Blogging in Education

What is Blogging? Why use it in Education? How do we do it?

These are the questions I asked when myself and a colleague were looking at using 'Blogs' at our school.  Especially......Why use it?.  I hope this post may help you start this blogger journey or get a better feel for Blogging in Education.

What is Blogging?

Before this the question we need to ask is "What is a BLOG?".The word comes from the expression 'WEB LOG' and is a discussion or information entered as 'Posts'; this is published on the World Wide Web.

When you work on a blog and using all the skills when editing a blog you are BLOGGING. Blogs can be personal or corporate and organisational and come in many media forms: for example written, photos, sketches etc.

Most of us in education use a CMS (Content Management System) to help use create, edit, manage and publish our blogs on the World Web. If we didn't use a CMS we would have to deal with coding every page....and as educators we have no time to deal with that.

Below is a good link that looks at some of the best CMS for creating a Blog.

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/self-publishing/the-10-best-blogging-platforms/

Word Press is the most popular and has plenty of add ons and extras that make for some very high level presentations.

I have found in NZ Schools, due to many using Google and Google management systems like 'Teacher Dashboard', use Blogger. It is hosted and is very easy to use, perfect for schools.

No 1.  

No 2.  

No 3.  

LMS (Learning Management Systems) also provide the chance for students to 'Blog' as well.

Why use it in Education?

Blogger utilises many skills and is a very 21st Century resource to learning. Students need to learn the skills of blogging, the technical skills, communication skills and visual presentation skills.

Then it's Blogging for a reason that supports the learning experience happening in the class.

Before starting we did a lot of work and had plenty of discussion around 'What is Blogging, and being a digital citizen when contributing and being part of a huge community of online contributions.

There are also age recommendations. Wordpress says 13 years of age. To have a Google account you must be 13, that is why schools with Year 8 students and under really need a school domain. Recommendations for Google+ and Blogger is 13+ I am lead to believe. 

Why we implemented Blogging:

Our pedagogy was driven by a lot of Guy Claxton's work (which I have talked about in other posts) and one of the fundamental traits students should exercise to build learning power is REFLECTION. 

Reflection - covers the aspects of learning that are to do with strategic management and self-awareness. They include planning, self-evaluating (revising), looking for further application (distilling) and fluency in the languages of learning (meta learning).

Therefore, we were going to use Blogs as a way for students to reflect on their learning.

How do (did) we do it?

This needs to be answered with two separate questions:

1. How do we implement it into our class program?

2. How do we do implement it Technically into our class?

Implementing Blogs in our class program was just one part of our whole google vision or plan. it was one piece of the jigsaw. We spent plenty of time with both teachers and students working on Google Drive applications before we started with Blogs.

 The process or long term plan of getting our students effectively blogging.

1. We ran what we called a 'Discovery Week' where we had a context and students could personalise their learning around this. Communication was the key word specially looking at different types of media, messages, beliefs, opinions and how they are conveyed. Great place for them to start understanding the power of the word and the many ways available to us to have our voice, thoughts and interests heard.
2. We then introduced what Blogs are and what is 'Blogging, and how personnel blogs were a great way to write reflections (we had discussed already on what 'Reflection' looks, feels and sounds like earlier in the year). We brainstormed why Blogs are such an exciting and useful tool to use for reflecting on ones learning:
• Add photos
• Add Links
• Video reflections
• Diagrams
• Graphs
• Websites
• Youtube etc etc
• Sharing/feedback
3. We had Friday rotations over the Term. One of the rotations looked at the technical skills of setting up and personalising a blog (front loading).
4. Before long the students were away and laughing!

Its also important to note we also got the staff to reflect on their own learning/practice to use for their own Professional learning and Teacher Registration documentation.

Now this was the big one for me ........  How do we do it Technically? I will put this into a separate Post. Have fun and please comment or point readers to other places for information on blogging in education.

e-learning and the year ahead.

The first Term is near an end and there has been so much we ave achieved in regards to implementing e-learning into the school. These developments I will start to document more regularly.

There are 5 preview points that I want to bring to our attention in preparation to up and coming blog posts. 

1. The move away from the term ICT when discussing ICT. This term narrows peoples thinking in regards that it is only about getting tools into the class. There is a fundamental change in pedagogical practice due to the opportunities ICT brings and this is what we want the community to focus on when we talk ICT. The term we will now refer to with anything ICT is e-learning and this shift makes it more student centered and about teacher practice. 
2. What is elearning and it's place in the scheme of things?
3. Some crystal ball gazing (based on research) in regards to the huge influence this is to have, if not already on class practice, student achievement and how we are tracking. Also, what we endeavor to achieve at our school over the next few years.
4. Past, current and future developments
5. Curriculum development of e-learning and it's link in our curriculum strategic plan.

I believe that the term 'e-learning' is going to be a term that is said in the same breath when saying the words literacy and numeracy. There is a whole paradigm shift that is happening out there in our schools. 

So I look forward to bringing you my e-learning journey.

Welcome to my e-learning journey.

I have been to some rewarding conferences, workshops and school visits in regards to ICT, BYOD, Google, e-learning and the concept or 21st Century Education or Education 2.0. They were rewarding and reassured me that educationist we are on the right road, heading in the right direction.......however no one really can pinpoint the destination only that it will be a transformation in educational practice and that it will be exciting and something we should not fear or hold back from.

Here’s an interesting video from Enabling e-Learning: Leadership, where Dr David Parsons (Associate Professor, Massey University) talks about the term ‘e-learning’ and elaborates on defining this more like, ‘blended learning opportunities’ where e-learning tools are integrated in authentic ways.

 This blog will be a reflection journal me. To start this blog I thought that I needed to think about:

1. Where we want to be in our teaching pedagogy
2. What we need to get there
3. Why we need to 

I will add pages where I feel there is a real need for it to stay at the forefront of our thinking

Where to Start.......

Below is the SAMAR rubric to help teachers reflect on their teaching when implementing I.C.T into their classrooms. We have pushed this out to help staff understand where they sit. Here is a great webpage that backs this up so well - Samr as a framework to move forward.

We however need to dig a little more with this; this can wait till a later post......