At the end of last year, I created a podcast in an attempt to represent what I had learned during the year as well as state my goals for the future. Last year’s annual reflection of professional learning focused on technology, how I had used it, and what I had learned through some of the struggles and successes. I also listed some of the things I would like to try in the future, and one of them was blogging. The purpose of this blog post is to talk about the reasons I chose to create a class blog, what aspects of my blog worked, what parts did not, and what I learned about blogging, my teaching, my students and their families, and myself.
A blog, which is a contraction of the term “web log”, is an online site where a person can record their thoughts and ideas, and where people can go to read about the thoughts and ideas of others. Blogs can host pictures, video, audio and a variety of other media files. Below is a slide show I created in an attempt to explain what a blog is and why people blog.
Blogs can be personalized to suit the needs, interests and purposes of each author. Blogs are being used by journalists, athletes, business people, students and teachers, to name just a few. A blog differs from a typical website in that a blog is similar to a journal, where each blog post is time stamped, and blog readers can comment on individual posts. As you can see in the picture below, after posting what we covered in math class on May 19th, a student posted a question, which was visible to anyone who visited the blog, and I was able to answer.
Students can subscribe to posts and even email or forward posts on to other readers.
Blog postings are also archived, so readers can easily find old postings.
The idea for creating a classroom blog came after attending a conference by Dr. Tim Tyson, who spoke about integrating technology into the classroom in meaningful and significant ways, and using technology to increase transparency in the classroom. As I write this in the last month of the school year, I am reminded of past Junes where I felt mixed emotions of pride, guilt, fear and excitement. I am proud of my students who work hard, and achieve their goals or show progress, and I feel guilty about students who do not. I wonder if I did enough to help them, if I was clear with my expectations, if I was in contact with their families enough, did their families know what was happening in our classroom, or did their families even know who I was? I was afraid of what lay ahead for some of my students and I was afraid of backlash from students, parents, and administration. Mainly I feared I was doing a bad job. I learned a lot from Dr. Tyson during his presentation, and his message of transparency resonated particularly strongly with me, but it was the examples of his own teachers’ blogs that got me excited about the possibilities blogging could present for my students and me.
The first thing I did after the conference was visit mabryonline.org, the website of the school where Dr. Tyson was principal. Some of the teachers on his staff blogged every day, while others wrote blog postings once a week, some included detailed descriptions of their daily lessons, while others simply posted announcements. After looking at many of the blogs on mabryonline.org, I decided that a daily blog would best suit what I wanted to accomplish, which was provide my students and their families with complete open access to what we were doing in class.
Three blogs were created, one for math, and two for science courses (Chemistry 30s and Chemistry 40s), and they all had the same features: an archive of old posts, links to other interesting blogs, links to useful websites, a subscription box where students could enter their e-mail addresses and get e-mail updates whenever I updated our blog, a visitor counter, and a search box to help students find postings related to particular topics. I did my best to update each blog on a daily basis and include a synopsis of the class as well as any materials from the class that could be posted. In the pictures below, we gathered class data of wins and losses when playing on the game show Let's Make a Deal. The pictures were posted to our blog, and the students were assigned homework that night based on the data.
One of the first things I learned, and struggled with, was that my students visited the blog a few times out of curiosity, but only made use of it if the blog had something they needed to look at or wanted to look at. This became my daily challenge as I tried to have something from each class to post on our blog. Some days were better than others, but for the most part, I was able to post almost daily.
Initially I just tried to post updates, but within a few weeks of starting the blog I had an LCD projector and interactive whiteboard installed in my classroom, and the blog became an integral part of passing information on to my students and their families. With the new technology I was able to take the material directly off our whiteboard and put in on my students’ computers.
Here we used a paper cutting exercise to demonstrate the addition of fractions.
Using the LCD projector, we were able to generate class data and compare results using excel.
My students were able to get the class notes from the blog, download assignments, check marks, give feedback on test dates and various other topics, and parents could check in any time to see what we were doing. Data from experiments was posted, pictures of what were doing in class and on our all-period days were uploaded and even student work was shown (see below).
The blog definitely helped to keep my students’ parents informed with the topics and events that were going on in class. I received countless emails with questions and comments about material on the blog, whether it was a parent curious about which questions their child was to work on for tomorrow’s class, or a student writing to tell me how interesting her mom thought a podcast that I had posted was.
The blog even had a useful side effect when one of my students ran away from home earlier in the year. It was the weekend and her mom was unaware of how to contact anyone at the school, but her mother knew about the blog and was able to contact me through it. As a result, I was able to pass on her questions to our school’s administration and guidance office.
The blog even had a useful side effect when one of my students ran away from home earlier in the year. It was the weekend and her mom was unaware of how to contact anyone at the school, but her mother knew about the blog and was able to contact me through it. As a result, I was able to pass on her questions to our school’s administration and guidance office.
Another lesson that I learned while using the blogs in class was that they can be quite time consuming to update depending on how detailed my updates needed to be, which worked against me some days. To simply post a quick update was no big deal, but posting files, pictures or videos required uploading to another website and then linking to the blog. It may not sound like much, but it added between five to 15 minutes to the time it took to post and some days that prevented me from posting. This is one dilemma I have yet to solve. I am hoping that over the summer I will have time to scan or upload some of the pieces I will use next year in order to save some time in the fall.
It was surprising to learn how many of students were not familiar with blogs or some of the features of them. I think it is the general consensus that our students are the most technologically experienced in history, yet many of my students still had trouble with tasks such as opening a .pdf file, emailing an attachment or simply finding the blog online. After creating the blog and posting the web address, I assumed my students would find it and naturally figure out all of its features. After several days of answering individual questions I realized I needed to go back and teach my students how to find it and use it.
My math blog worked out quite well, but my biggest struggle this year was making our blog relevant to my science classes. One of the strengths of my math blog was that I was able to give my students the option to take notes during some lessons, or simply follow along and download the notes from home after I had posted the notes using the interactive whiteboard. I did not have this technology in the science lab, and as a result was not able to post the notes as easily.
In order to post the notes from my science classes I had to scan each lesson individually, then upload and post, again being restricted some days by time. My science blogs eventually became a place to post the occasional answer key, or some interesting videos and science articles that I thought my students might enjoy. I found my science blogs frustrating to update because my students were not making use of them because I was struggling to put useful items onto them. The science blogs felt more like a gimmick than a useful educational tool.
After several months of posting short lesson updates and stories of interest, I stopped posting to my science blogs. I told myself that if my students asked why I had stopped, I would continue blogging and continue to put the time into scanning notes and writing updates. Two weeks went by and not a single student asked why I had stopped posting updates, and that marked the end of my science blogs. The lack of responses from my students stung a bit, but I was the only one to blame and my own lack of creativity. It was this event that sparked the idea of writing this year's ARPL about blogging, because it was obvious to me that I needed to reflect on them in order to improve the blogs for next year. I do plan to revisit the idea and hopefully a summer of reading and reflecting will fill me with good ideas.
One idea that I failed to make use of in an attempt to improve my blogs was seeing what other educators were doing with their blogs. The Internet is teeming with teachers and students talking about, posting and commenting on what is happening in their classes, and in order to make my blogs relevant, I need to see what others are doing well.
One idea that I had, and have seen on other class blogs, was to have my students take ownership of the class blog, rotating through who would post the day’s lesson by giving them author access. Another idea I had was to create science podcasts, with my students demonstrating how to solve specific problems, or teaching topics and posting them to our blog. A third idea I had was incorporating cell phones and Twitter (a micro-blogging service) into our class blog. Twitter can be incorporated directly into most blogs, and Twitter has the unique feature of being able to send text messages out to the cell phones of all followers of the blog when updates are posted. This service would be great for sending out announcements, reminders, pictures, or important messages. In addition, cell phones can also be used to update blogs and Twitter feeds. One bonuses of using Twitter, and other services like google text, would be using cell phones in a constructive way, instead of battling with students over them.
After using blogs for just under a year, I come back to the core question of using technology in the classroom: am I using technology for the sake of using technology, or is it providing my students with unique and meaningful learning opportunities. The opportunity is there and when used correctly, open up possibilities for connections and learning that would not be possible without the technology. The challenge is finding those uses, and balancing them with all other aspects of teaching. I have a start, but have a long ways to go.
The comment section at the bottom is open, so feel add any thoughts.
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