Beyond School

[Photo credit: noqontrol at Flickr.]

Lesson learned: mention, as a blogger, that you need or want feedback, and apparently that’s enough. I asked for it a couple posts ago, and got it. Thanks to you all: your comments are so valuable I’m putting them on this post to increase their visibility and, I hope, invite more voices into the conversation.

Because right now, I have a lot of teachers wanting to jump into classroom blogging, while almost none of them seem willing to experience blogging first. And that worries me.

So here is the conversation so far. I wish I had time to comment, but I’m at school. Later.

Whatever you do, don’t miss Linzel’s concluding questions at the bottom of this post….

Mr. Miller said…

Clay – I am intrigued. I don’t know if I agree with you completely. And I’m not saying that because I’m trying to politely state my disagreement. I honestly don’t know.

What touched me was your mention of blogging replacing homework. You make an excellent point and rightly focus on pedagogy that is a necessary component behind any valid teaching. The last few months I have discovered a lot of the web 2.0 tools that are being used in education – a journey that I’ve undertaken on my own in the building. It’s been a whirlwind tour, if you will.

However, I think in the last week or two I’ve found myself pulling back, purposely not reading all the feeds in my bloglines or not trying too hard to integrate the wiki work I started with my next unit. The fact is, I’m still wrapping my brain around it, and I don’t know how ready I am to set up more embedded web 2.0 tools. I believe in them, but I need to do more.

In the meantime, I’m going back simply putting the homework on the blog.

And I guess that’s why I don’t know if I disagree with you. I think you’re right, but maybe I don’t want to believe that I’m one of those teachers. Is that just me trying to make an excuse? Maybe it’s more of me recognizing that I need to pause and reflect and train myself some more. Thanks – as always – for helping me think.

March 8, 2007 9:32 AM

Clay Burell said…

Hi “Mr. Miller”,

I don’t know if I agree with myself either It’s only a worry right now, and a hunch.

I think the distinction to be made is this: If it’s your (I mean “you, the student”) individual blog, it should be yours to show your own developmental journey through your educational years. It’s your blog (yes, guidelines I can see are necessary, but beyond that I’m suspicious).

For hw assignmets–and even the best are cookie-cutter and non-individualized, aren’t they?–maybe hit “comment” on the class blog? That I can see….

But even that still creates an association of blogging with homework that I don’t like.

Moodle feels “schooly” because it is so: that’s its purpose. So HW on Moodle (or a wiki, maybe) seem fine.

I just see blogs as a precious writerly thing–really the most special literacy tool of all for personal development.

And to keep it untainted by associations with “school” and “HW” is something that’s seeming more and more important to me. It threatens to poison the blog-well, if you know what I mean.

Nice to hear from you. I feel your pain as far as being solo in your experiments. And we’re all dizzied, and often, by what we’re trying. And I, too, have stepped back from reading so many blogs and pulled back to focus and reflect.

Seems like that’s part of a “natural 2.0 cycle” for a lot of people: dive in, saturate, dry out, reflect, dive in 2.0, etc.

March 8, 2007 11:23 AM

Jeff said…

And you’d be amazed–actually, you wouldn’t; it’s really predictable–how many teachers in my ongoing blogging staff development group still are looking for just another way to have students hand in homework, a way that’s more “fun” and “in their world” than the paper model, but otherwise no different. Immersion in the world of blogs and their philosophy is key; without that, there’s no hope. At least none that I see.

March 8, 2007 11:32 AM

Patrick Higgins said…

I am digging this line of questioning that you have undertaken. The most dreaded thing to hear from a member of my staff is that comparison of blogging to an existing format; the one I hear often is “threaded discussion” or “discussion board.”

A few weeks ago, Will Richardson spoke at a conference I attended and his take has greatly influenced my thinking: get your teachers blogging and let them see the value of it before they bring it to their students.

Some of our favorite bloggers are nothing short of prolific, offering up several posts per day. When teachers see them, that is intimidating. Do we show them those posts because they are worthy? Or do we show them where to look for blogs about what they are passionate about (show them technoriati and Google Blog search)?

My hat is in the ring for letting the teachers play before they thrust it onto the students because if they don’t carve out their own use for it, it is most certainly going to become just another way to hand in homework.

March 9, 2007 2:10 AM

linzel said…

Just one thing…..

In science I can make my expectations quite clear for an online portfolio/lab journal. Calculate this, show that…conclude. As long as the directions are clear they can handle it.

The trouble lies in asking them to THINK like a scientist. The HOW are you going to measure, analyze etc.

Isn’t blogging inherently tough in a Social Science scene? Its by nature application/creative. Thats tough stuff!

So where are we going to place the goal lines?

I just thought this up….are grade levels fading/melding? Does the learning process end in June every year? Or should we be thinking about this in a new way as well? We do call/want them to be ‘life-long learners’ don’t we?

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