Blogs are a new medium for communication. Society and educators are just now beginning to understand the ways in which blogs can be used to facilitate communication, especially with regards to reflection and literacy. For this assignment, please review the links provided in the instructions provided in Week 2 in our Laulima course site. After reviewing the information in the links, respond to the following by posting a comment:
After reviewing what others have done with blogs and learning more about blogs, how might blogs be adopted within your own locus of control. In other words, explain to us how the use of blogs might facilitate communication in an arena which you teach or which you plan to teach in the future. Be specific and provide a basis for your use of the tool. Answer with at least two cogent, appropriately written (grammar, spelling, etc.) paragraphs.[Please complete this response by Feb 2nd]
In addition, read through some of the comments posted by your classmates. Pick one and respond with your own reaction. One simple paragraph describing (a) what you liked about the approach and (b) any suggestions you have for modifications or additions. [Please complete this response by Feb 3rd]
Please email me if you have questions.
31 comments:
How might blogs be adopted within my own locus of control?
Although I am not currently in the classroom, my hope is to one day be in a position here at Hawaii Community College where I would be able to provide support to faculty wanting to integrate technology into their curriculum. To be more specific, my ideal position would involve helping faculty to develop and deliver more distance education courses. There is an ever growing interest, and more importantly, a staggering need for more distance education courses on the Big Island. When looking at the statistics, it is quite embarrassing to say Hawaii Community College services the largest geographic area and yet offers very few courses through distance learning.
If in such a position, I could definitely see a real use for a blog to be set up. I feel it would be a wonderful tool to foster a community of learning among interested faculty and staff. On this blog, faculty/staff would have the opportunity to seek and give advice, ask for technical assistance, share experiences, or simply bounce ideas around. I think from the faculty/staff perspective, having such a blog would make it easier and less intimidating to learn about delivering courses through distance learning. And from the support perspective, although it would take time to monitor the facilitate the blog, it would hopefully reduce the need to address redundant issues. I think it would also be an ideal forum where the faculty/staff’s needs could be identified, and support staff could post information regarding distance education issues as well as upcoming training events.
As a side note: UH-Hilo recently started a similar blog, but specifically for faculty and staff to discuss Laulima. I have logged on and explored that blog, and can appreciate its potential. I am a little disappointed that its viewer and user counts are not higher, but as with all new innovations, I am sure it will just take time to take hold. I suspect as the official end of WebCT nears and faculty are forced to move to Laulima, traffic will definitely pick up on that blog.
Hi Leanne,
After reading your ideal job I think the position I'm going into is something like that? Thank you for sharing and I hope one day you will be in that place. You would be great doing something like that!
I too think that blogs would be a great tool to facilitate support among faculty and staff. And yes I think the traffic will pick up when every one gets on Laulima.
A hui hou,
Pua
After reading about blogs I realize that my students can use blogs as a means to communicate with their peers. Our program services college bound students from Kau, Konawaena, Kealakehe, Ehunuikaimalino and Kohala High school. We also serve Naalehu, Pahala, Konawaena, Waimea, Kealakehe and Kohala Middle school. We meet with students at their school monthly and once a year we take each grade level on a field trip to learn and share from each other. With the use of a blog site we could keep those relationships going all year round.
Our students can use this blog site to help each other and share experiences. The blog site can be set-up with topics and concerns that youth face on a daily basis. Some of the topics could be study habits, time management, cool tools for school, accessories, dating do’s and don’t and this site can also have a resource section for college information and financial aid. This blog site will facilitate an online community for all our students.
Hi Pua,
I think your use of blogs for communication and relationship building between the western Big Island high schools sounds wonderful. You’ve thought of some really great topics to begin with, and I can only imagine how that would grow as all these high school students start their discussions. Only one more thing to add… it’s going to be so great that you may find yourself needing to extend it to the Kauai high schools when you get there too! Just joking (but you know it’s possible). Great job, Pua!
Jayne
I teach special education preschool and my students’ diverse needs range from one spectrum to another in every area of development. Because these young children have special needs, parents and teachers are faced with diverse challenges daily. Although there is an unlimited number of resources and assistance out in the real and web-world to help these children grow, many times other parents and teachers are the best resources around especially in the local community.
Parents and teachers who live and work with these children share the stressful challenges of teaching them specific skills; but they also share the joy of each successful “baby step” accomplishment that occurs. I think that some parents and teachers would be willing to share their experiences and learn from each other through a blog, especially on the Big Island. The resources here are either non-existent or not well publicized or known; but word-of-mouth is at many times credible from people you know or can relate to. This forum would allow busy parents and teachers to click on links to personally recommended supports and local resources that they themselves found helpful. It would serve as a convenient method to read and post questions and comments, share success stories, and provide support to each other at their leisure any time of the day or night.
For the early childhood literacy development course I will be developing one idea came to me right away. This would be a great format for early childhood students and practitioners to share literacy curriculum ideas.
Specifically, curriculum activities to expand literature that teachers can implement in the classroom with young children. There are lots of curriculum activities teachers have developed that are not published. Early childhood educators can share their ideas on what worked for them and ask other educators for their opinions or ideas of an activity they are planning.
Aloha Jayne,
It’s nice to connect to another early childhood person online. I really like your idea of supporting families through the use of a blog. I makes sense to give them a resource they can access in their own time, knowing what busy lives we all have. Attending a F2F support group may not fit into everyone’s schedule, especially with the additional geographical challenges of the Big Island.
I especially like your idea of sharing success stories. You probably already thought of this, I liked how Peter started with us introducing ourselves, giving others an idea of where we are coming from. I think it makes people more comfortable knowing the people that they are communicating with.
Cyndi
After reviewing the information about blogs from the links provided and looking at some examples, I am actually sold on the idea that blogs can be very useful and effective tools in education specifically in language teaching.
I have been teaching Filipino [Tagalog] for quite some time and through the years, I have collected so many boxes and crates of journals and portfolios [and there's no more space to store them]. Next semester [or maybe, this semester, I would like to incorporate blogs to replace journals and portfolios.
One thing that I want to pilot is for students to post their journals on certain selected topics and have their classmates respond to them or write their feedbacks [similar to what we are doing in this class]. For this pilot project, students can just write feedbacks such as what they find most interesting from their classmates' journals.
I can also use blogs to supplement reading and comprehension activities for my language classes. For example, I will post a short news item and then give instructions for students to respond to the comprehension questions.
Blogs can also be used for our mentoring/tutoring program where some 100 level students who need help with specific lessons are matched with 200 or upper level students. Since time will be an issue in setting a common schedule between the tutor/mentor and the tutee, having an asynchronous medium of communication such as a blog can provide accessibility and convenience for all involved in the program.
Salamat [Thank you] for reading my comment,
Ime
How might blogs be adopted within your own locus of control. In other words, explain to us how the use of blogs might facilitate communication in an arena which you teach or which you plan to teach in the future.
While I don't see myself as an instructor in the near future, I think that as part of an administrating body of college courses, I see blogs as being a useful tool to us. At Outreach College we facilitate many courses from various subject areas and some are geared to students who are at various locations, from the outer islands, continental U.S and even other countries. Blogs can serve as another useful tool of communication between the student, the department and administrator. By having separate blogs, students can communicate with the instructor, but may also have another blog to communicate to the administrator and department to express concerns about the course itself. I could even see blogs be another means of an online evaluation to online courses.
mchar, (sorry I could not figure out a way to determine your human name) ;)
You have an interesting application here. I noted from your post that you see a usefulness for blogging as a way to get feedback on administrative issues related to courses. In this sense, then, blogging provides a back channel for communication within an organizational or workplace structure. Do you think that kind of blog would be accessible to all parties involved and what level of discourse might you want to encourage, formal or informal? Actually the idea of using a blog to provide an alternate channel of communication in specific workplace/educational settings gave me an idea. I'll elaborate in my post.
-Richard
As a high school English teacher, I was intrigued by the reading that highlighted the use of blogs to teach writing. I have bookmarked the site, http://weblogg-ed.com/ and plan to browse it to get ideas about activities, strategies, and managment. My students have worked in online forums and are now using Blackboard to post journal writing, but they view it strictly as an assignment and I am wondering whether the personalization afforded by blogs will give them more ownership and voice in their work.
One of my fellow broadcast journalism advisors has his kids blog regularly as part of their broadcast class and he writes one of the best blogs around for broadcast teachers: http://www.htvmagazine.com/
The ease of creation and number of free blog sites makes presents a nice opportunity to experiment--stay tuned; I'll let you know how it goes :) I should also note that our school has appropriate use policies in place and that we take our learning center students through lessons on rights and responsiblities online. Wish me luck!
Hi Ime,
I was interested in your use of blogs because I think we share some similarities. I also use online portfolios and journals in myu English classes and will now be attempting blogs.
I would love to see how yours turn out! I also like the idea of mentoring. Our learning center is made up of different grade levels--guess we've got high school "cohorts"--and it would be neat for the sophomores to use this medium for mentoring the newcomers to the learning center.
Thanks for sharing!
Lynne
Hi Jayne,
I agree with Cyndi and think your idea of creating a blog for parents and teachers to share their experiences is a wonderful idea. I believe it would provide an incredible layer of support to parents and families, to be able to read and share their experiences (both challenges and successes). It would extend their support system to parents and families throughout the islands (and beyond!).
I was also thinking that having a blog for teachers, specifically to share what they are doing in their classrooms would be another great blog to create. I feel it could be a great resource for teachers, especially in special education, where the range of disabilities teachers face can in itself be a challenge. I would think being able to share ideas, techniques, etc. as well as being able to ask for suggestions or assistance would be great! For me personally, I know it would have been a tremendous help to have had a resource like that when I was the only Japanese teacher on the campus 10 years ago. It would have given me the opportunity to share, and get ideas of what other Japanese teachers were doing in their classrooms.
One thing I thought of while reading the articles and the comments of other students is that blogging has an empowering potential for complementing the ongoing activities of people's lives in specific settings or communities. People can have the ability to enrich their understanding of real life experiences through back channel communication. In one of the articles, the example of middle school students posting on their blogs immediately after a school dance is an example of this empowerment. This gave me two ideas about how to integrate blogs. One concerns research purposes and the other, teaching practice.
In learning science research we might test a learning technology design by conducting experiments in which students (and teachers) use our tool for a specific purpose over some amount of time. A component of the experiment is to get a quantitative measure of learning. Did the participants learn the concept the technology was intended to support? To ascertain this quantitatively we use pretest/posttest results to help substantiate our findings. Here is where I see the usefulness of a blog to measure pre-knowledge and post-knowledge. Participants make postings to the blog before, during, and after the experimental phase. This is open ended. They can post replies to each other's perspectives about the experiment, the learning concept being addressed, or the technology itself. The content and direction of the blogspace is entirely up to them. This is similar in concept to think-aloud protocols, or learning journals. The difference with the blog, however, is that it clearly decontextualizes the perspectives of the learner from the experiment itself. Its a back channel for communicating experiences with the experiment (we are interested in this data too!). The logs of the blog (bloglog?) can be quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to further substantiate findings. There is a continuum of experience and learning that can be captured in such blogs. I think this could be a valuable aspect of the data and complement the pre/post assessment tools. The second idea is much shorter...(promise).
I'm a teaching assistant for the introductory programming classes in the ICS department. From my purview as grad student in the field and having almost ten years experience teaching entry level programming I tend to think that written and oral literacy in CS courses should be encouraged. A group blog for students to provide comments on how they came up with solutions to programming assignments is one way to give them practice in verbalizing design. I also think blogs as a techno-medium might even be attractive. The instructors can participate too, providing feedback and clarification. Here, again, we can appropriate the blog as a back channel on real-life experiences (students learning to program).
-Richard
In an elementary through middle school setting, I would use a classroom blog to extend my classroom and to generate reflections, stimulate critical thinking, and exchange crucial feedback. Teacher posted notes, references, enrichment opportunities, and homework assignments would be included. Students and parents would be able to ask questions, express concerns, submit assignments, and exchange feedback, thereby facilitating communication. Students would be asked to create their own blogs in lieu of traditional assignments such as a book report or a daily journal.
I think the students will be very excited about posting on line. As the computer teacher, a “Blog Etiquette” class would be my first order of business. Many students have been instant messaging and texting for some time now and I would want them to differentiate between posting to a friend’s “My Space” or “Club Penguin” page and posting to the class blog. I would encourage them to compose their postings in another medium before submitting them on line. Cognizant of the fact that the eyes of all their classmates are on their postings, students may very well work harder than they would for an assignment that only their teacher reads. Also, having an opportunity to read their classmates postings would provide students with more insight and may help them to generate their own ideas.
To ensure all students have equal access, I would allow them supervised access to the computer lab after school in the event they do not have internet access at home. Providing supervision would help subdue the parent’s concerns over the students’ internet use. Students without an email address would be provided one created solely for school use. While the use of blogs in K-12 education has great benefits, there are some logistics that need to be worked out before jumping in. Taking these issues into consideration will help ensure the successful implementation of blogs. I find in my locus of control I must always take not only the learners' needs into consideration but also the parents’ concerns and restrictions.
As I develop my classroom blog in the near future, I will keep all of you posted and send you the link. For now, I have created a blog for the ETEC hui at so our neighbor island friends can participate to some extent. Please check it out at and let me know what topics you would like to address.
http://etechui.blogspot.com/
Hi Lynne,
Although I don’t teach English, my first thought as to how blogs could be used in a K-12 setting was in an English class. I came across a literature circle blog, http://sarahplainandtall.blogspot.com/, which I found to be quite interesting. Students in your class would benefit not only from posting their journals on line but also from reading their peers’ journals, similar to how ETEC students learn from each other’s postings.
What I liked about your approach is that you have considered, as I have as a teacher, how blogs might be managed in accordance with school policies and students’ online rights and responsibilities. The creation of the actual blog is not as challenging as the logistics. As K-12 educators, we have to look at the implications of new technologies and how students might abuse the tools meant to enhance their studies.
Blogs will have a positive impact in education when preceded by lessons on digital citizenship. I would suggest that if you don't already do so, you should incorporate lessons on using technology appropriately (for more information, check out this site: http://coe.k-state.edu/digitalcitizenship/index.htm). If your students have a computer class perhaps it can be covered there but should be re-iterated before you commence your blog. You may even consider making it a journal entry.
Take care,
Penny
Hi Penny!
Thanks for the response to my post and for the helpful suggestions and links. I checked out the Sarah Plain and Tall blog site...looks interesting. My kids are now reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, so perhaps I'll have them do some of their lit circle work via the blogs as well.
And, yes, we try to do a bit with online citizenship via our "Telecomm Overview"
http://www.mohs.k12.hi.us/media-central/telecomm-overview.html
(Note: We need to update this overview as some of the links are no longer accessible...such is the web, huh?)
and we approach media literacy through our Media Core class, which is part of our Arts and Communication Pathway.
http://www.mohs.k12.hi.us/media-central/media/index-media.html
thanks again! looking forward to more blogchats with you :)
Lynne
Hi Penny,
I like your idea of how you would use blogs as an extension of your classroom in being able to generate reflections to stimulate critical thinking. I think it would not just benefit from peer, parental, and even community feedback (if extended that far out), but it would really benefit the students' individual growth. Depending on how it is used, whether it is to reflect on assignments, etc. from the first to the last day of class or just on individual projects/excursions, students (self), teachers and parents will be able to see the growth in them through their writing. This would be another way to facilitate critical thinking by going through their blogs with them and asking them questions about their own growth. Or to see if they can already reflect their growth on their own.
If I were to have my own classroom one day, I would use blogs with the focus of it as a medium for students to visually see their own growth in their self as a whole (knowledge, critical thinking, perceived personas, etc.) and as a medium to allow their parents, the school (Principal, Administration, fellow colleagues, etc.), and even the community to see what is happening. These blogs can be a journal to showcase their work, sort of like the eportfolios that the ETEC department requires the masters students to create and maintain. However, it wouldn't be just filled with words and pictures. I would encourage and probably make it a part of a few lessons for them to create their own videos, or podcasts to post about their works, etc.
Hi Tiffany,
I'm intrigued by your goal of having students discuss their "perceived personas." As part of our media study, we look a bit at the idea of online persona and the role of technology and media in adoption of multiple personas, as well as the influence of omnipresent media (cameras, cell phones, YouTube et al) to affect persona and reality.
Just saw an article about a director who shot a video totally from the perspective of security cameras. And then there's that YouTube pheonomenon where kids are capturing and posting stuff like campus fights online.
lots to think about...critically :)
Lynne
Hi all,
How might blogs be adopted within your own locus of control?
I think that blogs has not a new concept any more because they are used for several purposes such as entertainment, communication and even education. It depends on users’ purposes that blogs can be a successful tool.
Blogs will be a great tool for teaching and learning online because of its convenience. The teacher will post lessons and questions on blogs, and then students will view them and answer them directly on the blogs. Learners can discuss with others on blogs, too. For example, an English teacher can post audio lessons on blogs so that students just visit, listen, and do what the teacher required. If they question, they can write comments on blogs, and other students can answer them or teacher can answer later. Blogs can be effective tools for writing, especially English because learners do not need to handle in hard copies of their assignment to the teacher, they just come to class’s blog and submit assignment. It is practical and economic.
Blogs will make teaching and learning environment more dynamic and flexible. If teachers and learners feel bored with coming to class, they can use blogs to learn outside class. For example, if a teacher have two-week conference, he cannot come to class to teach, he /she will use blogs to teach. He/she gives lectures and questions on blogs, and learners learn themselves, complete assignment and hand in on time. This is very helpful because the teacher and learners do not miss class.
I think I will use blogs for my future students who cannot have chance to come to class. I will teach English skills or other subjects. I think I can upload audios, video on blogs so that learners just visit and get them without coming to class. Blogs can be an important tool for writing class. I can post pictures, questions, and assignment, and then my students just visit blogs to give comments, answer questions, and finish their assignment. To sum up, it depends on teachers’ purposes that blogs can be used flexibly and target various goals.
Hi Penelope,
I really like your ideas that have used blogs to enhance teaching and learning. I think we live in the technological age, so we need to make teaching and learning environment different and more dynamic and interesting to not only enhance teaching and learning but also appeal learners to learning. You see that blogs have several functions that allow users to create their own setting. Thus, teachers can use it as supporting tools for their teaching. I do believe that present learners like to study with technology because it helps them develop their creativity.
I think there are various technological tools that are used to enhance teaching and learning. Therefore, the teacher needs to choose the appropriate one to teach. Or, he/she can combine some of them to teach. It is really great. However, the teacher should not abuse them because technology can bring unpredictable disadvantages. A good advice is use the one we feel the comfortable and can manage it. Thus, we do not meet any troubles with it.
Thanks for your sharing
How might blogs be adopted within your own locus of control?
While I was reading the articles two was of incorporating blogs into my curriculum could be for communicating with the students on assignments and the other would be as a reflection piece for their e-portfolios. It would be very helpful to have a way for sick students to get daily work from the teacher when they are sick. My colleagues and I have many complaints about that subject. Parents expect us to drop everything to get them the work. They don’t come to pick up the work. Or they are just going to miss one day. With a class blog, homework and classwork could be posted. Also, I was thinking that it would be an excellent way of communicating with the teacher for help on home/classwork when not in school. This would also offer a chance for the other students to do peer tutoring and interact with one another without fear or embarrassment.
The other way that I was thinking of was a student blog that would be connected with his own e-portfolio. This would be a great way for parents to see and read what their child is having a hard time on, what he is succeeding at, or what is going on in school. This would be a good place for some guided reflection as well as a commentary on the work that was done and put into the portfolio
hi penelope,
I like your idea of setting a "Blog Etiquette." This establishes some rules and guidelines of communicating via blogs.
One thing I would modify in establishing this set of Blog Etiquette is to have everyone share what they think should be part of it so that all students/ participants have ownership to it.
--ime
Hey Penelope!
You brought up some good points. I especially have to comment on the "Myspace" issue. I don't know about other schools but I know that our school has it blocked. I also know that everytime I am in the computer lab with my students, it is a fight to see who can get through the blocks to look at the "forbidden" sites.
You really have thought about how you are going to prepare your students for doing educational blogging. My hat is off to you because I didn't think of going that far. I am going to be really excited to see how the blog in your classroom goes.
Susan Kihara
The use of blogs would be especially helpful in my teaching of Finance courses. The technology utilized for blogs allows greater incorporation of multimedia and interactive features than typical, text-only discussion boards. While blogs come in various formats, in general, they provide multiple ways for blog creators to present content – text, pictures, audio, video – and interact with visitors via discussions, surveys, and other means. Those additional features and interactivity can help me to show students how the content we cover in the class is relevant to them and applicable in real-life.
For example, in my blog covering my thoughts on the financial markets, I have incorporated a business news feed and a survey on saving. I might also include stock charts or other finance-related multimedia that might interest students. Having this additional content provides a springboard in the same arena as the discussion. Consider trying to do the same using the text-only discussion board in WebCT or Sakai. Once I send the student to another site to view a chart or news, I may or may not immediately get the student to return to the discussion forum to submit their thoughts. That is definitely not as likely with a well-designed blog.
Hi Richard,
I really like your scientific approach to utilizing blogs. I definitely agree with you that blogs provide a great mechanism to collect pre- and post-thoughts from students for a given situation. Blogs may not the means for achieving a high level of validity, but considering the alternatives, it's the most efficient and effective means to collect the type of feedback you mention in an online environment.
I feel that that blogs would be a quite useful tool for me in my classroom, however because i work for the DOE, the internet access restricts most blogs. in the article Writing With Web Logs, the author talks about their English class. the article states, "Best of all, students got to ask Kidd questions about her writing when she made a virtual appearance on their site." I think Kidd questions are th best kind of question to ask when kids are having trouble with a project.
have not used any blogs in my class because of the DOE security feature and that my school is far behind with technology. i really would like to use blogs with my students but i don't see this happening unless i don't work for the DOE.
Kristin Kennedy talked about using the blog with an author. I teach history so i think it would be hard to have them talk to Han Wudi or King Tut, but it would be cool to have them talk to a primary source like a person living in Egypt or China.
Ryan,
I like you idea about using a survey on your blog to engage your students. Judging but the course content in your Finance class I would have to assume that you teach high school. Do you teach in the DOE? If so what blog site do you use. Many of the popular blog sites are blocked which I think is a shame. anyway good luck with all you blogging.
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