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Chapters 2 and 3 Weblogs
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Chapter 2: Weblogs: Pedagogy and Practice
Notes
- Definition - "...a Weblog is an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection."
- Writing to the web is easy and there is an audience.
Characteristics of a Blog
- not static
- comprised of reflections and conversations
- updated frequently
- Demand interaction - engage readers with ideas, questions, links
Examples
- The Savvy Technologist - Tim Wilson - reflections from daily work, links to educational sites, lesson plan ideas, conversations with other teachers - share experiences, ask questions, push thinking (collaborative space - readers part of writing and learning process)
- Meredith’s Page - journalism student - reflections on work, homework assignments, links to articles, running news feed from Google, comments from classmates
My Space, Live Journal, Xanga, etc.
- Used more as a social tool than learning tool
- More journaling than blogging
- Blogging more of a process of thinking than account of days events or feelings
- Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
- Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
- Blogs promote analogical thinking.
- Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
- Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
Ways to Use Weblogs in Schools
- Class Portals - Example: Journalism 1 - course management tool: publish course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homework assignments, rubrics, handouts, and presentations.
- Online Filing Cabinets for Student Work - archive work, time stamp to see when handed in, reflection, searchable, share with other who are invested in student progress
- E-Portfolios - Example: E-portfolios for Learning by Helen Barrett (see her other online e-portfolio versions)
- Collaborative Space - Example: Secret Life of Bees - High school students wrote their reactions, responses, and research to the book. The author joined in on the conversation!
- Knowledge Management - communicating internally: school committees and groups - minutes of meetings, continue dialogues between get-togethers, share links of information, store documents and presentations, best practices, lesson plans, learning objects (worksheets, projects)
- School Websites - Example: Lewis Elementary School, Portland Oregon (Principal, Tim Lauer's Blog)
The Pedagogy of Weblogs
Essential Questions:
- What can Weblogs do to improve student learning?
- Why should classroom teachers consider blogs as a tool to deliver their curriculum?
- Blogs are a constructivist tool for learning.
- Expand the walls of the classroom.
- Archive learning that teachers and students do. (reflection, metacognitive analysis, organization)
- Supports different learning styles.
- Develop expertise in a particular subject.
- Deal with expanding information - good for teaching research, organizaion, and synthesis of ideas.
A New Writing Genre - Connective Writing
- read carefully and critically, write with clarity and strong arguements, wide audience, link to sources for ideas.
- expository writing which starts with reading
- read critically to look for important ideas to write about
- one post can be a synthesis of many readings - find connections and relevance in connections.
- organization
- awareness of audience
- reflections on or experience with ideas
- find and id accurate and trustworthy sources of info
- correctness in posting
- post is draft as others can comment it. Test ideas and writing against audience.
Konrad Glogowski - "...students associate blogging with knowledge-building. They see writing in their blogs as transactional writing, as writing to be interacted with, to be returned to and reflected upon."
| Traditional Writing | Blogs | | writing stops | blogging continues | | writing is inside | blogging is outside | | writing is monologue | blogging is conversation | | writing is thesis | blogging is synthesis | | writing is done for the purpose of the classroom | blogging is an ongoing process |
Ken Smith - "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, not in order to make a connection or build social capital but because 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."
Scaffolding Blogging
| Elementary | Middle School | High School | | provide sites or have them find interesting sites of info | become "experts" in a topic | extended study and reflection on topic | | teach how to write about what they find useful in sites | compare information from different sources and trustworthyness of source | reflect and build on previous ideas, incorporate feedback, synthesis information | | recruite an audience (teachers, friends, parents | primary sources as audience | |
Blogging Across the Curriculum
Examples:
- Pre-Calc - Math teacher who uses his weblog as a starting point for introducing new concepts, share links and a forum for discussion.
- Bud's Blog Experiment - Teacher at an alternative high school. Reflects on his practice and learning.
- The Write Weblog - 5th grade Anne Davis has individual blogs for her students to chronicle their learning about writing.
- EduBlog Insights - 5th Grade teacher, Ann Davis, reflects on her and her students’ use of blogs
- Ways to Use Weblogs in Education
Affects on Student Learning
- Teach critical reading and writing skills
- Gain greater information management skills
- Become more media and information literate by clarifying choices make about content they write about
- Teaches them about how network functions - human and computer
- teaches skill of collaboraton
Blogging As Resources - Determining Validity and Trustworthiness
- Find out about the author - see "About" link (find informatin about name, background, title, authority on topic)
- Reputation among peers - blog tracking site Technorati.com, enter URL of flog and see who else links to it.
- Look at blogroll that blogger links to
Also see
1. Stephen's Web - Principles for Evaluating Websites
2. NECC Talking Points: Blogs as Resources
Reflections
Chapter 3: Weblogs: Get Started!
Notes
Getting Started with Your Own Blogging
- Start with reading other blogs - blog search tools Bloglines Search, Edublog Awards
- Leave feedback on others' blogs
- Start own blog small - create link to something interesting that you read along with the excerpt
- Next, start annotating the links you post with a couple of sentences to highlight what you feel is meaningful or important
- Progress to writing more in depth - drawing on your own personal experiences and reflections
*Remember that blogging should be a learning experience not a place to air greveinces
Blogging with Students
- Start small - use weblogs to post homework assignments and relevant class links - just communicate info to students and get them use to getting info in a different way
- Get students to read blogs - prepare a list of Weblogs and look at them with students. Good blogging starts with good reading.
- Have students respond to post on class blog. Post question each day. Require a certain number of responses. Just get use to responding and posting.
- Give them their own blog.
Blog Safety
Teacher's Role
- Connector, not just evaluator - comment back when appropriate, link to the best students posts and ideas in a class blog (see Anne Davis' Blog, The Write Weblog)
- Assessing blogs - count number of posts to reading post for form and content, student self-assessment - select best blog post and reflect on them
- Rubric for blog work - evaluate level of participation, the intellectual depth of the posts, the effectiveness of the writing, the level of reflection regarding the ideas expressed, and the willingness to contribute to and collaborae with the work of others.
Will - I would love to see this rubric.
Blog Software
Recommended Educator Bloggers
Reflections
Chapters 2 and 3 Weblogs
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