First post
Well I’ve messed around with blogs over at blogger, but for whatever reason, their pages frequently fail to load properly at school, so I’m exploring other places for me to host a blog.
A couple things first off. I’m an English teacher. As such, I value reading, writing and thinking. And I’m always looking for ways in which I can help my students do more of it easier, quicker and better. Especially the thinking part.
I’m still somewhat new to teaching, as this is only my fifth year in the classroom. I wouldn’t say that I’m extremely advanced with technolgy. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know much about, but I try to incorporate technology as much as I can.
I think, however, that just using technology at school is not a good enough idea in itself. It needs to be used in ways to empower our students. Ways in which they will take control of their own learning and thinking.
Here’s an interesting example of a typical technology use at school: Today at my school we had an in-service designed to help faculty set up web pages. A couple of teachers showed their pages to the faculty, earning admiration from many for how complete their sites were. Mostly what they had were just places where they could upload class information: calendars, PowerPoint presentations, assignments, class notes, etc. They called them “interactive” websites and talked about how nice it was that the kids have all this information at their fingertips and now there’s no excuse for “I didn’t know we had a quiz” or “But I didn’t get the assignment” students.
But… what is happening here? It’s great from some perspectives, especially a parent’s. Now parents can look to see what’s happening each day in class, they can check if their child has any work to do. It’s great for some students. Now if they are absent they can find out what they missed. Or if they forget their binder at school, they can download the calendar or assignment. But is it great for the teacher? Now he (both teachers who shared were men) has post assignments and daily activities every day. What happens if one of these teachers forgets to post today’s information? Is it now his fault if a student is unprepared? I see this as really putting a lot of the responsibility on the teacher. Where is the personal responsibility for the student? Why do they need to bother to take notes in class when they know they can download it tonight?
So I’m searching for the ways in which I can use technology to help with learning. Not as a resource for students, but as a way to help them learn, think, and do. I know there’s a lot out there, so I’m going to start with something simple: blogging.
Right now I’m finally trying to use blogging in my classroom. In the fall, I had a couple of my classes set up blogs and try to use them a bit. I admit, what I had them do was a bit forced. Ok, it was very forced. I made them use their blogs to think about a persuasive paper they had to write (also a very forced assignment). They had to think through their ideas and post information they found on the Internet. I wasn’t really impressed with what they wrote, but I wasn’t really planning to be. What I wanted to do was simple: get them to set up blogs and make sure they know how to use them. Now I just need to think of ways to get them to want to use them and to get them to use them for good reasons.
And I’m working on that now. I’ll try to keep track of what I do, why I do it, and what results I find here on this blog. Stay tuned.
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January 17th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Greg,
Welcome to blogging. This is a great first post — some good questions here. I’m looking forward to seeing what ideas you have as you begin blogging with students.
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