VSTE: Success with the Read/Write Web
This is my “online handout” for the
Links
- Will Richardson’s Links on Classroom Blogging
- John’s Blog
- Landmark Project
- Podcast Examples
- PM Wiki
- Apple’s Blog/Podcasting Server
- Mrs. Neylan’s Blog
- Dr. Morgan’s Blog
- Mrs. Long’s Blog
- Mrs. Labott’s Blog
- GLND Podcasting Page
Quotes
- First Grade Teacher: I have come to really enjoy keeping my blog updated daily. I think it helps the parents feel like they get to see a little of what is going on in their child’s day at school without actually being there. Parents have also told me that it has helped them talk to their children about what they have done in school instead of the typical “stuff”.
- High School Teacher: I am all excited about using the camera to show some concepts in the class now. The little movies on the blog are very nice. Just wish I could have stayed in the blogging a little longer to practice more. I have stopped cursing it a long time ago, cause the kids like it so much. Actually I have gotten more positive feedback from the parents on the blog than any other thing I do. Guess it turned out okay after all.
- Fourth Grade Teacher: I’ve really gotten in to blogging this year. And I am trying to come up with ways to make it more interactive for the kids and less of a virtual newsletter.
- Kindergarten Teacher: I love the weblog. It is so easy and so much fun!
- Marc Prensky: They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops, beamed messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked almost all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction.
- Tapscott & Williams: Millions of media buffs now use blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and personal broadcasting to add their voices to a vociferous stream of dialogue and debate called the “blogosphere.” Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a “wiki workplace.” Customers become “prosumers” by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product.
- On wikis, from an administrator: This is one of the greatest things we’ve done… it’s so easy… and everyone here can contribute to the agenda before the meeting starts. I just love this wiki!
Our Rationale
Activities that encourage participation through the creative process are the ones we ought to be trying when using
technology . Theread-write web (blogs, wikis, podcasts) offer a creative experience.
Our Theme
Our “success” is measured by teacher involvement in using these technologies: podcasting, blogging, and use of Wikis. It continues to develop as they include students in the use of these technologies to encourage higher-order skills, responsibility, ethics, 21st century skills, and a creative outlet.
February 27th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Our students won’t have the chance to use a wiki or do a podcast or participate in blogging unless, we encourage teachers… then push a few teachers, and finally require all teachers to get involved. I think the commentary in Teacher Magazine in December 2006 about our Blog requirements is a key discussion for all emerging technologies….
Published: December 1, 2006
Classroom Tech
Thou Shalt Blog
By Kevin Bushweller
If you want classroom technology to be used in imaginative and effective ways, you have to let teachers discover those methods on their own. You cannot force innovation.
That’s the mantra I’ve heard for years from educators, administrators, and even technology advocates. And as the author of a new blog on student motivation (I was encouraged, but not required, to launch it), I’m now in a position to appreciate firsthand the wisdom of that approach.
—Glynis Sweeney
But districts’ expectations of teachers have kept pace with changes in technology, and in some places, that bottom-up philosophy has been replaced by a more top-down approach. The mostly rural school district in Goochland County, Virginia, for one, now requires that all its teachers maintain classroom blogs to improve communication with students, parents, and colleagues.
I can understand a requirement that teachers use e-mail, given its ubiquity, but blogs? Taking a format that first gained popularity as a mode of personal expression and turning it into a district-dictated bulletin board seems antithetical to the Web’s free spirit.
John Hendron, the district’s instructional- and Web-technologies specialist, and the chief advocate of the blogging requirement, says making the blogs mandatory helped bring all educators up to a baseline of technological proficiency.
“It was a small challenge for some,” he acknowledges. “There will always be folks who don’t see [a certain type of technology] as an integral part of their job.” But if left unaddressed, Hendron adds, “the divide between the ones who see it as integral and the others grows wider.”
The blogs also streamline educators’ workloads, allowing them to bypass paperwork by posting class content, notices for parents, and other pertinent information online. Teacher Caroline Long says she uses her blog to update lessons for all her art classes at Goochland High School. She also posts student work on her blog so parents can view it. “I think the blogging requirement is a wonderful idea,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We cannot ignore technology and its uses in our school/lives/world.”
Still, I wonder if forcing teachers to blog is the right approach. If someone at my company had told me a year ago that I had to start a blog, I would have done it only because I had to. My heart wouldn’t have been in it, and my readers probably would have sensed that.
But because the idea for my blog grew up naturally from the grassroots, rather than from a newsroom edict that all writers and editors start blogging, I have enthusiastically moved into the blogosphere. I did this on my own terms, and I think it shows.
Then again, I’m a journalist, not an educator. I do not have to constantly update scores of people about assignments and other classroom matters. And if districts see practical reasons for requiring teachers to maintain blogs, then maybe that’s a natural next step.
What do you think?