Posts tagged blogs
The Importance of Student Reflection
0In an online classroom, there are two primary written reflection tools: blogs and forums.
A forum is ideal for collaborating in a group, and following prompted topics. For example, a history instructor teaching a unit on the U.S. Civil War may post weekly discussion questions like:
- Why do you think it took hundreds of years for slavery to become such a divisive issue?
- How did women contribute to the war efforts?
- How did the abolitionist movement begin?
From these questions, a very lively and thought-provoking discussion may occur among the students. Each shares their own input, responds to others, and contributes by drawing from their existing knowledge and experience. It’s an excellent activity for hybrid learning environments, and directed online classes.
Forums work well for self-directed classes, too, where students work at their own pace. While you can’t guarantee that every student will progress the same through the course, thoughtful forum-based questions can cause the student to continually think about the general topics at hand. It is not unusual for forum topics anywhere on the web to be rekindled one or two years after they go silent, often by an enthusiastic or curious contributor. The advantage of the forum is that it doesn’t have to be limited in time.
In this sense, the forum acts somewhat like a blog. Student A responding to a post that Student B made a year ago probably won’t hear anything back from the Student B, since Student B likely completed the course a long time ago. But Student A still gains valuable reflection from writing. Especially in a K-12 environment where safety policies may prohibit teachers from endorsing student blogging, a closed forum hosted on the LMS can be a welcome, viable alternative.
Dawley (2007) wrote, “The asynchronous nature of discussion forums provides opportunity for in-depth reflection over time. They also create a sense of community through discussion of course concepts, peer interaction and feedback, making instructor feedback visible to all students, and they also exemplify one of the highly touted benefits of online learning — anywhere, anyplace, anytime” (p. ix).
A blog is a reflection tool that doesn’t need strictly directed prompts. When students blog, they are writing to the world, and inviting comments from people all over, not just their classmates. Using blogs gives the students ownership of their content, and lets them engage a worldwide audience, not just their teachers and classmates. Plus, many students who are shy in face-to-face settings and never speak up in the classroom, finally find they have a voice and can assume a vibrant, charismatic persona they would never seem to be able to do in a face-to-face class session (Ferdig & Trammell, 2004).
References
Dawley, L. (2007). The Tools for Successful Online Teaching (1st ed.). IGI Global.
Ferdig, R. E., & Trammell, K. D. (2004, February). Content delivery in the ‘blogosphere.’ T.H.E. Journal, 31(7), 12-20.
New Features: Weber Blog Statistics and Improved Search
2The blogs have been a fantastic tool for Weber School District. I didn’t expect such rapid growth and usage of them since we launched them in August 2007. If you’re a district employee and haven’t used your blog yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s a great way to share your important thoughts, keep in touch with staff, parents, and students, and receive feedback from them. Just go to this page and click the “Login to Your Blog!” button. Enter your Novell username and password and your blog will be automatically created. We are also offering E-volve training on how to use the blogs, so if you need further assistance, get your school administrator to enroll you in these specialized classes.
As with all Weber School District technologies, please use the blogs responsibly and keep their educational purpose in mind. We’re not concerned if you post some personal pictures of yourself and maybe even your family, so the students and parents can get to know you better. However, don’t use them to post religious content, or sell products for a business, and make sure you keep your language clean. Remember, elementary students have access to and may be reading your blog! If you wish to post class pictures or videos of students on your blog, PLEASE get parental waivers first and work with your school administration on proper procedures to follow through with this. Make sure you don’t at any time post both a student’s photo and name together. If you post a student’s photo, do not include a name. If you post a student’s name, do not include a photo. One or the other, not both.
On to the cool new features. Blog statistics are available for anyone to see! Our employees can see how their blogs rank compared to others. I hope this encourages more active blogging, and well-thought-out content on the posts. I wish to see the blogs transition from being “a place to upload my assignments” to “a place to have conversations with parents, staff, and students.” All statistics are updated daily. Here’s how they work:
Visitors per Day
This is the average number of daily visitors each blog receives, from data collected over the past 30 days. This is kind of a tricky thing to track, and due to the nature of standard web logging techniques, will only be about 98% accurate at best. This tracks unique IP addresses for a given day. So if you have a user who visits your blog from the same computer multiple times during the day, it will only be counted once. If another user hops on to that same computer and visits your blog that day, it will not be counted. If a single user uses two different computers to visit your blog during the day, it will be counted twice. This particular statistic does not omit bots that may come across your site, so all your visitors may not be human (usually just 2 or 3 of your daily visitors will be bots).
Posts per Month
This is the average number of posts each user makes a month, from data collected over the past 90 days. Keep in mind that all posts you make appear on the Latest Blog Posts page, so write relevant content that users will want to read.
Inside Comments
One of the most powerful features of a blog is the ability to leave comments on it. A great way to respond to feedback and encourage discussion is by responding to the people who leave comments on your own blog, and this statistic tracks that. It counts the total number of comments you’ve left on your own blog. The way this is tracked is by the email address which is entered when you leave a comment. Make sure you use your district email, so the blog statistics can recognize you. Also, this doesn’t count unapproved comments. Always make sure you check and approve appropriate comments that are left on your blog, if you are moderating them.
Outside Comments
These are the total number of comments that employees have left on others’ blogs inside the district. Blog-centered conversations would not be possible if it weren’t for people leaving comments on others’ blogs. For now, this statistic only counts employees (not yet students or parents); the reason being that we’re trying to encourage employees across the district to network with each other a little more, and the blogs are a good starting point for this. Again, make sure you use your district email when commenting, so the blog statistics can recognize you. This statistic also doesn’t count unapproved comments.
New Blog Search
Lastly, the Blog Search feature now does more than just return matching names. You can enter any keywords and it will scan the blog posts themselves and return a list of the most relevant results.
Why Teachers Should Encourage Students to Blog
3For: Teachers
Type: Technology Ideas for the Classroom
Many teachers don’t realize the benefits that can come from student blogging. These teachers may even have blogs themselves, use them in creative ways, such as communicating with other staff members and parents, delivering interactive content for students, and so on. So why wouldn’t we want to extend these same benefits to students?
Here are a few reasons why your students should blog:
1. Paperless Classrooms!
If for no other reason, set up blogs for your students to get rid of some of your overflowing file folders and save a few trees. It seems rather silly to make students go home, type up an assignment in a word processor, then print out that report and hand it in. The report is already in digital form, so why are we moving a step backward and making them print this out? Post that assignment on a blog! Then rather than shuffling through papers later, you can just view their assignment on their web site. With RSS readers, it becomes a fairly simple process to aggregate all the student’s blogs and instantly receive the latest student posts without having to go hunt for them.-
2. Students Enjoy Having Their Own Space
77% of students age 16 to 18 have a profile on a social networking site, such as Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, or Xanga. One reason they are popular is because students have the ability to create their own space on the web, and customize it how they want. They can upload their own photos and videos to share with others, communicate with others, and post updates about their own lives.
3. Interacting with the World
You could actually just have your students email their assignments to you, and achieve a paperless classroom this way. But then they’d be missing out on an important part of blogging: the global community.
Imagine you are the recipient of an award, but there are only two people there to see you win it: you and the award-giver. How much more exhilarating would it be to have a large audience watching and cheering you on? So why is our system:
- Teacher gives assignment.
- Student goes home, completes assignment.
- Student hands assignment to teacher.
- Teacher grades assignment.
- Teacher gives assignment back to student.
How many people have seen the student’s assignment? Exactly two, the teacher and student. How rewarding is it for a student to know that the only person who will ever see the project they worked so hard on is their teacher?
Now consider the possible wider level of interaction using a student blog:
- Teacher gives assignment on the Civil War.
- Student posts assignment on the blog.
- Classmates leave comments on the assignment, ask questions, offer insights, and link to their assignments for cross-commenting.
- Parents see and proudly enjoy the work their kids have done.
- Students from 500 miles away find the assignment, post encouraging remarks, and share a similar project they did in class.
- Teacher leaves comments on the assignment.
- Teachers from other schools across the country find the assignment, leave insightful comments, and perhaps a helpful video that complements the assignment.
- Friends of the student find the assignment, and post their own remarks.
- Civil War history buffs find the assignment, share links to supplemental material, and mention an upcoming Civil War exhibit that will be showcased near the student’s hometown.
- A museum curator finds the assignments, and posts a link to the class blog on her own web site, driving more visitors to the student’s blog.
Count the number of readers the student’s assignment has passed on to now, noting the plurals. This one student now may have an audience of hundreds. The student’s blog has stimulated an entire topical discussion. They have started a conversation with an online community, and a larger audience. Better rewards.
Students LOVE getting feedback from their peers. A huge chunk of their lives revolves around this social interaction, and blogs can encourage this. When you encourage students to blog, you are giving them a voice, and encouraging them to share that voice with the world. It’s a great way to motivate them to finish their homework! So break down the walls of the classroom and connect them to like-minded individuals around the world.
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