Miss W. and her Smartboard

As many of you will have read in previous posts, this has been a steep learning curve for me this year.  I have been trying to allow my students to join in the challenge of using new aspects of Web 2.0 tools.  I teach all grade 6/7  classes over the year in eight week blocks and one area of history we must teach is historical inquiry.  I mentioned to the other grade 6/7 staff that I would be prepared to assess this aspect of history.  How to do this using the newer technology? 

I decided a wiki would be a great way of allowing students to present the information they found as part of their inquiry.  I began the course teaching them the historical process:

• big question to answer
• smaller questions to help gather the information
• locating sources both primary and secondary
• gathering and organizing the information
• justifying and evaluating the information - does it answer the question?
• presentation of information to an audience

Students usually only have an audience of the teacher but I wanted to broaden this to other students, teachers and members of the community. Part of the curriculum is looking at the local community and I felt this would fit in perfectly with using a wiki to organize and present the information.

Students began by brainstorming what they knew about the history of their municipality. We then decided on the big question. Students worked in pairs and chose an aspect of the municipality they would like to find out about.  Some discussed it with parents and relatives and chose their topic wisely because they knew they would be able to get some information from them. As a class, we then brainstormed where we might be able to find sources for information.  We ended up with a list of about 15 primary and secondary sources.

I then set up the wiki with a basic page of our municipality and a link to a timeline of history in the area. Another wiki page included which students were researching which topics, then finally each pair of students had their own page on which to put their information.  Students then had to get permission from parents to become a member of the wiki; I suggested at least one person from each pair be a member.

Students then began gathering their information. Emails were sent, phone calls made, visits down town to go to shops to run interviews, head to library to find books and of course using the internet.  About two weeks before the end of the course, we discussed how we were going to assess the wiki work and students came up with a rubric that I then posted on the wiki.

 The wiki is going to be an ongoing project with each grade 6/7 class adding to it throughout the year.  Also towards the end of the year, I will advertise the wiki within the community and see if other members of the district can add to the information.  There is though, a place where this can happen now, but as we know, unless something is advertised, then rarely does anyone else know about it on the net.

Already some of the first group of students added information to other pages on the wiki and gave clues as to other sources the students could be using for their research. Students have been emailing me to get help and ask questions and one day when I was ill at home, I actually got on the wiki and was emailing back to students about problems they were having. Students have also been working outside of school hours on their pages of the wiki.  Those students who did not get permission to use the wiki, have had to hand in their work as a word document so they can still be assessed.

My next post will be about the challenge the students had in this first group. Two of the questions I asked them in their assessment lesson were:

• What did you find was a challenge in this assignment?
• Should Miss W teach the class about using a wiki or is it better for students to try things out for themselves? Give reasons.

Logged in this evening to Twitter and there she was - Sue Waters asking us to write a post or comment about blogging and what it means to us.  She also invited us to join in an Open PD session via Ustream or Skype but this was going to be 7am my time in Tasmania.  I might make it but …….if I don’t, here are some answers to her questions.

Where you blog and how long you have been blogging for?

I have been blogging since January this year.  I have a personal blog which you are reading now but since February I have also been teaching students using a class blog.  A few of them have earned the right to have their own blogs in the last couple of weeks.

Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work?

I blog about my experiences using Web 2.0 tools which are new to me this year. This includes blogging, smartboards and using wikis.  I have also been using teachertube and as Sue knows I have tried a Skype conversation with a little success. The students are definitely more on task when being allowed to blog, and those students with their own blogs are continuously sending me emails during the evening asking about other things they can add to their blogs or posts.  So far at work, blogging has not had much benefit for other staff as they don’t seem to have the time to do it especially if, as a teacher, you are moderating the students’ blogs.

How blogging has helped your students and how long have you been blogging with students (if applicable)

Blogging has helped the students to improve their written literacy skills and has allowed them to tell their classmates and visitors to their blogs more about the things that interest them out of school hours.

Why you feel blogging is important ?

I feel blogging is important for 21st century students because it can be a safe way to start building a network especially for the tween years and early teens.  As long as the teacher is prepared to put in the effort and keep overall control of the experience, students can gradually be allowed more and more freedom within their blogs.  It is also a way for students to see there is a wider world than just that of the town or state they live in, and that other students around the world have similar interests to them.

What are the 3 most important tips you would share with a new blogger?

Blog for yourself first and get used to writing posts with links.

Read and comment on lots of other blogs - easy way is read comments on Edublogger and Edublogs and visit the blogs of those people - make a comment on their blog and lo and behold they come and visit your blog.

If working with students, be prepared to have a large load in the beginning with a class blog - then as students show they can be responsible internet and blogging users, allow them their own blog but with you or their parents as co-moderators.

According to my clustrmap statistics, I am now batting over 1000 visitors to this personal blog.  I have only been blogging for about two months but I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge.  It was easy during the summer holidays to get on and write a post every couple of days about the steep learning curve I was going through.  But now I am back at work, I am only making about one post per week. 

I am also administering a class blog which moved from learnerblogs to edublogs a few weeks ago.  In a bit over a month blogging there, we have had about 500 visitors and the students love looking at the clustrmaps as well.  I have now added Feedjit to both the personal and class blogs to make it easier for the students to see where people are coming into and out of our blog.

But despite the large number of visitors, only about one person in thirty actually makes a comment on a post.  I must admit that I too, only comment in some adult blogs that I read.  But when I visit a teacher’s blog that has student blogs attached, I try to write in at least two or three of the student blogs and also ask permission from the teacher to add their blog to our class blogroll.  This is certainly widening the horizons of my students and I know the thrill on my students’ faces when they get a comment from somewhere overseas - for us that means anywhere out of Tasmania.

How do I know which blogs to comment on?  Firstly I look at those teachers on edublogs home page and I try to visit three blogs per day that I haven’t been to before.  I also look in the edublogger and edublogs blog to see which people I haven’t yet visited.  I also have about 15 subscriptions to blogs of people I enjoy reading and they often mention websites or other bloggers in their posts.  In fact, it is all just one big social network that seems to keep growing all the time.

January 2008

• learning to use a smartboard
• convert videos using Zamzar
• using del.icio.us to tag pages
• learning to blog and make comments in others

February 2008

• learning how to use a wiki
• teaching students to blog
• teaching students to use wikis
• creating class and student blogs

March 2008

• using twitter
• joining Skype - but still can’t get the microphone on the headsets to work - hope my school techie will help
• taking part in an online discussion through Elluminate

WOW!!  Time for a break to let all this information sink into this little grey head.

I made a decision this weekend.  Four students in my class have submitted posts for me to publish; they have written lots of comments in our class blog; they have commented back to students who commented on their posts.  I feel they deserve to have their own blog.

Edublogs has a new create a blog and user function that I thought I would use.  One of those alerts at the top of your dashboard…..  All went well, created their name and blog, email was sent to the students but then I had a problem.

I could get onto their blog by typing in the URL, but then it wouldn’t let me into their site admin.  It kept sending me back to my own personal dashboard.  This happened with all four blogs I had created.  Was it something I had forgotten to do?

I got onto the edublogs blog and made a comment about what had happened and it was recommended that I put the problem with all technical details on the edublogs forum.  I did this and within an hour the problem was solved.

I can now get into the admin side of each student’s blog.  But I think I will leave them as co-administrators until Easter and I will spend this week with them getting their presentation, blogroll and sidebar widgets organized.  Once that is done I will then drop them to editor status so there is less chance of mishaps.  If they want to then make changes they can negotiate a time with me to help them do that.

Nearly two weeks since my last post.  Things at work have been frantic.  Less than a month back at school and we are already talking about our interim reports for after Easter.  What do we have to report on?  Has the Education Department sent us the subjects we HAVE to report on or can we make a school decision?  Oh, no, there are three teachers doing subjects under the heading of ARTS -  will there be a collaborative report or will each write their own?   I usually help organize the mid year and end of year reports but with the changeover to the Tasmanian Curriculum this year, we will need to find out if we can use the same type of report we have used the last few years.  I know I will have to write about Literacy/English which also includes LOTE, Numeracy/Math, History and Health and Well Being which is part of our Social Skills program.  Two subjects, though, must be assessed in all other areas and these are ICT and thinking.  I wonder how some of the teachers will do this? 

 I haven’t had time to make comments in other teacher’s blogs but I am glad that I have RSS feeds to at least ten blogs that I can easily read in my Google Reader, so  I can find out about what has been happening especially in the USA with all the conferences that have been happening.  Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and Larry Ferlazzo always have great blogs with lots of interesting information or del.icio.us links to look at.

 I have also started my history class on a wikispace about our community.  As we have never used this form of Web 2.0 technology, it is a learning experience for both myself and the students.  As well as the history wikispace, our grade 6/7 team is doing our planning for our Social skilling program on a wiki.  Again, a great learning opportunity.  I have had two of the staff actually add information to it.  I know it will be successful when most of the staff had added their bit of wisdom to the discussions.

Finally, the smartboard is now  permanently set up in the room.  Some students will be writing a post for our classroom blog about this momentous event in our room.  A couple of students were reporters and photographers for the day while the board was being set up.  They interviewed the workers and took some digital photos to use in their blog post.

Last week I asked for students to write a post that I could put in our class blog. Three students replied from my class and I have now posted the first of their attempts.  Choc (nickname) has written a piece about stamp collecting.  She included a great picture but because it was bitmap, it would not upload properly.  In my comment to her I mentioned about finding jpeg images and also about acknowledging her image source.  I hope this is the first of many posts by my students in the class blog and it would be great to have some comments from other educators about ways to improve a post.  This can then help them in future posts and when they get their own blog as well.

I was interested to read the post from Frieda at Thinking about Learning on the topic of  “Changing Cultures”.  Tasmania, the island state of Australia, is supposed to be the intelligent island or so our government has been telling us for many years. Yet, in schools where many teachers are close to retirement age, there is not a lot of computer use other than for word processing or using Powerpoints for presentation purposes.  One reason for this is lack of computers in classrooms and when computers are in labs, often these are used for IT classes, so English and Maths teachers can’t integrate simulations, webquests etc into their program easily.

Having been back at school a bit over a week now, I mentioned to some teachers at my school  that I had been blogging and learning about wikis and using the Smartboard over the holidays.  I am hoping that one small step from me, in my subtle loud voice,  might find some other teachers prepared to increase their range of teaching skills using Web 2.0 technologies.  Already in my classroom, I have noticed the keen interest taken in writing by the boys in the group when using the class blog.