EduBlog Insights

Here’s the transcript from the Tapped In sesson with Bernie Dodge. The session was a follow-up to the one he did last week at NECC. At first, the discussion centered around WebQuests and Bernie pointed out that the real learning takes place away from the computer screen when kids argue with each other or explain their thoughts or teach each other what they read. Then the discussion turned to weblogs and he pointed out the NECC blog. He gave a few other samples like he did at NECC and then referred the entire group to Will’s site to “lead you to other teacher-bloggers.”

An interesting aside was when someone named JeffC said he had been trying to get Tim Lauer to use Tapped In for a while… and Tim had been trying to get him to blog!! I have to definitely come in on Tim’s side. While I find these Tapped In sessions interesting from time to time, blogs are where it’s at. (in my humble opinion!) 

Then info was given about wikis and the value of group ownership. This quote from Bernie resonates with me:

“I’ve been in this field for almost 30 years and one thing I’ve noticed is the tendency for people like us to pounce on new technologies just because they’re cool. I’m as guilty of that as the next guy, and I’ve already seen conference presentations in which teacher report trying a blog or wiki with kids and having mixed results at best. Why mixed? Because they didn’t really think through what the pedagogical purpose was for using those new tools.” Hear, hear!

Bernie went on to say that he thinks the solution is embedding blogs and wikis in the WebQuest format and this will make it likelier that actual learning will take place. He goes on to give other resources.

Hmmm. Lots to think about. I think we are awhile away from combining the three because each piece requires learning and reflection time. I think lots can be done with the separate tools as well as combining them. WebQuests have always been my favorite technology to teach, until weblogs took over.

Thinking, thinking, thinking…. Gosh, I wonder where we will be with all of this a year from now. Just thinking back over the past year amazes me… These tools are great but we’ve seen too many start and stop. When I was collecting my links for my presentation, I had a folder called Start&Stop for the many weblogs that started off with a bang and just fizzled for one reason or another. That folder kept growing. I’m with Bernie in that I hope lots of educators think before they pounce! I think we could all help there so that may be where I try to focus next year. Even more to think about……

Here’s the link he gave for a summary of the whole NECC presentation. I have to say that every session I have attended by Bernie Dodge is top notch. I’m glad he pushes himself each year to share his learning! We all profit from it…..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 at 2:16 pm and is filed under About Weblogs, Imported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.