Learning, Teaching and ICT

 I mentioned in my previous post that I was surprised at the unexpected lengthy pieces of writing on the children’s Glow blogs and wikis. I’ve been using the same strategy that I adopted previously when I carried out a case study for my Chartered Teacher studies -  my dissertation  has the details, and I’ve had a closer look to see if I can come up with a formula (I’ve looked at some of the professional reading that helped to convey my thoughts at the time).  

Three ingredients jump out:

1. Content  - The freedom to choose

• Lafferty (2004): “To develop an online community requires a more student-centred approach with the tutor transforming into a facilitator from ’sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side.” 
•  Marsh (2007) proposed that by enabling children to create blogs based on their own interest, valuable learning opportunities might be developed
• Buckingham (2008) argues that through using the new media, young people are learning primarily by means of discovery, experimentation, and play, rather than by following external instructions and directions
• Stern (2007) also found that in the absence of audible or visual cues, young people often feel less inhibited, a sensation heightened by the experience of crafting messages in front of a computer screen, frequently in the privacy of their own room or other personal space. She claims that authors possess more control over the impressions they give than they do in offline spaces, since they make all the decisions about what to reveal, omit, embellish, or underplay. 
• Wenger states 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. 

 2. Comments -  Creating a sense of audience

• Stern (2007) argues that the main audience for their blogs was the authors themselves and that they were self reflecting as they tested out different versions of their current and possible identities. She also maintains, however, that they were continually testing out other audiences too, and that they were hungry for peer approval
• Davis and merchant (2006) believe that the perception of an actual or imagined audience prompts us to think about what we wish to show ……… an audience to whom one is presenting a particular narrative of the self

3. Sharing - New posts shared offline (in class), tends to influence other – sometimes typically reluctant - writers to add posts to their own blogs .

• Godwin-Jones (2003) explains that blogs and wikis offer powerful opportunities for online collaboration for learners. He states that the encouragement of peer to peer networking and buddy learning is central to a constructivist learning approach,
• Dissertation quote – Sharing the stories that the children wrote on their wikis provided ideal opportunities for formal learning to occur.  The stories were  written at home, usually in instalments. It is clear that the children often went home and improved parts of their stories after having heard them read aloud in class.  
• Owen et al, 2006  believe that there is significant potential for the development of new approaches to education. There are changes in our understanding of practices of creativity and innovation – from the idea of the isolated individual ‘genius’ to the concept of ‘communities of practice’, where reflection and feedback are important collaborative processes.

But there’s a fourth ingredient that came in to play during  the case study period and that was the importance of ‘Role Models’. At the time I was interested in gender differences and I noted that my class were very aware that some of the  The AllStars girl bloggers seemed very skilled writers. This encouraged the girls in my own class to improve the quality and quantity of their posts. The boys, on the other hand, had no such role models. The AllStars teacher Kim P contacted me at the time because she was aware of the same gender differences:

•  ”Girls seem more word oriented evidenced by their blogging stories, commentaries etc; whereas boys tend to prefer visual (and less text oriented) ways of expressing themselves. Maybe boys prefer to talk and show how to use an application, rather than using application for personal reasons.”

 This time around the gender balance has changed, though. It’s the boys who tend to write more on their blogs and wikis – and the Role Models are in our own class

• Andrew enjoys writing blog posts. His wiki story is looking fantastic, too.
• Kian started this story as a blog post and it’s now 6000 words long. He’s been continuing it on a Word document and it’s being saved on a memory stick until it’s finished (we’ve had a lot of discussions about copyright and I suspect he’s protecting the idea until it’s published). 
• Jack has been writing a hilarious story on his wiki. It shocked me at first, but I can’t wait to read more. What do you think? Jack’s Story

Now more reluctant writers are beginning to add lengthy posts. Four stand out for me:

• Sean wrote a great account of his first experience at a  football match. I don’t think he’d have been this inspired in class. It’s here 
• I’m impressed that Ryan was motivated to write this post in his own time.
• Dylan’s post made me smile and I want to know more about his knowledge of Falkirk Bus Routes.
• Lewis is very proud of his post about his holiday to Aviemore

 More to follow about the girls’ writing

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

Three primary 6 stage children from Nethermains visited Carronshore just before the Easter break. They wanted to know how to add a  Voki and Photopeach slideshow to their new eportfolios. The picture here shows them concentrating as their ‘peer mentors’ demonstrated how to use the websites and then embed the completed efforts into their eportfolio. The class teacher had brought them along to see this for themselves. I’d already visited their school with a small group of Carronshore children to introduce them to the concept of eportfolios.

On both occasions I was struck by the genuine feeling of willingness to share and to listen (I think this picture and the ones below illustrate this?)

 Here’s a picture taken when the Primary 6s from Carronshore explained the process involved when adding a voki to an eportfolios home page.  I can’t remember which one was was displayed on the screen, but I think it was Jaimey’s .

The Nethermains group only had an hour with us, so it was a bit of a rush to help them to create their voki character and upload a personalised message to the site before embedding it into their new eportfolio.

These eportfolios are very much a ‘work in progress’ and won’t come to much without a lot of input from all involved. I know that when I return to class in August, the school management team will give me the freedom to set up an eportfolio experiment with my own class …. and this secondment has given me the opportunity to play around with the potential of reaching out to others in the authority.

On reflection, setting up these eportfolios is the result of a journey that started with a class blog – which then led to me giving children in my class their own online spaces (and voices) .  

I hope I’ll be adding some more to ‘The Story of the Carronshore Blog’  soon …..

 I’ve been writing …. and tweeting …… and talking for a while now about ePortfolios!

 I initially set them up for a few primary 6 stage children at Carronshore. Since then these children have helped some Primary 6s at Nethermains to set up one, too. The Nethermains group and their teacher are coming along to Carronshore tomorrow so that they can find out how easy it is to embed a Voki and Photopeach slideshow into their ePortfolio.

 I’ve also been sharing the idea with the teachers from the Art Department at the local High School and I’ve helped a small group of 4th year students to begin working on their own ePortfolio.

 When I mention this to others in my own Local Authority – and to others outwith the Authority – the first question I’m typically asked is : “So … what is an ePortfolio?”

I find the answer to this question difficult. I think it’s because when I first heard about the idea, I was so attracted to it that I began reading any available relevant literature. This led me to writing a blog post about what I understood about the concept … but I can’t regurgitate all the bullet points in that that post every time someone asks me to explain in a few sentences what I mean by an ePortfolio, so I’ve tried to reduce them again to get the main points (as I see them) across. 

1. What is an ePortfolio?:

• It’s a collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s efforts, progress, or achievements 

2. What should they look like?

• There should be evidence of self-reflection

3. What’s the teacher’s role?

• They need to plan carefully to provide clearly defined criteria 
• Effective feedback should be given to students, to encourage them to observe their own learning journey

4. What about the pupils?

• Comments should go beyond “I think I did OK” or ” I think I have more to learn.”
• Pupils should be monitoring their own learning so that they can adjust what they do when they perceive they are not understanding.

The next question that I need to prepare for is: ” How do you manage something like that?”

Whilst on secondment, I’ve only been able to ’play around’ with the idea and I’m looking forward to trialling it ‘for real’ when I return to the classroom in August. I’ve been very encouraged, however, by the motivation shown by the children I’ve helped set one up for so far. Because I set up the wikispace eportfolios, I receive an email every time a change is made to one of them.

Once you create an account, you can create more spaces with their own unique URLs. You can then invite others to become members of that new space by sending them an email.

One way to keep control over the new wikispaces you create, is to invite users using the ‘gmail trick’ method by adding a ‘+ name’ the first part of the email address.

The instructions in the slideshow below show the steps involved and describe how the same method can be used to create multiple  accounts in a variety of online tools.