EduBlog Insights

The entire group of edubloggers are winners, both on and off the list. We keep seeing more and more exceptional educational blogs every day. We are getting our voices and the voices of our students heard! I truly believe these voices will help bring about needed changes in our educational system. So my hope is that the list of edubloggers keeps growing as it has grown this year. Wow! Just think about those possibilities just a multiplying! It makes me soar!

I wrote that last year at the Edublog Awards 2005. What a year we have had since! I feel the same way this year - just more so! I find more good edublogs daily! I often wonder what the true number really is.

Now it was fantastic to celebrate this year’s Edublog Awards 2006. I really enjoyed the Annual Edublog Awards event at EdTechTalk this morning. Here are the winners! Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier were great hosts. Josie Fraser, as always, presented the winners in her own special delightful way. Be sure to check out Dave’s Top 10 news events of the edublog year.

Congratulations to all the winners! I have to say it once again- the entire group of worldwide edubloggers are winners - both on and off the list! I can’t wait to see what happens next year!

Recently I presented a workshop session on blogging at the GaETC conference. I had a Skype call with Darren Kuropatwa. I wanted him to share the positive aspects of blogging that he had experienced with his class. Some amazing things came out of that call. First, Darren shared how his students summarize what they are learning through the scribe posts on the class blog. He explains it so well on the podcast. He uses a paradigm he borrowed from med school - watch it, do it, teach it. His students are writng the textbook for the class. The examples he shared were fantastic. He shared how he uses the chat box so his students have homework help 24-7. The students use delicious to create a resource file to help each class member. Then the wiki solutions manual is the space where students solve, annotate, and correct each others’ work. Listen to the podcast to get his explanations. What is so impressive to me is that Darren has truly put this in the hands of his students. They have ownership of their learning. They work as a team. It is the best use of blogging that I’ve seen in a classroom.

Then another story developed as we were skyping. I commented on the first time that I had seen Darren’s blog and how it blew me away. I am not and have never been a good math student but as I was reading his blog I got so excited because it made me feel that I could still learn these math concepts that had alluded me in the past. See my post here: A Math Weblog to Note. I can still remember that day and how I explored his blog in depth. It was exciting. Now the neat thing here is I heard the other side of that story, as did my workshop participants. Darren recalled how how intense the feeling was for him hearing how someone a half a continent away had been impacted by the work he was doing. Now here’s the best part of the story. Darren said his first reaction was “My students need to feel this.” His first thoughts were how to give that to his students. A true teacher! Now that’s a feeling that many of us have had and have seen firsthand when students blog. I’ve had many moments to share with students when they were just blown away that someone thought something they wrote was good or someone added to the conversation about something they were blogging about in class. Darren said in the skype call that this was what blogging is all about, that motivation from an authentic audience. I thought it would be good to share this piece because it could be used to share with administrators and others to get an idea of what blogging can be all about. Teachers need to set the stage and guide it. No one does that better than Darren.
I’ve thought about it a lot since the workshop and I’ve also thought about how Darren has captured the essence of blogging and then gone that extra step to share it all with others. Then each year he has built on the pedagogy and shaped and reshaped his learning and teaching. Darren is not just a math teacher. He is an incredible writing teacher as well. He knows how to use writing, blogging, and the Internet to learn. He guides his class and steps aside to let them own it. Just check out Living in Whoville and you’ll see. It gives me chills.This digital story is a class project. You can see links to some of the other projects that tell the story of what his kids have accomplished. It is awesome.
Now listen to the podcast, DarrenAnne.mp3, and listen to the two sides of the story. Just think what could lie ahead for our students! It is inspiring. He is really empowering the student in a way that totally focuses on the pedagogy - no small task. Plus the work is in the hands of the students. They own it! It is a model to follow. I can’t wait to cast my vote this year in the EduBlog Awards 2006.

The Edublog Awards 2006 nominations are in! Take a look!  Voting closes midnight GMT Saturday 16 December 2006. It is exciting to go through the list and while I know many on the list there are always many that I don’t know. This is so amazing to me because I really try to follow all the new educational blogs. Hmmmm, wonder what else is out there that I’m missing? That’s why it’s so important that we blog to each other about the good work going on in many places. The best part of this truly is the  promotion of excellence in the educational use of social software. I wish the best to all the nominees!  I say to all edubloggers worldwide keep up the great work you  are doing  in your quest to make a difference with your students and to promote needed changes in our educational system. My hat is off to each and every one of you!

I just finished the first round with students where I used podcasts to help them proofread their writing on their blogs. I wanted to share the process.

The students wrote stories about photographs from Scotland. These photographs were the ones that Chris so kindly let me use. They were transferred from her Flickr pictures to a wiki. The students wrote their first draft and inserted the pictures. Their drafts needed lots of work. I mean lots of work. Once I get over my initial dismay at their lack of writing skills (which I am firmly convinced would be oh so much better if we gave them time to write - another story for another day), I just roll up my sleeves and decide the best place to start.

Teaching students proofreading is hard work or I guess I should say getting students to apply that learning is hard work. Elementary students like to zip through tasks and their idea of proofing is a quick glance. Many times though they just run out of time. The instructions were to have two windows open. They opened the podcast of their story on the class blog. They used their individual blogs to follow along. The first attempt had them here, there and everywhere. Some were mesmerized by the screen designs appearing on their podcast. Some did not even have their story up on the screen and some were off commenting. It’s hard to wait to answer those good comments. OK, time to regroup. I got everybody zeroed in on the task again. I suggested that they follow along with their finger lightly on the screen as they were listening. That helped. This time they got it but it requires really paying attention. This is a skill they have to practice. We suggested they listen again. They were willing. Then I worked one on one with a few and had them read it. Still, just like we do, they would read it as they had it in their mind, not on the blog. We persevered with this training. They were surprised at the errors.I can’t say they were wild about it at the time but they were fascinated with the podcasts and when I closed with letting the students each give “proofreading pointers” on the audio recorder they were tuned in. Here’s a sample. JhonnyProofreadingPointer.mp3 This was fun! Then they thought about it this week and some even brought in papers so they could edit their original papers. They were much better! In our discussion in class about the process I felt that they were beginning to get an understanding of how helpful this was.

I’ve never felt too successful at getting kids to proofread but this time I saw some lights going on. (Now if those lights will just stay lit for them to do that process by themselves One thing that was apparent was that they were quite proud of their revisions. This is not something I would do with every piece but I think from time to time it will be a good tool to use. I plan to let them record for each other. It will be interesting to see how they do and how they like that. When they were doing their editing they used ideas and suggestions from people who had commented and given them pointers. I’m also finding it very interesting observing how they respond to the pointers. I also observed in class today many of them silently reading their revisions when they had completed it. Hooray! Then they began to blog some thank-you’s to their commenters. Our time ran out so that will be the first order of business next week.

I really love blogging with kids. They are my best teachers!

Liz Ditz recently left a comment on my post about testing. A little humor sometimes goes a long way to help me put frustrations at bay, at least momentarily. If you are not reading her blog, I Speak of Dreams, you’re missing out. Her comment needs to be enjoyed by others so in case you missed it:

Did you see NCLB–The Football Version?

Author Unknown

l. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don’t like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th games.

5. This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals.

If no child gets ahead, then no child will be left behind.

Learning Technology is a publication of IEEE Computer Society. They published a special issue on “Blogging as an Educational Technology” My article “Thinking & Writing Wrinkles Bloggers” was accepted.

Her paper shares a project where fifth grade elementary school students who used blogs to communicate with other educational bloggers. In her paper she looks at how blogs were used in cooperative learning and how they increased social, academic, and technological participation.

Here’s the overview of the other articles published. It looks like some good reading so I’m off to do just that. It is so good to see more and more published work on blogging in education.