Today I ventured into blogland (I know, it’s really called the blogosphere, but I like blogland better) with my students. I set up two very simple blogs (one for 1st semester and one for 5th semester) and invited them all to be authors with me on the blogs. Their homework is to try to get signed up by accepting the email invitation I sent. We’ll see how that has gone tomorrow in class. I only had three messages from students who were having trouble…of course that might mean only three actually tried.

some of my 5th semester students celebrating Halloween

some of my 1st semester students dressed up for trick or treating

While I can’t (read won’t) promise to blog every day this month, I kind of like the idea of posting here about my blogs that are elsewhere and how they work out with my students. So maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow.

I would want to respond to their reflections by offering my own comments that encourage them to keep learning and growing and by pointing out how I have seen them learn and improve during the course.

I might also promote such reflection on their part by including my own reflection of how I see the course and my work so that students can realize that I want to continue learning and growing.

Posting and commenting to share opinions – this could include posts created by the teacher and/or students as well as linking to opinions of others in formats as formal as a newspaper’s opinion column or editorial or as informal as another blog.

Blog entries that help students and teachers see knowledge as interconnected – this could include a teacher’s blog entry about an idea with the request that students respond with connections that they see with other subjects, experiences, areas or ideas. The blog as well as the comments could range from simple written comments to video or audio responses, either created by the students or teacher or linked to another webpage with relevant material.

Blog entries that encourage reflection – again, this could work for both teachers and students, depending on the type of blog. For teachers, the blog could be a space to reflect and self-evaluate their work in the classroom as well as a place where other teachers, coaches or mentors could respond with feedback, support or ideas to help the teacher improve. In this case a teacher could use some of the kinds of artifacts presented by Dr. Helen Barrett: written work, audio recordings or videos of actual classroom activities. This makes me think of an idea used in the field of medicine for obtaining expert opinions from doctors in distant locations in order to support medical care facilities in remote or underdeveloped places. By creating an accessible database of patient information, doctors are able to receive support from specialists who are far away. Dr, Ernest Madu of the Heart Institute of the Caribbean in Kingston, Jamaica, successfully incorporated this practice of telemedicine. Could teachers also use blogs as a part of a tele-education system to learn from expert teachers who are far away? I am intrigued by this idea.

Here’s the TED.com video of Dr. Ernest Madu.

Since blogs provide an archive of the contributions of both the blogger(s) and those who comment, students and teachers alike could go back to see and contemplate where there has been growth and change in the thinking by the course participants. This could facilitate self-reflection, an essential component to lifelong learning according to Barrett. In fact, the kind of journaling to which a blog easily lends itself is an ideal way that a blog could support both the teaching and the learning processes: teachers could use blogs for reflecting on what and how they have taught while students could use blogs for reflecting on what and how they have learned.

I have found this semester that it has been worthwhile to take a significant amount of class time (half an hour here, 20 minutes there) to be sure that all my students know how to use the Blackberry phone they were provided by the school. Not only has this helped the students understand the power of that tool, but it has invariably helped me because there is always a student who knows a better way to accomplish a task than I do, so I learn along with them. I would expect to spend a similar amount of time teaching use of the technology itself were I to begin using blogs in my classes.

I would also want to present very clearly my expectations about how students would use the blog both through written guidelines and instructions as well as by modeling the expected use of the blog in class. Additionally, I would provide several ungraded opportunities to practice using the blog without the threat of scoring poorly before students are graded on using it. I have tried giving some low-risk assignments for my students to complete with their Blackberry phones to help them become more comfortable and agile with using them, and I would expect that a similar approach with a blog would also be useful.

I would likely also want to continue to provide, if not ungraded activities, then activities which are graded based on how thoroughly and thoughtfully a student reflects on what she has learned. I also would incorporate the opportunity for students to evaluate my work as their teacher and the course itself which is a step I try to include even without the use of blogs, but which might be better facilitated with a blog.

Finally, for both preparing for and evaluating student use of the blog, I would want to make my grading of blog use very transparent (as I try to do with all my grading criteria) and I would want to stay flexible and willing to accept alternative uses of a blog if the situation arises. I like to allow my students and myself the chance to innovate as we are working our way through a course, and I think that approach would be particularly important with using a new technology.

Following a suggestion from Ruth Reynard in “Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students”, before I could evaluate the effectiveness of a blog as a resource, I would need to set specific goals and purposes for the use of the blog when designing the course. These goals should be based on the desired learning outcomes if the use of a blog is going to truly help students get the most out of a blog. I would need to consider how to implement the blog to promote analysis, synthesis, acquisition of new ideas as well as application of those ideas. Here is a link to her article:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx

I read the privacy and security information on both WordPress and Blogger before starting my own blog because I do not want to be exposed to unwanted contacts or spam e-mail. I would want to take precautions with student use of a blog, probably by limiting participation through invitation-only so that I know who is using the resource.

I think it is of primary importance that we teach our students to be cautious when using the internet, and I think it is necessary to be selective about making student work public on such an anonymous and enormous forum as the internet. We limit who is allowed to enter our physical campuses and I think we should be equally careful about allowing public access to Internet resources we use for class. I realize that students will take risks on their own, but my role is to show them the best and safest ways I know to interact with the world so they can learn in a safe environment, without being exposed to critical situations such as threats from strangers who might want to take advantage of them.

That said, one of the advantages of using blogs is that it can be a way to reach my students “where they live” so to speak. Since my students spend more and more time on the internet and have become more and more agile in their use of internet technology, it makes sense to bring that technology into the classroom. I think such additions to our resources as teachers can make our classes not only more appealing to students, but make them seem more worthwhile to them. They know, almost instinctively, that much of what happens in the world exists in some way on the internet, and they seem to expect to be able to conduct much of their life there.

Since a significant portion of that Internet world consists of the written word, it is a natural resource and forum to include in language classes such as the ones I teach. If I am to teach students to be mature, knowledgeable, critical participants in the world, then that should include the medium they may use more than any other: the internet. Blogs may be one way to achieve that by showing students how to analyze and respond to writing on the internet. Blogs have the potential to give students a real world, hands-on experience with the language, and that may be one of the most significant advantages that such technology presents to the language teacher.

fort at the port

This is a photo I took on a trip to Veracruz earlier this year. I was intrigued by the stone and stucco of the old fort in the foreground juxtaposed with the colorful containers of the working port in the background.

I think this is a little like the way my classroom is evolving with new technologies being added to teach skills of communicating…skills which have been taught for centuries.

This is my blog that I’ve set up for the course I’m taking about how to use blogs for teaching. My plan is to try out my blog with my advanced English classes.

If you have any suggestions or comments, you’re welcome to join in the conversation!