Blogging to Communicate

Blogs are the new big push at my school. The tech coordinator has just chosen a platform and now all teachers have been assigned a blog and all students in grades 3-12 will have access to their own blogs under their teacher's administration. However, since reading and discussing the TPAK framework for EDC551, I feel instantly cautious.

In the past, I've jumped all over new websites and technologies and quickly looked for ways to work them into my lessons. However, I am starting the see that there is a benefit to taking it slowly with ICT integration. As is pointed out in the TPAK article, internet technologies are most effective when they are part of your pedagogy, and actually helping to teach the content. If you begin pushing too many new technologies, you run the risk of them becoming white noise, just ineffective.

So when I received my new blog log in info, my first question was, what is the purpose of all of us teachers being given blogs?

The answer: To facilitate home-school communication between teachers and parents and students.

My next question as, how are students going to be using their individual blogs?

The answer: However I want them to. There is no common goal in assigning students blogs.

So now I am tasked with integrating these new required technologies into my teaching repertoire; but before I can do that, I needed to know how they are better and more effective than what I am already doing. Here is what I now know...

So far this year I have been fairly effective with communicating with parents. Every week I send home a paper newsletter with classroom updates, key vocabulary, project reminders, etc. Every two weeks parents get (also on paper) an outline of what our class will be working on for the following two weeks.  They also get occasional announcements on paper and as needed per child letters or emails. It works. It breaks down if the student forgets to or refuses to give the papers to the parents.

With blogs for parent communication, the only middle man is the internet. While internet access is sometimes fickly, it is probably a bit more reliable than an angry elementary school student! I can put all my parent communications online, thats easy. Now its the parents job to retrieve it if they want it. But all I've done is change the vehicle. I'm saving trees, but is it really a more effective way communicate? In the end, I think yes.

Right now, there are 4 different first languages represented amongst the parents of my students. Some speak English well, and all know a little bit of English, but some not enough to fully understand the letters that I send home. By moving this information to an online format, I am making translating easier for the parents. Google translate will translate entire websites and offer alternate translations for words simply by scrolling over them. Its not always the best translation, but could be helpful for parents that are struggling to understand English.

Blogs also offer the opportunity for me to show and not just tell parents what is happening in our room. I can post videos of the experiments that we do, photos of student work, online games to practice important vocabulary. This is a much more engaging and effective way to convey to the parents what their children are learning about in our classroom.

While discussing these new websites with another teacher, I brought up the issue that now, parents are not going to get any information unless they seek it out. Its always there for them, but what if I am posting an important announcement and they don't bother to check the blog? My friend's suggestion...subscribe each parent to your blog! This way, when you make a new post, they will receive an email notification that there is new information online for them.

Is a school-home communication blog a fancy new way to send home notes? Yes. But it is not just that. It is truly a better, more helpful way to pass along important news to parents.

Now what about student blogs? I know that my students would think it was fun to have their own blogs, but I am still not sure that a blog is the best technology for my upper elementary students to be using at this time. Currently, we use Google Drive to share work and collaborate with classmates. A blog is a different platform to do mostly the same thing. Right now, I see the only advantage of blogs above and beyond this to be that I could use it not only to share work, but also to teach digital citizenship and safe internet practices.

My mind is made up about a class blog to share information with parents. I'm excited to have this platform as a way to give parents a window into our learning. However, I'm going to need to do a bit more research into student blogging before I jump into that. I want to be sure that I'm not just giving them more technology for technology's sake. I want it to be truly useful.

Testing Alternatives

I have to say, I hate Moodle. I know its popular and tons of schools use it as a platform, but try as I may, I just can't get a handle on it. And as it turns out, I'm not the only one!

The school where I work utilizes Moodle for many of its Middle and High school classes. They would like to have upper Elementary teachers also using the same platform for online class materials. However, Moodle can be a bit difficult to learn, its not very user friendly and its appearance leaves students wanting a bit more. So, this week, our ICT coordinator asked myself and a few other teachers to preview some new websites as potential replacements for Moodle. And I am so excited!

We are looking at: http://www.edmodo.com and http://www.schoology.com

Both of these sites are based on a Facebook style of social networking. I have just signed up for the two of them so that I can decide which one I will use with students this coming quarter. Simply signing up, I'm already excited. These sites are both easy to navigate and look very engaging. Only one of my fifth grade students this year has a Facebook account but it is a website that they are all familiar with and anxious to eventually be able to use. I'm sure that these websites familiar look will encourage students to use and interact with it.

I really want to use the internet for as much school work as is manageable. I currently have a class blog that is available to students and parents as a means of keeping everyone up to date on what is going on in our room. I'm looking forward to one of these new sites helping me to provide students with easier access to content and assignments and a smoother means for students to collaborate.

Now, I just have to choose!