E-tools are such valuable technologies for education in the 21st century; they are a huge database of collaboratively designed information that is in such an easily visible form. In this course, managing E-learning, I have explored with all of these E-tools and have particularly focused on blogging. I explored with wiki's through the moodle site and included my say into some of the sites: behaviourism, and the mobile phones wiki which was linked to De Bono's six thinking hats, and of coarse I have explored with numerous websites.
Before Managing E-learning I had not thought to ever start a Blog, in fact, I didn't understand what you would do with a blog or what it would be for. I certainly never believed that blogging could be used in education and could actually enhance and support learning.I have particularly focused on, explored, and been actively participating with the blogging site called Blogger, which is the site that managing e-learning directed us to use:
http://bloghackz.com/
However, I did explore with another blog website called blog.com. I created an account with blog.com: http://biancajaneturner.blog.com/wp-admin/?c=1.Blogs are websites that can contain a writer's or groups of writer's opinions, experiences, observations, and etc. Blogs provide so many advantages and opportunities, they can simply act as a type of journal for people to share globally or privately, or they can act as a website of information and media value. Blogs are great because of their simplicity and ease of use. At first it did seem quite daunting to begin a whole new web page all by myself and knowing that I had selected it to be shared so that anyone could access it. Blogging is about exploring, you do need to spend time looking around the site finding shortcuts and new things. Blogs allow you to upload or embed pictures, videos, audio's and much more; finding out how to do this was simply a matter of looking and pressing the buttons that I wasn't sure of. I had great fun developing my blog over the weeks and I found that as the weeks progressed I learnt many new things and my posts became more and more advanced and interesting.
What was most surprising to me was finding out just how useful blogging could be in my classroom. Because I am teaching to high school students there is so many tasks that I could set involving blogging. I could ask my students to create a blog and then week by week they could answer some structured question regarding the topic of focus, I could make it a necessity for them to include a different ICT tool in each blog and afterwards we can go through them as a class. So, blogs create opportunity for exploration of technology, for the students to collaborate their ideas, opinions, and experiences, and to encourage creativity. The following YouTube clip was especially interested me because firstly, it introduced to me that I could also use blogging in Health and Physical Education, and secondly, it gave me a guide as to how I could implement structured blogging in my classroom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZAYqxEgBkg
Having the students involved in the same activity and collaborating their opinions, ideas, and experiences, can generate higher order thinking; blogs have the ability to be extremely effective in the classroom.
Strengths:
- Easily accessible tool that you can record ideas, opinion, experiences, and much more onto
- Allows further ICT tool: pictures, audio's, videos, etc to be uploaded or embedded into posts
- Encourages creativity
- Immediately eye catch and interesting to students
- Can be used to record reflections and evaluations, generating problem solving skills and process, allowing the students to create meaning out of the activities
- It is a text based communication online which allows extended audiences to view the site
- Supports easy storage of ideas
- It is easily assessable for the teacher to track progress made by the student
- Postings are in chronological order making it eay to keep track of
Weaknesses:
- Access to the Internet is required. if you set a blog post for homework you need to ensure that each and
every student has access to the Internet at home.
- Similar to Glogster, you can become too involved with the aesthetics rather then the content in the blog, as
a teacher I would need to ensure that I make my expectations clear and structure that content that is
required.
- Unless safety precautions are taken, blogs are open to any viewer, including unwanted ones.
Opportunities:
- Blogs unlock so many opportunities and allow for such variety and difference. the use of blogs will only keep on becoming more and more beneficial in the classroom; soon they will be a part of the curriculum and assessment pieces. Teachers need to explore with the E-tool and discover new ways to implement it into the classroom.
Threats:
- Legal actions need to be taken and safety precautions should be followed, ensuring that you are aware of
who is looking and monitoring your students work.
- Copyright needs to be completely avoided, make sure that you site where you got the resources from.
I have enjoyed blogging so much and I believe that I will continue to find new and exciting things that I can do with my blogs. Blogs are a place of reflection and reflection is a huge part of education for learners, especially in high school.
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