A best practice
If you haven’t read Ewan’s post, Does blogging affect attainment? Yes!, and its comments, you need to! Take special note of Ewan’s reply to the comments.
Stephen’s right that we need more examples - although I read examples every week in my RSS feeds of where social software have improved the learner experience. I do have a question though, which might need to be a blog post: how can you link attainment to social software? I don’t think you can, because there are so many other factors at play, including the quality of the teacher.
Researchers tend to have a disrespect for anecdotal evidence yet, when it comes from experienced teachers, it’s worth far more than stats from someone who doesn’t really know where those students have come from.
Like Ewan, I frequently read examples in my RSS feeds and on my blog comments where social software has improved the learner experience. Note this most recent comment from Brandi.
I felt like that was the richest discourse we had ever had.
These kind of comments are heard over and over. I’ve got to get back to this and will but what I wanted to point out was a best practice that I observed as I followed the links on Ewan’s post. Progress Report is a blog that is written by a student who talks about her tutoring experiences. Her tutor is Chistine McIntosh, none other than Ewan’s mum! The comments Chris has made to the student on her blog are one of the best examples of “best practice” that I have seen. Check out all the great comments Chris has given “the teens”. What a great model for other edubloggers to see! Her blog, blethers, is a great read, too. Check it out!
August 14th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for the quote. I hope to have more evidence of best practice in blogging this year. Keep posting so I can stay motivated!
August 15th, 2006 at 2:24 am
The debate kind of moved on to a sour note as one or two other bloggers felt that this was proof of nothing at all. I ended up feeling that no matter what we do there will always be disapproval or a condascending word from someone, somewhere, to hold us back yet again. Feeling a little bit let down by the edublogosphere at the moment.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Don\’t let it get you down! Just keep sharing the good work your are promoting and your observations! You\’re probably absolutely right that there will always be disapproval or a condescending word from someone, somewhere, but we just have to move forward and keep the focus on the powerful learning we witness.
I long for the day when teacher observations will be considered powerful but that\’s another post that is brewing within. We teachers look for what works, try it out and if we see results we continue to build on the learning. Now we have a way to share this in ways we have never had before.
Keep up your most excellent work! You make a difference!
August 15th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Thanks for the kind words and the link - I noticed the latter from my stats!
August 17th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
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