Learning, Teaching and ICT

I’ve been going on a lot about how the class are using their Glow Blogs. For example, at the  TeachMeet at this years Scottish Learning Festival my presentation focussed on them. I spoke about them again at the more recent Falkirk TeachMeet …. and I’m constantly mentioning them on twitter (the examples below are copied and pasted from my twitter account and were added there as I discovered them appearing on the top of the list of new Falkirk posts

• Love Kian’s blog post – anyone got time to leave comment? https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/cpskiang/2010/09/25/my-car-run-in-the-dark/
• Friday fun working on group stories. Only time to upload one 2 Glow blog before bell. youtube quick so used it! http://tinyurl.com/359ev3t
• Class are really getting the message about copyright. Read Mason’s new post http://tinyurl.com/34z96e8
• Know I keep going on about it – but I’m impressed way class using Glow Blogs. New post just published by Anna http://tinyurl.com/38hf7a2
• Cameron’s tried hard 2 put info in own words (been talking about Plagiarism in class) Bet he’d love encouragement http://tinyurl.com/39sq44n
•    Had rubbish day at school. So much went wrong. At least ICT was fun – can’t take credit for Art or Gym, tho http://tinyurl.com/33twlfq
• Just noticed Andrew’s worked out how 2 tag posts – only mentioned this in passing last! wk https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/cpsandrewf/
• New post from J http://tinyurl.com/39pq5gd Maybe it’s because we read out A’s post today? http://tinyurl.com/2vfrq2q Something’s working…
• @irvingm Thanks Class keep blogging (from home) No idea if it will continue Another new post https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/cpsannaf/
• New post from Elisha. Great she has confidence to write so much on blog. sure she’d love encouragng comments http://tinyurl.com/3aehxxl
• Glow blogs are surprising me – Sean would never write this much in class. Honestly didn’t expect this from him http://tinyurl.com/35motyd
• Boys don’t like to write? Maybe they just need an audience https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/cpsandrewf/2010/09/25/max-in-the-middle/

It’s also great to see that some children who don’t normally enjoy writing in class are beginning to voluntarily write posts on their blogs from home. After receiving some encouraging comments (thanks to my ‘twitter’ colleagues!), they’re writing follow-up posts, too. The children love to have their posts read out in class and often the first thing they say in class is, “I’ve written a new post. Can we read it out to everyone?”

And there was the incidence when Lewis very quietly asked me to read out his latest blog post. No-one in class knew about his gran, and I think he was glad that he was able to mention it via his blog post (he whispered that his mum had said it was ok to share it)

“I have a gran called Ann and she was in strathcarron hospice with cancer and she had allot of medicine. She was in strathcarron hospice for four weeks but at the weekend she died on Saturday night.  Her funeral is on Thursday and I was sad when she died and I am going to miss her very much.”

I was a bit worried when I began using Glow blogs, and before I introduced them to the class I wrote a Wish List post. One of my main concerns was that the children would be frustrated that they couldn’t easily embed slideshows, etc. in to their posts. I think that it does irritate them a bit, but what has happened is that they’ve had to concentrate on the written word. This has led to some unexpected lengthy pieces of written work that we’ve been able to share in class (and subtly learn from?).

 Recently, though, there has been a turn of events. This came about as a result of writing letters to the local Bookbinders Tom Valentine’s in Larbert. The class wondered if they could be shown what’s involved in turning a story they’d written into an actual book. There was great excitement on Thursday when a reply came from the Bookbinders saying that they would visit us and look at some of our stories. The reply also included the children’s letters in a beautiful leather covered book with gold lettering (it’s at school but I’ll take a picture soon and include it here).  Valentines are going to bring along some of the equipment used when binding books before they’re published. 

The class have already begun planning the stories they want  (hope!) to be published. Some want to write individual stories and others want to work in a small group - but what concerns them is how they’ll access stories at home that have been begun in class .. and vice versa. We discussed  using Microsoft Word and saving the stories on to memory sticks - but none of the children have one. Another option is to write on their Glow blogs and save the entries as a Draft post.

It was at that point that I had the idea of setting  up a wiki for each of them. They were set up in a hurry on Friday – I’ve used them previously with classes so it didn’t take long! I only had a few minutes to ’sell’ the advantages of having a wiki and to describe how to access it and use the various features.

I’ve noticed that Andrew has already added pages to his wiki. It’s looking great http://cpsandrewf.wikispaces.com/

What’s even more great is that he seems to have sussed out how he’ll use Glow blogs and his new wiki (another step towards an ePortfolio?)

Hi everyone! Welcome to my wikispace. I am going to use this for a lot of things. The main reasons are to have fun and to write my stories on. To view the stories I am going to write you will have to go on my stories page. I have a glow blog which is awesome so I think this will be awesome! I am looking forward to writing on this. I don’t really know what to write, so see you! Remember to look at all my pages daily!

I’m looking forward to sharing how he’s used his wiki in class tomorrow

There has been a bit of a discussion on here recently about the setting up of pupil Glow Blogs and I was a bit surprised to read this comment from John (I’ve linked to his twitter profile, as his blog http://johnjohnston.info/blog seems to be ‘broken’ at the moment?).

John wrote:

As far as I know pupils can’t set up public facing blogs. So they can only set up private or glow only blogs.
” Public (Note: Can only be selected by Staff, Site Collection Administrator and Administrator.)”
A workaround is to get the children to create blogs (They need to have been given permission by ASM), and send you the url to their my glow. Then logged in as SCA you manage the blog and set to public. You could set up a links webpart in a class glow group where the children could add their urls. Using SCA account is necessary as your account can’t access children’s my glow, unless SCA gives permission. Children can’t manage members of own glow.

This is just a very qiuick post to show the steps I took to set up the pupil blogs for my own class. I was logged in as them, but there’s no reason why children can’t do this themselves. They were able to add me (class teacher, I’m not the SCA or ASM) to their ‘My Glow’. I’m not sure why John thinks this isn’t an option for them …maybe it’s the way the Glow Blogs have been set up in our Authority that makes this possible here?

Anyway, here’s how I did it (as a pupil).

 At the beginning of this school session, I set up Glow Blogs for my class and wondered if they could form part of an ePortfolio. Our Glow Blogs have been up and running for less than four weeks, so they’re a wee bit away from being ePortfolios yet

I talked a bit about them during  TeachMeet at this years Scottish Learning Festival last night, and today I’ve been pondering how the (9/10 year old) children have been ‘settling in’ and getting to know their new online spaces. Tonight I took a quick whirlwind tour of the blogs so that I could get some sort of overview of what’s happened so far.

 These are just some of the significant learning experiences to date:

Establishing the Purpose (a couple of first posts – setting the scene for their blogs?)

• Hi people of earth. This is my first ever blog entry. I am going to use this blog to tell you all about what I do inside and out of school. Please comment!!!
• Hello mighty world ( that’s full of random people watching me on my blog ). Watch and see what happen’s because im full of good ideas.

Learning about Copyright (a difficult concept, but lots of class discussion about it seems to have paid off)

• I got all this information out my book Horrible Histories The Savage Stone Age but put it in my own words.
• My friend Kian sits beside me at class.I am going to tell you some of his ideas.WARNING:The fowlowing section of writing is COPYRIGHT as it is Kians.
• Earlier today Anna+Robyn used the DJ Earworm song Like OMG Baby. So i just went to DJ earworms site and lokked and looked and looked but nothing so i commented and asked if we could use it with all music credit going to him but he need’s to E-mail back so im waiting!!!

Becoming Familiar with Blog Layout (wondering what happened to the post he’d written just previously?)

• My first AR reading book was by David Orme …. Look up to see the 2nd book I read.And by up I mean on the compuuter not the roof or sky!

Awareness of Audience (asking for comments – or just ‘talking’ to a perceived audience)

• So far I have had LOADS of comments on my blog! I would like to thank all the people who left comments. If you see a post and you think of something that describes it or something to improve it don’t hesitate to comment
• I dont have alot of comments so plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz plz leave comments
• Okay we did max in the middle today but i cant tell you about it because it’s Alisdairs turn on the computer so ill update you laterz!!! BTW Alisdair is my little brother

Blog as Vehicle for Communicating  Difficult Thoughts (Lewis doesn’t usually share information in class and mentioned quietly that he wanted this post to be shared with his peers)

• I have a gran called Ann and she was in strathcarron hospice with cancer and she had alot of medicine. She was in strathcarron hospice for four weeks but at the weekend she died on saturday night. Her funeral is on thursday and I was sad when she died and I am going to miss her very much.

I’ve included my Prezi presentation from last night here …. thanks to Fearghal for his help with the setting up (I nearly mucked up!). Thanks, too, to all the other ‘behind the scenes’ people who made it …. despite my stressful state …the best TeachMeet experience for me so far. I came away with loads of ideas to investigate further.

It’s  been couple of weeks since I issued the class with their Glow Blog  usenames and passwords (actually it was a phased programme, so some have only had theirs for a week). In that short space of time there has been a lot of activity. I’ve  been surprised by the way some of the boys have taken to their blogs. Andrew and Kian have written some great posts – and Jack’s ‘Hello Mighty World’ post really made me smile

The reason that I’m surprised at the way that the boys in the class have taken to the blogs, is because my research from a couple of years ago pointed to the fact that the girls were much more reflective and the boys preferred to upload pics, etc. This is not the case with this particular class. The girls are the ones who are keen to express themselves via slideshows, etc. The dissertation was a Case Study, though, and only looked at my (then) P7 class. Although at the time, KimP  commented that she had found a similar trend with her own class

“…….The Vokis and Animotos are visual – like the prevalence of pictures on the boys blogs. I’ve noticed that the boys in my class also are really good at making topic related vokis and animotos.
In my experience, girls use these applications in a different way – more about how they see themselves, or want to see themselves; as opposed to the boys filling these applications with topic specific pictures and content.

What hasn’t changed, though, is the delight when comments are received. ‘Audience’ is clearly a very important part of their blogging. We’ve had to be careful to log out before leaving comments on posts, however, because surnames automatically appear (I could solve this by changing each of their Glow profile pages, but I just don’t have the time!)

Keeping track of the blogs is relatively easy as I use Google Reader, but I’ve noticed that if you visit the Local Authority Glow blog, then the most recently active blogs move to the top of the list.

Up until now, the class have been ‘getting to know’ their online spaces and just learning about how they work. Last week, I introduced them to linking to each others’ blogs or to any online webpage, and next I plan to explain the benefit of tagging their posts. I plan to let them grow organically as, if they’re going to withstand the test of time (and to eventually become part of an ePortfolio), the children need to feel ownership of the spaces. I was surprised, therefore, when they came up with the suggestion of using them as a learning log for their class project. Andrew blogged about this – and has already had feedback from his new PLN

“Hi again! Today at school Mrs V gave us all a Learning Log. A learning log is when you get given something to find out about. It can be anything from finding out about food to finding out about magnetism. Most of the time you get a week to do it. We were lucky though because you normally have  to do it in a big jotter but we got to do ours on our blogs! Since our topic is on Australia my learning log is about Sydney! If any of the AllStars check out my blog could you please leave comments telling me a bit about Sydney! So heres my learning log…”

But I think that the biggest advantage of having given the children their own blogs, is the difference it has already made to the classroom climate … and the insight I’ve had to the children’s interests and personalities after having only been with them for such a short time. More on this to follow ….