Learning, Teaching and ICT

In a previous post, I wondered if I’d already put the following in place:

‘create a learner centred environment where participants have the freedom to build and maintain their own on-line presence’

…. then I thought that maybe I should look at the ‘bigger picture’, so I devised a questionnaire for the children to find out more about their thoughts about ‘owning’ an individual blog.

The questionnaire was distributed on Friday. The responses were all anonymous … but I did ask that they put ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ at the top of the page. The reason for the anonymity was to try to ensure that the children felt free to be honest – I asked for the ‘boy/girl’ thing because I just had a ‘gut feeling’ that the girls would have a more positive reaction to the use of the blogs (mainly based on the fact that they have been overheard discussing them more?)

There were 12 questions, and now that I’ve had a chance to look at the results more closely, one or two (or 3 or 4?) things ‘jump out’ immediately.

1. All pupils reprted that they had been quite excited/happy, or very excited/happy at the prospect of being given their own blog
2. Most pupils reported that they had lost some interest in using their individual blogs since setting them up in September (jumping down one place .. e.g. ’5′ went to ’4′, ’4′ went to ’3′)
3. There was no difference between the ‘boy/girl’ responses (even although I had anticipated this beforehand)
4. 3 pupils had indicated that their enthusiasm towards using individual blogs had actually risen ……. the three pupils were boys (this was a surprise!)
5. 2 pupils reported that their enthusiasm had dropped from ’5′ to ’1′ on the scale – one was a girl, one boy.
6. Almost every pupil wrote about their frustration when trying to manage adding codes to their blogs

A lot to digest ……. next post coming up

I’ve been re-visiting an essay written for a recent charter teacher ‘E-Learning’ module (ouch .. it hurt bringing back the horrible memories of actually puting it all together!). Thinking from that module led me to want to research the area further, so I’ve picked out just a few of the points made during the essay:

• A recent HMI Report on Improving Scottish Education includes a section on ‘ICT in Learning and Teaching’ (2007). In the introduction to that report, Graham Donaldson (HM Senior Chief Inspector of Education) states that :

Information and communications technology (ICT) has transformed the means by which we inform ourselves, remain up to date with world event and areas of personal interest, and further our learning. For many, books and journals are no longer the first or primary source of information or learning. We now regularly rely on images, video, animations and sound to acquire information and to learn. Increased and improved access to the internet has accelerated this phenomenon. We now acquire and access information in ways fundamentally different from the pre-ICT era. The findings outlined in this report confirm that Scotland is well placed to build on current strengths in order to realise the full potential of ICT to improve learning and achievement. The challenge is to make that happen.

• More locally, the Falkirk Council website states that :

Feedback from teachers shows that pupils are generally more eager to take part as they use ICT equipment to engage with learning.

• In The Paper, ‘A Digitally Driven Curriculum’ by Buckingham and McFarlane (2001-sorry I can’t find a direct link to this!) remind that today’s children know much more than the majority of adults and that schools need to engage with, and build upon the new kinds of informal learning that are developing around these media.
• Many pupils are using sites such as ‘My Space’, ‘Beebo’, and MSN. Maybe we need to monopolise on the online communication skills already being developed in the pupils’ lives outside of school.
• Blogs and wikis are not unlike the social network tools already being used …. can they be adapted to incorporate e-learning to occur successfully? A community of learners?
• Etienne Wenger who, along with Jean Lave, coined the term ‘Community of Practice’ . He believes that:

……..the school is not the privileged locus of learning. It is not a self-contained, closed world in which students acquire knowledge to be applied outside, but a part of a broader learning system. The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event.

• Bob Godwin-Jones of Virginia Commonwealth University writes in ‘Emerging Technologies‘ that blogs and wikis offer powerful opportunities for online collaboration for learners
• Steve O’Hear wrote in The Guardian that:

  ‘The web’s shift from a tool of reference to one of collaboration presents teachers with some rich opportunities for e-learning’

  He also writes that many believe that the web has entered a second phase where new services and software – collectively known as web 2.0 – are transforming the web from a predominantly “read only” medium to one where anyone can publish and share content and easily collaborate with others. He also explains that the “new” web is already having an impact in class, as teachers start exploring the potential of blogs, media-sharing services, and other social software, which, although not designed specifically for e-learning, can be used to empower students and create exciting new learning opportunities.

• The next point is to do with motivation. The report by the Scottish Parliament Education Committee emphasises the need to introduce pupil centred learning and to cater for multiple learning styles. The new web 2 tools certainly cater for a variety of learning styles.

OK! I think it was worth the pain! Is that what I want to look at here … the ‘motivation’ factor? Maybe that’s the crucial thing – I need to try to make sure that they don’t lose interest because they see the use of blogs as less motivating than their own social on-line experiences.

Oh dear … judging by the comments on my first post, at least 2 people are actually reading this blog now !! I’d better come up with something worthwhile – here’s kind of where I’m at with the research …. The podcast link is very ‘Pinky and Perky’ sounding, but it seems to work perfectly if you click on the word link next to it.

I have been working hard on coming up with a clear ‘research focus’. Although we have a class blog and the pupils all have their individual blogs and wikis, I want to ‘move on’ with this and investigate whether it’s possible to create an online learning community. I touched on this during an ‘E-Learning’ module last session.

I’ve discovered this blog. Konrad Glogowski’s thesis for his PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto focussed on the use of blogging communities in education. His work was with pupils a little older than mine ( I teach p7 – his pupils are 13 – 14). He talks about how to prepare an online space for learning and plan a learning community. I enjoyed listening to his podcast and I’m looking forward to seeing if his ideas can work successfully in my own situation.

He also refers a Ray Oldenburg’s research into classrooms as ‘Third Places’ ?

Possible question :

Can a learning community emerge naturally by providing a supported environment for online learning? (needs a lot of tidying up!)

Aims:

• create learner centred environment where participants have the freedom build and maintain their own on-line presence (I think this is already in place??)
• encourage expressive writing to move beyond just what is being taught in the classroom. Use scaffolding to allow freedom to interact and form social networks
• teacher’s role is to be part of the community, so I need to set up my own personal blog, too, and read others’ blogs – not evaluate them by focussing on ‘secretarial’ skills/errors
• give them easy access to the conversations (I use google reader – this can easily be set up by the pupils as well by having them copy and paste the OPML file??)

It’s early days, so I’ll probably change direction a few times. Today we did look at other blog posts, but before we could do that one boy came rushing over because he had received a comment on his blog from a boy in a school in Inverness. We couldn’t link back to his blog, but a google search solved the problem and we found the link. We knew the blog was about football, but it didn’t make too much sense because it was full of large empty gaps (Daily Motion is obviously banned in school!) The big question from some of the boys, though, was … ‘Can we have a football blog?’

There are other blogs on the Dingwall site, too ……. my answer was, ‘Well, OK – maybe. What about using our wikis ?’

Anyway, thanks for the comments so far …… Kim was right – the 2nd post was just as much hard work as the 1st! Maybe Kim and John could be my Critical Friends …….

My first post on my very own blog … wow!

It’s exactly one year since I set up our class blog and the pupils in the class all have their own individual blogs .

Anna‘s recent post prompted me to finally take the plunge and set up this blog. In her post, she refers to Courtney’s blog and her realisation that maybe there could be more to ‘blogging’ and that it doesn’t have to be ‘just for school stuff’.

The class blog is where I ‘showcase’ the work we’ve been doing at school, not somewhere I can post thoughts and reflections….. so here I am!

I’m now at the final hurdle of my Charter Teacher course, and this year I’m going to be involved in (for me) a large research study. I’ve decided to look at how blogs can be used in education. For the last year, we’ve been in touch with the AllStars in Sydney and the class teacher has her own blog. A post about commenting confidence made me aware that this is something that should be discussed in class.

We’re also going to look at what makes a good blog read … and what makes you actually want to leave a comment on a blog post. I learned by accident (during our recent ‘parent blogging’ workshop) that some of the pupils are already actively reading and commenting on a few other blogs when a group referred to this blog in their presentation.

Ok, first post over – I did it … and it hardly hurt at all