EduBlog Insights

Tessie, from the Literature Circles group poses this possibility…….

“As we have all learned, weblogs can be used with students in Language Arts for book clubs. However, I would do something different and use weblogs in Science and/or Social Studies. Students could be assigned to groups similar to us. The teacher assigns each group to a different  research topic (the topics chosen by the teacher cover a QCC objective and will be or have been taught). For example, World War I.

The departments for these weblogs would be more specific such as terms, important people, causes, effects, and culture. The students would be responsible for finding one fact to post to each of these departments. For example, if posting to “effect” the student would report one effect of World War I. After two months, students are expected to have posted in all departments and the research is complete. The groups must then present their weblog projects to the class. This allows your students to teach and learn from one another.” 

What a week! I’ve been trying since last Tuesday to sit down and write my thoughts but suffice it to say that there haven’t been too many moments to come up for air! Lots going on, not the least of which is our College of Education securing a PT3 grant that has lots of good things written into it. One part of it is to focus on the use of communication tools to enable real-time support for student teachers and novice teachers throughout the induction years. The Literature Circles instructor and I have been discussing how to implement the best use of weblogs to foster the type of communication that will be or real service to these beginning teachers. We will be following the same group that has been working on the Literature Circles edublogs. We’re at the brainstorming part of our thinking.

And this same group took a field trip to J. H. House this past Monday. It was fantastic. I’m writing that up on the Wrinkles site. My favorite part of the day was watching my Wrinkles group interview the Georgia State students. Weblogger to weblogger in a face-to-face interview! Can’t beat it!

A lot of really good data is coming out of the Literature Circles project. One segment that I wanted to share with you is some more of their thoughts on weblog possibilities….

Mary Beth leads with the following observations:

“As we continue to use this weblog system, I can’t help but think of all the possibile ways to utilize it in the classroom. I think that when students are working on an extensive science fair project, that this would be a great way to communicate with one another. Weblogs can also be used with interactive spelling homework assignments, social studies fact reporting and posting math questions. What if a teacher even had a mystery/ riddle she asked to solve each week. Wouldn’t it be fun to view other student’s answers and responses? Maybe the person who solved the problem could then be responsible for making the next post. It is truly a useful tool if used properly. Do you have any other suggestions on how to use Weblog?”

Talesha’s visit to J. H. House sparked a lot of thought:

“After visiting J.H. House Elementary today, I realized that the weblogs can be used in a variety of ways. At this elementary school, the students watch thirty minutes of CNN News daily. After watching the news, the students could make postings to their weblogs about various topics and they could have open discussions about them. I think this will be great. Just like they had to use Bloom’s Taxonomy for their Inspiration Webs, I believe that the students could use Bloom’s for this activity as well. While responding or posting to the site, the students would have to use higher level thinking. This activity could be started in the fourth grade. The students could type their responses and the teacher could post them. This is similar to how it is done at J.H. House. If this is successful, the teacher could find another class to discuss with. Therefore, not only would their class be posting and responding, but so would others from other schools or classrooms.”

Candice thinks the use of weblogs could be expanded into many subjects:

“Using weblogs for subjects other than language arts might be useful for students in posing questions using bloom’s taxonomy. Also, students might make it as a form of communication with the class on information relevant to their studies found on the internet. This could be the beginning step of a large circle of study buddies with the convenience of not having to leave home and meet.”

via <Blog News for Bloggers>

Trudy Schuett writes on writeronline about “Why Writers Hate Blogs and How We Can Allay Their Fears”.

Some excerpts:

When blogs began to enter the mainstream over the last year, I could see writers viewing them with suspicion, and in some cases, outright hostility. That’s understandable. The “personal journal” kinds of blogs were, and still are in many cases, not very well-written and of marginal interest to the general public. There are other kinds of blogs, though. To name a couple, both news blogs and business blogs are often professionally-written and have established, and growing, circulation in multiple thousands of readers.

Still, a lot of writers are looking at blogs as just another thing to waste time and money on, or even as something they’d rather not know about at all.

Hmmmmm. They may be missing out on a whole lot of content that could help their writing or at the very least get a feel for what the public is writing about. I like to think that all types of writing will emerge from blogging and we have yet to know what the full impact will be. A part of me balks at comparing this type with another. Can’t we co-exist and realize the importance of all these “emerging voices”?

The other day, I did an (extremely) unscientific survey of 300 AZ tech-oriented people, who are also marketers, pub-licists, or otherwise firmly established in other professions as well. I asked what they thought about blogs in general and got respon-ses ranging from …blogs are only good for marketing purposes if you want to have a folksy, personal approach…to the electronic equivalent of the blank stare.

Even though the number is growing, we still get blank stares from the majority of educators, too.

Diaries and Journals
Blogs have been around a lot longer than you think. Dave Winer introduced Radio Userland in 1997, and they went into more-common use around 1999, when Pitas launched the first free weblogging tool.

What happened then was the blogosphere was flooded with daily diaries and personal journals, which led to the common mis-perception that a blog is ¡∫by definition¡Ö one of those things. A blog is only a content delivery technology, nothing more. What the content consists of is entirely up to the individual or business that owns it. People tend to think a blog must be of a personal nature because so many of them are, but the number of blogs that aren¡Ùt personal, and used for business, news, teaching purposes or other applications is growing every day.

I don’t really agree that “A blog is only a content delivery technology, nothing more.” That definition seems limiting. Wonder how long it will take for educational blogs to be recognized? It seems like we’re still an afterthought or a sideline mention in most of the articles written.

The Changes are a-coming
It is now (finally!) true that anyone can publish on their own website. Free bloghosts, with user-friendly interfaces now allow anyone who can use a word processor and navigate the Internet to set up their own blog. Once you understand that a blog is not the same thing as a traditional, static, website, that you can expect the blog will reach out to the world for you, as you expected your website to do (and were disappointed to find it didn¡Ùt) you can begin to understand why it is that I am so excited about blogging.

There’s another window of opportunity here, for those who have that deep need for the public to see their work and read their books. I won¡Ùt kid you ¡Ì yes, it does take some work, but not nearly as much as a static website. You won¡Ùt need to pay anyone to set up anything for you, and you will have full control of what goes in the blog, and when. You can change your content or almost anything else every five minutes if you want to.

How about focusing on another window of opportunity that centers on education? The opportunity to open new doors of communication and sharing among educators all over. The opportunity that could be afforded to students to see how they could have a voice that could make a difference. It really is all about the “voices”.

NEX TIME: Blogging School is in Session!

I’d like to think that Part 2 would be about schools but I suspect that it may be a “how-to” on learning about setting up and having a blog. What do you think?

I really enjoy reading any and every article about blogs that I can get my hands on. Trudy Schuett’s article made me think about a lot of things. I thank her for that.

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