Learning, Teaching & Technology

One of the district goals this year is: Teachers will increase student engagement and improve student achievement by focusing on instructional practices. This blog entry is a review of the work we have done at YES this year to post more student work online by using teacher web pages and blogs.

In a conversation with Betsy Lane before the school year started we talked about efforts I might make to increase the use of teacher web pages to display student work and communicate with parents. The goal was to engage students in presenting learning to an audience of parents and family members. Specifically, I wanted to increase the number of teachers using class web pages and the involvement of students in creating content to display online. This year there has been an increase from 50% of classrooms displaying student work online to 80%. In addition to classroom teachers the Art and Music teachers have expanded the student presence on their web pages this year.

The initial impetus for this increase came from a faculty meeting dedicated to setting up and managing teacher web pages in September, 2008. Mike came over from HMS and worked with a group who wanted to set up blogs and I worked with teachers who needed assistance with their FirstClass web pages. We left that meeting with all classrooms having an initial page established. Since then I have met with teachers before school, after school at lunch and during a few minutes of a schedule lab period to assist them with the web pages and blogs.

At each grade level the majority of teachers have posted photos, movies and student-created presentations of their learning. Some of the examples include:
• Voicethread descriptions of Student Art are an example of postings Cam is doing with each grade
•Audio clips of student songs for each class to support Music practice at home.
•A Voicethread on Laura Skowronkis’s page describes their Arctic Sculptures
•Stephanie’s photos, movies and voicethreads at the bottom of the page as are Kim’s .
•Elke’s first class Voicethread on Arctic Animals and she has photos with commentary as well.
•Carli’s class read their Arctic poems and posted a recent play as well as photos of the year.
•Richard’s everexpanding class blog has been going all year.
•Chris used her class blog to share plans with parents and she scans student work for display.
•Karin’s class created biographies that are posted online in addition to an informational web page.
•Nicole started a blog this year to send home newsletters and information about the class.
•Gabe uses a blog to send home information on various pages.
•Nancy’s student photographers made a Sugaring Time movie last week and they have been using an Observation Blog this year.
•Mary Jo has used her web page for the past two years to list upcoming events and curricular links.
•Renee’s class created slideshows about inventions that created a freedom and they have maintained a class blog.

Many of these links will not stay active as teachers will take them down to make room for next year’s classes, but for now they are wonderful audiovisual representations of student learning. The pride students exhibit when they hear that their work is on the Internet is palpable in the room and it is fun to hear them talk of sharing it with their families.

Next year I would like to work on moving some of the static content that is consistent across the classes into a grade level wiki that could be linked to each teacher page. I would like to continue to expand the multimedia projects that students post online. A couple of teachers and I are looking at possibilities for expanding student communication and collaboration by sharing blog entries across classes and possibly in other countries.

Note, fellow EDC500 class members, I didn’t get to this until late today so if you commented on my “Project Update” I’m sure that Alice will count that as a comment on my Project. CW

Why do this project?

I undertook this project in an attempt to compile the web pages, wikis and blogs that I have created or may need to create. In the past I have had web pages hosted at a variety of addresses that even I couldn’t find, let alone someone else who might have common interest. This blog (http://yestech.edublogs.org) is designed to host my links to school sites, courses I teach as well as my professional portfolio. I needed to spend this week focusing on blogs as a tool for me before I knew enough to follow up on my ideas about ways teachers and students at school could use blogs. My work this week has confirmed what I have read in several blogs about having to write and create a blog for my own purposes before I could offer any guidance to others who might want to try this form of learning reflection for themselves and/or their students.

What is my project?

My project is essentially this blog- Learning & Teaching Using Technology: How can our students share what they have learned? I still have much to learn about fine-tuning this blog to make it the web presence I want it to be.

How have I done this project and what will I continue to do?

I have spent most of the week on this blog and the sites that connect to it. The blog will grow and change as I continue to work on it. In the next few days I will be connecting this blog to other work I have at other Internet addresses and and playing with how the design works and feels. The blog site itself has much more complexity that I haven’t yet fully utilized (e.g. In what areas would images help a reader understand? What about posting videos would be most powerful? Podcasts?) I am not a “journaller” or person given to frequent written reflection so the dates on the last posts of this blog may serve to push me to keep it current. We’ll see!

What will it change in my practice?

I love the idea of having my resources connected to one place that is interactive. I’ve been intimidated to make things so ‘public’, but I’m getting more comfortable and look forward to the feedback it will allow. I hope that several teachers at school will want to develop classroom blogs and we collaborations across classes and schools in various settings.

How is it collaborative?

This project is a big step for me in moving to new ways of collaboration and connecting with other educators. The comments posted have been great and I hope that during the school year the content will be interesting enough to engage teachers at school in online conversations. I see this as a chance to open my work up to parents and students in a new way as perhaps they too will comment and react. If I can interest teachers in blogs for their classrooms that will give me a new connection to what students are learning and writing.

I heard Will Richardson at NECC07 and have been reading his blog this summer. It has been interesting to read his continuing thoughts about the importance of the quality and purpose of blogs, not just blogging for blogging sake. Also, he has been questioning the format of “expert” presentations at NECC, BLC, etc. and writing about trying to build conversations and connections as part of working with teachers in groups.

I was one of many who responded to a July 17 blog entry about the difficulty of getting educators to focus on their own learning and not just the students. That was my first comment on a blog other than a class or contained group. So far, no return comments…

I could read this blog every day and have 6 new things to try!! Today he wrote about a virtual presentation he did for teachers using Skype and iSight following up with SlideShare a podcast and posting to a wiki–wow! I can almost follow how to do that, but it is a bit mindblowing.

Mike Arsenault mentioned that slideshare.net is adding podcasting to slideshows and indeed theyn now have “slidecasts” which allow to upload each one and the soundtrack will accompany the slides. I love this for kids who are using digital cameras and iPods with recorders to be able to post their work online.