See video about a blog.
'And so to blogging', he says as my fingers curl up with the fear of revealing the inner-most workings of my brain to the world wide web. Fair enough, it is something I plod on with for means of assessment and published reflection, but what does it mean for a class, for my class? How will, or could, this impact them. How can it help?
As I drive to my first meeting with my new class, the school appears behind an imposing, run down block of flats, graffitied, with a number of boarded up windows. It seems as though my class will not have much experience with blogging It may sound stereotypical, but as it turns out, very few of the children have computer access at home. This goes against everything I seem to have heard so far regarding today's children and ICT.
Blogging, it seems, will not have entered the consciousness of many of these children. How do you then introduce blogging to the class, and how do you tackle the inevitable feedback from parents who cannot provide access to these blogs at home?
"In 1997 Jorn Barger coined the phrase Weblog to describe a site that combined links, commentaries, and personal thoughts and essays from the perspective of the Weblog author." (Blogs: A Disruptive Technology Coming of Age? 9/26/2002, By Phillip D. Long)
Blogging is a way of sharing news and information with a whole range of people. A class blog would be a fantastic way of sharing news from the class with parents, carers and other teachers, but how do I enable parents to see it without computer or internet access at home? The class can access the blog during their limited use of the ICT suite, yet the question still remains, to blog, or not to blog?
The media suggests that blogging is in my favour. I can share ideas, news, view responses all in one place, which does sound like a good idea. But can the children use this kind of medium effectively? They can type, yes, but they are so used to forming ideas on paper before even sitting at a computer that I feel they would struggle with using a blog as a learning tool., to begin with at least. I know that many children in the class own a games console of some shape or description, proving that they can adapt and learn in a new way, if only they practice it enough. Linking, very usefully to the reflections on Prensky and the Digital Natives Part II (see below), in which he discusses how a persons brain can change and adapt in different circumstances.
Therefore if I can begin to model how blogging works, and the ways in which it benefits its users, surely a class on 24 children can take it on board and will soon enough become effective bloggers themselves.
I am delighted when I hear that the school will be opening up its new ICT suite to parents and children at the end of each school day, turning the idea of a class blog into something that is possible and worthwhile.
The answer it seems is to blog. Lets see how it works in reality shall we?
References
'And so to blogging', he says as my fingers curl up with the fear of revealing the inner-most workings of my brain to the world wide web. Fair enough, it is something I plod on with for means of assessment and published reflection, but what does it mean for a class, for my class? How will, or could, this impact them. How can it help?
As I drive to my first meeting with my new class, the school appears behind an imposing, run down block of flats, graffitied, with a number of boarded up windows. It seems as though my class will not have much experience with blogging It may sound stereotypical, but as it turns out, very few of the children have computer access at home. This goes against everything I seem to have heard so far regarding today's children and ICT.
Blogging, it seems, will not have entered the consciousness of many of these children. How do you then introduce blogging to the class, and how do you tackle the inevitable feedback from parents who cannot provide access to these blogs at home?
"In 1997 Jorn Barger coined the phrase Weblog to describe a site that combined links, commentaries, and personal thoughts and essays from the perspective of the Weblog author." (Blogs: A Disruptive Technology Coming of Age? 9/26/2002, By Phillip D. Long)
Blogging is a way of sharing news and information with a whole range of people. A class blog would be a fantastic way of sharing news from the class with parents, carers and other teachers, but how do I enable parents to see it without computer or internet access at home? The class can access the blog during their limited use of the ICT suite, yet the question still remains, to blog, or not to blog?
The media suggests that blogging is in my favour. I can share ideas, news, view responses all in one place, which does sound like a good idea. But can the children use this kind of medium effectively? They can type, yes, but they are so used to forming ideas on paper before even sitting at a computer that I feel they would struggle with using a blog as a learning tool., to begin with at least. I know that many children in the class own a games console of some shape or description, proving that they can adapt and learn in a new way, if only they practice it enough. Linking, very usefully to the reflections on Prensky and the Digital Natives Part II (see below), in which he discusses how a persons brain can change and adapt in different circumstances.
Therefore if I can begin to model how blogging works, and the ways in which it benefits its users, surely a class on 24 children can take it on board and will soon enough become effective bloggers themselves.
I am delighted when I hear that the school will be opening up its new ICT suite to parents and children at the end of each school day, turning the idea of a class blog into something that is possible and worthwhile.
The answer it seems is to blog. Lets see how it works in reality shall we?
References
- Blogs: A Disruptive Technology Coming of Age? 9/26/2002, By Phillip D. Long at http://campustechnology.com/articles/39247_1/
- Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? By Marc Prensky at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf
1 comment:
Well written post. Thank you!
Hope your class blog goes well.
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