Blogging to Learn

I just read an article in “The Journal” called Content Delivery in the “Blogosphere” (Ferdig & Trammell, 2004) that addresses an area of technology use in education that hasn’t been touched on in this blog, the blog. More specifically, the article talks about the use of learning theory in blog development and practical implementation suggestions for educational blogs.
Ferdig and Trammell cite constructivist learning theory as the model for blog pedagogy. The student is actively involved in the learning process when he/she posts to their blog. Students can publish their thoughts and comments on a subject to their blog. This gives them a public area for discourse and also a sense of ownership (Ferdig and Trammell, 2004).
Reference:
Ferdig, R.E. & Trammell, K.D. (2004). Content Delivery in the Blogosphere. T.H.E. Journal, 31(7), 12-20. Downloaded March 25, 2008 from: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16626/

I thought that I might give some examples of various ways blogs are being used in relation to education and some general Blog resources. I’ve divided the blogs into a couple of different categories.

Tips for using blogs

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/03/ten-habits-of-bloggers-that-win.html
“The Cool Cat Teacher Blog” Vicki A. Davis has a great blog on education and technology from the perspective of a classroom teacher. Her “10 Habits of Bloggers that win” is a really helpful guide for teachers getting started in blogging. I had to include this quote from Vicki that I thought was appropriate to the educational technology discussion, “This is vital to their future! We're not educating factory workers anymore, folks.”

http://www.edutopia.org/digital-discussion-take-your-class-to-internet
Edutopia is very deep reference for educational technology. This link is not a blog, but a short article on blog usage in the classroom. Specifically this article prompts the educator to ask the question, “What is the purpose of this blog?”

Technical upgrades for your blog

http://www.technorati.com/widgets/blogwidgets
Technorati Blog widgets gives you ways to spice up your blog once you get it going. Add tickers, news links, search engines and tags to your blog. Technorati is a group of articles and blogs that cover many areas of interest, not just education. There are great articles on the general use of technology that can be applied to the classroom or educational technology field.
http://www.allthingsweb2.com/mtree/BLOG_2.0/
All things Web 2.0 has more way to customize your Blog. Find ways to put ads on your personal Blog, pod cast, and link to blogs with associated content. Again this Blog isn’t education oriented, but it does give the teacher an idea of the possibilities of blogging in the commercial arena and what you can do to get more “hits” on your Blog.

Examples of teacher blogs

http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/
Mrs. C. Classroom Blog, with video and links to student’s blogs. This classroom Blog does it all. If you want to see what a Blog can do for the classroom teacher, this is it. There is video and audio and links to educational websites for teachers and students. There are widgets that show where the hits are coming from world-wide. There are links to all of the student’s blogs. There are links to all the local school administrations for parent’s reference. This Blog goes on and on. It really has that dynamic interactive component that Web 2.0 is supposed to bring to the educator and student.

http://marykreul.teacherhosting.com/blog/
Mary Kreul teacher Blog aimed at parents. This example is well conceived and the graphics and text are setup in a very aesthetic and readable way. Mary Kreul uses the Blog format to let parents know what is going on at the school, inform them of the assignments that are due, and give out the grades of their child to them. The educational value of this site really its attempt to provide that triangle of learning with the teacher, student and parent all contributing. This is an interesting angle on Blog use in education.

Video production blogs

http://www.kongisking.net/kong2005/proddiary/
Peter Jackson’s King Kong Production diary – Lot’s of tips on how all of those special effects are made. This site gives insight into what it takes to make a full length big budget movie.

http://blog.planetstream.net/
This Blog provides video on – line tips for small businesses. This site mostly deals with the costs and technological aspects of streaming your video and audio productions on-line. It provides links to related web-blogs, technical tips and even job information. This is a good starter site for the person with video production skills that is interested in using the web to promote their videos or use their video skills to promote small businesses on the web.

http://www.videi.org/
I thought that I would throw this one in to show a combination of education and video production with a Blog. This the web-Blog of a student video production workshop in Bosnia sponsored by Loyola University. It is a student workshop so you can see the learning process going on in the quality of the posted videos. Each student gets their own video introduction also. This is an example of giving the students ownership their creative output and providing a place for publication. This is an interesting idea for the video production class. I wonder what the difference in quality would be for the student productions at the University that I work at if the students knew that their projects would be published to the web?

Technology integration and use issues

I’d like to reference a news article in this post. The article is from the March 2007 issue of the eSchool News , pg. 38. Alan November , an ed-tech consultant had some interesting remarks in his speech at the FETC 2007 conference.November says that the key to using technology in the classroom is not training teachers to use it, but to train them in how to incorporate technology creatively into lessons in stimulating and engaging ways. He also states that the assignments need to be more rigorous and demanding. He says, “Our standards are too low.”November emphasized three skills needed to turn classrooms into effective digital learning centers.The first is to teach students to deal with massive amounts of information. He says that we tend to give the student just what they need, when they need it to take the next test.The second skill requires that the classroom become a global communications center. Teach the children to work with people around the world and establish a network of people you can tap to make the student’s learning experiences more effective. November emphasizes that we spend too much time teaching teachers technical stuff and not enough on creative application of technology.The third skill is self direction. “The real change in the global economy isn’t that you get a laptop or an MP3 player, it’s that you don’t have a boss telling you what to do., November said,” The self directed person becomes more valuable. We teach children how to be taught, what we need is to teach them how to organize their own learning. We have created a culture of dependency. “November says that teachers can reach students by tapping into the technologies they already have. Teach algebra on a podcast. Use MySpace to teach social responsibility.This was an interesting article for me in that it moved away from the high tech “Gee Whiz” factor of technology, to concepts of use. This is the issue that sometimes seems to get clouded when talking about technology, whether it’s a new digital television camera to the latest educational software, first we need to state our goals and explore how we can use the technology to help us meet them.

Changing Roles with Technology

In the recent issue of Current(The Public Television Newspaper) there was an article by Jeremy Egner on the keynote speech at the Intergrated Media Association’s Public Media Conference in Boston. The speech was given by video journalist Michael Rosenblum . Michael is sometimes called an evangelist for the video journalist concept. The video journalist is a journalist, videographer, sound person, and editor. The video journalist can use a laptop with video editing software and Ethernet encoders to edit and transmit his/her stories from remote locations. Traditionally the roles of journalist, videographer, sound person and editor were filled by separate individuals. New tools have led many stations to go with the “one man band” approach to field journalism. There are many different ideas as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But, it is here now.This is similar to what Mr. Rosenblum was saying in his keynote speech. New technology is here. He said, “Get it or you’re unemployed, the steamroller is not coming, the steamroller is here.” Flash video, Google maps, podcasts are all elements that some Public Television Stations are using to augment their traditional broadcasts and in some instances creating new content for distribution on the web.Check out KQED’s Quest website for some idea of what’s happening with educational television. Television as we know it is going away. For broadcasters to keep their audiences they must drive them to the Internet.What does this have to do with education? New technologies are forcing educators to ask the same questions as the TV station employee, “What is my role and where am I headed?” Will the teacher of the future have more in common with the “one (wo)man band” video journalist? Will the teacher have to be a technician and an educator?

Shared Resources

The next logical step is to share your other resources with your school, friends and colleagues. I have found that a really simple way to share a PowerPoint presentation is to convert it to a .mov file using Camtasia and uploading it to YouTube . You just paste the embed data from the Youtube site to your Blog and you're done! Here's an example of a PowerPoint presentation I did for an Engineering Fair to explain to the public the basics of the TV digital transition path.