I am passionate about learning.
My love affair with ICT is because I truly believe it really does enhance learning and allows students different learning styles to experience success, which hopefully will lead on to higher self esteem, empowerment and a love for learning knowing that they will succeed.
I have been thinking about how this relates to student blogs and blogging in the classroom. For some time now I have been looking for examples of blogging in the classroom, especially looking for those with real and full evidence of classroom learning. As I read student and class blogs and I have to say that in many cases I have difficulty identifying the learning involved. I always ask myself what is the learning here, and often I am stumped.
I believe class blogs should have real purpose and that the owner of the blog (usually the teacher) is quite clear as to the purpose. I can really only think of 2 purposes - 1. to celebrate learning and 2. to show process, progress and achievement of learning.
It is easy to find blogs in the first group - to celebrate learning. These are the blogs serve the purpose of a digital newsletter to that show what has been happening in the school or classroom during a particular period.
However, to find blogs that show process, progress and achievement of learning is a little more difficult. An adult is able to make links between posts and to develop an issue across several posts. I'm not saying that a child cannot do this, but in many cases the blogs deteriorate as the child is unable to focus on the clear purpose of the blog.
In order to help students focus on the learning, the blog should have a clear and defined purpose and once this purpose is no longer needed (the unit of work is finished, the learning has moved on to a different area) then the blog should also finish. An example would be a student who was investigating a topic for science fair or conducting a novel study. The blog will show the process of the investigation, the progress of the learner and the outcomes of the learning, but when that investigation finishes and reflection is complete then the blog sits idle.
It's all about purpose for writing - a very important deliberate act of teaching.
An entertaining but awfully true message set to music by John Rockwell
Thanks to Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for finding this one.
Great video by Jackie Halaw
3 steps for 21st century learning
Step 1 - teach creativity
Step 2 - teach skills of competition and co-operation
Step 3 - introduce collaboration with global peers
- it all sounds easy enough
'Kids these days are not taught the same as I was when I was at school'.
Thanks goodness for that!!
I have been watching the development of the Wikipedia entry on the VT shootings over the last week. Surely this is collaboration at it's best. It is more up to date and maybe more accurate than my local newspaper. I certainly read reports in Wikipedia that were not reported or reported incorrectly in the newspaper.
It makes me wonder about what is around the corner. What will be the state of journalism and the future of journalists when we can use our tv's in a collaborative wiki format?
It is now imperative that we teach our students how to critique, synthesise and analyse, and they must learn how to ask the hard questions.
