{"id":139,"date":"2010-12-25T11:01:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-25T00:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/?p=139"},"modified":"2010-12-25T11:03:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-25T00:03:20","slug":"blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"Blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

An issue that is increasingly important for students and of vital importance for any leader and evangelist of ICT in education is the capacity to take regular classroom activities out of that classroom both spatially and temporally. We are, like many, a college with insufficient face to face teaching time; so access to the learning minds of students outside school hours is vital. Tools that tap into screenagers enamourment of social networking and technology are an important solution to this problem. Crooked Timber<\/em>\u2019s Henry Farrell identifies five major uses for blogs in education.<\/p>\n

First, teachers use blogs to replace the standard class Web page. Teachers post class times and rules, assignments, project, notifications, suggested readings, and exercises.<\/p>\n

Second, and often accompanying the first, teachers post links to Internet items that relate to their course.<\/p>\n

Third, blogs are used to organise in class discussions.<\/p>\n

Fourth, teachers use blogs to organise class seminars and to provide summaries of readings. Used in this way, the blogs become \u201cgroup blogs\u201d\u2014that is, individual blogs authored by a group of people.<\/p>\n

Fifth, students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade.<\/p>\n

Farrell\u2019s fifth use of blogs could, with little change become, requiring students to construct their own lesson material or compile their findings of ongoing experiments or exchange possibilities with peers – within a stipulated project, either teacher or student generated.<\/p>\n

For an example of this; a Year 9 Science class, via www.blogger.com<\/em> (See pictures below) were required not to submit a final assignment paper but produce a blog of the experimental progress concerning water quality and associated flora and fauna in a waterway in Centennial Park. Review by peers counted for as much of the final mark as the teacher input. Blogs were specifically chosen so as to raise digital literacy, remove possibility of a last minute all nighter, allow considered reflection or contributions and access by the teacher in non-school settings. The science teacher was also able to improve the students learning by adopting uses 1, 2 and 3 (Farrell). The class teacher used the students\u2019 own blog entries to link to sites of interest or further exploration (use 2). The \u2018scaffold\u2019 in the students own head served as the basis from which to explore and so expand. The teacher also had a blog entry to act as a reference page to review the topic as the study progressed, acting as an advanced organiser page and an index to the students\u2019 own work (use 1).\u00a0 While not a use specific to the project, discussion was encouraged across the blogs as to the interest level and completeness of peer work.<\/p>\n

Blogs can be in-house, but the resultant \u2018in captivity\u2019 nature then negates the value of being internet based. An important value of a blog is that students know they have a more public reach; that they are potentially in the face of an audience of global proportions; having outside review as a real possibility gives gravitas to their approach and writing.<\/p>\n

Sample blog entries from yr 9 Science class.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I have finished writing my scientific report. All of the experiments and observations and research I completed taught me a lot about an area that I live so close to but knew hardly anything about. I found the open ended investigation really interesting and enjoyed doing it. Now that I know so much more about the protected wetland, it makes me want to help maintain its existence. It was fun, but it feels good to be finished!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong><\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Today i tested the turbidity and salt presence of ny first 2 samples and as they were from the harbour they were very high salt. I am going to do my moisture and organic content of my 2nd lot of soil samples. Because the science teachers are using the drying oven at school i have to use the second oven in the boarding kitchen. The kitchen won’t let me use their scales so straight after school today i went to phillip and weighed out 2 lots of each soil and what i will do is put all 8 in the oven but i will take the first 4 out at an hour and a half and the other four at 3 hours because i am unable to weigh them inbetween so this way the first ones will be moisture and the second organic. This weekend i hope to go and take more pictures of the gardens and work on my report.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
due to miss b being away on tuesday, i have had to delay my parent rock, texture and colour testings. these tests are the last ones that need to be completed so every test has been completed at least once. they will be tested during lunchtimes, whenever miss b is available.
\nonce these are complete i can begin sections of my report that invlove methods and results.
\ni have already begun writting my draft report; the introduction and reference section.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
also called the Health officer from Randwick council- Mark Leona about the new stormwater system that has been installed. results from this arent determinable yet as to how it has impacted as it is still early days but i did get some details on the system.<\/p>\n

the regeneration number did not respond, this reference is not too important though.
\nnor did the Environment officer at randwick 9399 xxxx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An issue that is increasingly important for students and of vital importance for any leader and evangelist of ICT in education is the capacity to take regular classroom activities out of that classroom both spatially and temporally. We are, like many, a college with insufficient face to face teaching time; so access to the learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16,17],"tags":[24,7,23],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom","category-education-2","category-ict","tag-blogs","tag-education","tag-laptops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}