succeed: Technology
The appropriate technology, technical support and professional development for educators is one key necessary to unlock the potential. Oftentimes school districts require technology training, much of it appears to be geared to administrative, not instructional, uses. Only slightly more than half the respondents felt that they had adequate preparation for integrating technology into instruction.
Needed to succeed: Student outcomes
The elements described as “21st century student outcomes” are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century. They need to be clear, flexible and logical (See the longer previous posting) as well as geared towards specific content and expertise.
Your focus on blogs and blogging does not for me at least follow directly from your goal of an educated workforce.
Consider perhaps carefully the following articles on blogging and education (The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities, Duffy, Peter D. and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38, Brisbane.; Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector, Williams, Jeremy B and Joanne Jacobs, Joanne, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2004, 20(2), 232-247. And Educational Blogging, Downes, Stephen, http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/EducationalBlogging/40493).
They offer support and challenges in using blogs as tools.
Hypertext and linking are important if not critical keys in blogging.
For those not wishing to read the above articles, perhaps a somewhat long posting from the third article can illuminate some areas needing consideration.
“the most telling motivation for blogging was offered by Mark Pilgrim in his response to and elaboration on “The Weblog Manifesto”: “Writers will write because they can’t not write. Pilgrim’s moving declaration should be read as a cautionary note. The warning is not about bosses who don’t want employees to write weblogs (though that danger exists), but this: writing weblogs is not for everybody. In particular, if you feel no empathy, no twinge of recognition, on reading Pilgrim’s words, then writing a weblog is probably not for you. This does not mean that you are not a part of the weblog world. It merely means that you participate in a different way.
And herein lies the dilemma for educators. What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don’t say the wrong things?
After returning from a writing teachers’ conference with sessions on blogging, Richard Long, a professor at St. Louis Community College, explained the issue this way: “I’m not convinced, however, the presenters who claimed to be blogging are actually blogging. They’re using blogging software, their students use blogging software, but I’m not convinced that using the software is the same as blogging. For example, does posting writing prompts for students constitute blogging? Are students blogging when they use blogging software to write to those prompts?”
After three years of experimentation with his Weblogg-Ed blog, Will Richardson also expressed his doubts: “By its very nature, assigned blogging in schools cannot be blogging. It’s contrived. No matter how much we want to spout off about the wonders of audience and readership, students who are asked to blog are blogging for an audience of one, the teacher.” When the semester ends, “students drop blogging like wet cement.” Richardson wants to teach students to write with passion, but he notes: “I can’t let them do it passionately due to the inherent censorship that a high school served Weblog carries with it.”
It seems clear that although blogging can and does have a significant and worthwhile educational impact, this impact does not come automatically and does not come without risks. As many writers have noted, writing a weblog appears in the first instance to be a form of publishing, but as time goes by, blogging resembles more and more a conversation. And for a conversation to be successful, it must be given a purpose and it must remain, for the most part, unconstrained.
One of the criticisms of blogs, and especially student blogs is that the students write about nothing but trivia. Examples can be seen all over the Internet. And how many students, when facing the blogging screen, feel like “Matt,” who writes: “Now each time I warily approach writing a blog entry, or start writing it, or actually write it, I end up thinking ‘what is the point?’—and, after all, what is?” When given their own resources to draw on, bloggers, especially young bloggers, can become frustrated and may eventually report having “committed the ultimate blogging sin of losing interest in myself.”
As Richardson says, blogging as a genre of writing may have “great value in terms of developing all sorts of critical thinking skills, writing skills and information literacy among other things. We teach exposition and research and some other types of analytical writing already, I know. Blogging, however, offers students a chance to a) reflect on what they are writing and thinking as they write and think it, b) carry on writing about a topic over a sustained period of time, maybe a lifetime, and c) engage readers and audience in a sustained conversation that then leads to further writing and thinking.”
Good conversations begin with listening. Ken Smith, an English teacher at Indiana University, explains: “Maybe some folks write flat, empty posts or bad diary posts because they don’t know any other genres (they just aren’t readers, in one sense) and because [they] aren’t responding to anything (that is, they aren’t reading anything right now).” It’s like arriving late to a party: the first act must be to listen, before venturing forth with an opinion. Smith suggests, “Instead of assigning students to go write, we should assign them to go read and then link to what interests them and write about why it does and what it means.”
The jury is still out, but as Richardson suggests, “It’s becoming more clear just what the importance of blogging might be.” As Smith writes, “It is through quality linking . . . that one first comes in contact with the essential acts of blogging: close reading and interpretation. Blogging, at base, is writing down what you think when you read others. If you keep at it, others will eventually write down what they think when they read you, and you’ll enter a new realm of blogging, a new realm of human connection.”
Una! First, thanks for spreading the word. I received a google alert with my name and it was a comment made on a social network from someone you referred to my blog. You’re certainly getting involved in the tools you have been anxious to use. Your leadership and modeling as you have pointed out will be what motivates teachers to get involved. Your roll-out is excellent. In your training, I think it’s important to show teachers some quality blogs of both teachers and students in the region so they can see what is possible.
Emphasize read/write web….Teachers know reading and writing are the foundation for all other skills. If a student is motivated by “publishing” on the world wide web, they will be reading and writing often. Alternative students are usually very motivated by technology and will be more likely to want to blog then write an essay on paper to be turned in.
As the students begin to blog, make sure you find out their blog address and get an RSS feed to their blog. As you receive e-mails notifying you that they have posted something, it would be great if you were to leave comments for them. They will be very excited that their principal took the time to comment on their blog.
Way to go Una. Always a pleasure to see you.
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