BloggingSmart.org

Facebook is certainly not new anymore.  In fact it is ubiquitous.  Do we even e-mail our friends these days? Should we approach it differently as teachers?

Sure, I use e-mail at work, but my Facebook icon is first in my bookmarks, and while I check personal e-mail at least a few times a week, I check Facebook twice a day if not more.  Most of my friends from senior school, university, my old job, my current workplace, and church are in my network.  I would certainly be less connected without this neat web application.

However, this presents a problem…

If I think I am connected through Facebook, it is truly nothing compared to most of my students.  I teach 90 students this year and 81 of them admit (in an anonymous survey) to having a Facebook account.  I have learned through conversation with them that they are at least as addicted as I am.  Many of them have hundreds of friends, post innumerable videos and pictures on line (including some of me, I hear ).  And…

Some of them want to friend request me…

My answer will always be no.  For a number of reasons:

1. Teachers should not be friends with students.  The relationship is one with a duty of care, and I truly do feel affection for my students (well, most of them;-)  ), but it is not an equal relationship.  The closest relationship I have with any of my students is a mentor relationship, where I am the mentor and they are the protege.  The fact that facebook calls the members of a network friends should instantly fire off warning bells for teachers.  I was even uncomfortable with the interactions between educators and Arthus over the summer… our colleagues are our equals, not our students, it can never be healthy for us or them if we alter that relationship.
2. Facebook is a not a carefully moderated environment.  I cannot control the posts of others, or even save the all of the actions of others to use for my own protection.  If a student were to accuse me of inproper conduct it may be impossible for me to defend myself.  It is almost as dangerous as meeting with a student on your own in a room with a closed door and no windows.
3. Teachers and students should interact in an educational environment.  Facebook is a social environment.  Almost every school now has technology tools like e-mail, wikis, blogs and discussion boards. They are maintained, moderated, and with logs stored by the school system.  This is the place for an educational connection to take place.  I would not meet my students at starbucks… the school building is the right place.

Reflecting on World Religions - or “Oooh, Aaaah”

So… how do you get students engaged in an authentic reflection experience?  How do you know that they are learning in the classroom?  How can you find out what they are truly engaged in?

The answer to all these questions is blogging.  I asked my World Religions students to complete a weekly blog post on their personal blog (hosted on my domain - learningsmart.org).  The only instructions I gave them was that it needed to be at least a paragraph in length and that it should be their “Oooh, Aaah” moment of the week.  They had to respond to something from class (related to World Religions) that made them think, or irritated them, or surprised them.  The responses have been stunning (check them out by following the links on the blogroll blogs.learningsmart.org)!

Admittedly some students have not been engaging with the activity… some have had to be chased to post, others have produced limited posts like:

My ooooh moment for this week is when Mr. Smart said that we would be switching seats already this early in the year. He said we would switch about once every 3 weeks, which is suprising because that means we have new disscusion groups often. This just suprised me.

But even a post like this has its value.  I have been able to post comments online to this student, and follow up in the classroom… was this the most significant moment for you this week in class?  What are you learning?  Without this activity it would be much harder to get a feeling for the level of engagement in the classroom.

Other posts have helped me to see when students are struggling with a topic.  After a week including a lesson on Plato’s Cave this topic dominated blog posts including many references to being “confused” or “blown away” and many comments about questionning the nature of reality.  This gave me a great opportunity to follow up the following week.

I have  been tracking the topics that students have chosen to write about and can see that students are most engaged in the ethics portion of the week, but that the specific religions topics are still engaging students.  This has been impacting my planning and helping me to balance my instruction.

The best part of using the blogs has been that I have been able to make connections with all my students and hear more about their responses to the material we are studying.  The reality is that when you teach large classes you don’t have time to make personal contact with all students.  The blogs have allowed me to see that many of my “quiet students” are some of the most engaged.  The blogs have given some students a forum that is well-suited to them.  Infact some students have become prolific bloggers posting more than once a week.

One element which still needs development is commenting.  There is nothing more exciting than seeing a blog which has inspired a conversation… an easy thing to find at many edublogs.  Some of my students (with a little encouragement) have begun to comment on the posts of their peers, but not many.  I have been trying to comment on every post that every student makes (hopefully modelling good practice!), but I have still not seen much student engagement… any ideas?

So why did I wait for this?

One of my most important values as a teacher is that I wont ask my students to participate in any activity that either I don’t understand, or that I have not completed myself.  This was the primary reason why it has taken me years to bring myself to ask my students to blog.  

Over the last two years I have been following the blogging careers of Doug Belshaw (dougbelshaw.com), Karl Fisch (http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/), and Jeff Utecht (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/), amongst others.  This summer I launched my own blog (see around you!) and have been exploring the challenges of commenting on the educational world around me.  Blogs should be personal, interesting, interactive, purposeful and public.  These were the values that I wanted to instill in the blogs produced by my students.  These are the values I have seen in the best edublogs I have read.

For student blogs however there needs to be an increased element of security and protection  for the students.  This was the reason I chose to host the blogs on my server (@http://bluehost.com) to avoid inappropriate ads and to control the content being published on the domain.  I knew that Doug Belshaw had used Word Press MU, that it had good admin controls and was fully customizable.  In addition I feel that I am now proficient at using a feedreader, and I can use this to track activity on all of the student blogs (thanks to google reader and the rss functions of Word Press blogs!).

So what are you waiting for?

There are many easy ways to get students blogging, but I would definately recommend beginning yourself.  Subscribe to some edublogs (like those mentionned above) using google reader or e-mail, start writing yourself (the easiest way is to sign up for a blog at edublogs.org), and then get your students involved.  Word Press MU is pretty easy to use, but so is edublogs.org for students.  Let me know how your journey turns out 8-).

Some of you may have noticed that I dropped off the twitterverse, history teacher’s discussion forum, and the various blogs I comment on a few weeks ago.  I think I am now back… at least I was able to put together a coherent blog post and make it back onto twitter.  Tomorrow will be the test to see if it can last. :-o 

I think it was the beginning of the school year that kicked me out of my networks.  I became a spectator, rather than a contributor.  In some ways this has been good for me.  I focused on my teaching, and implemented some great ideas I found in my feedreader. 8-) 

Sorry to everyone that was expecting resources from me… especially Nick who is still waiting for some stuff on 19th century China… I promise it is coming!

To anyone else who is feeling information overload… take a break… focus on important things… family first, then friends, then work, then the cloud… it helped me!

It has been far too long since I last posted here… this month has been incredible, but pretty intense, as only the beginning of the year can be.  My classes have been using lots of technology and I want to share some of the fabulous activities and products they have been working on.

Before that though… I thought it might be helpful to share a run down of the main tools I am using with my students this year.  You can check out most of these through learningsmart.org, and I would be happy to give you a guest login to most of the private spaces.  What applications do you use with your students?

Wordpress

Tool website - http://wordpress.org 
My version - http://learningsmart.org 

Use - Main portal for all online activities.  Contains introductory material on courses, a talent gallery of student work, contact information, and the blog function is used for news and homework updates.

Reason for selection - Most popular blogging software on the net.  Easy to set up and many themes to choose from (easily customizable).  Provides rss feeds and option for e-mail subscriptions.  Easy to post pages and posts.  Could even be used as a content management system if I need to post public documents.

Moodle

Tool website - http://moodle.org 
My version - http://classroom.learningsmart.org 

Use - Password protected content management system for World History and World Religions.  Contains separate areas for both subjects. Areas include course materials.  A news forum for updates (they get e-mailed to students).  Forums are available for student discussions and there is a chat function for synchronous communication.

Reason for selection - Most popular open source CMS on the web.  Lots of support at http://moodle.org.  Much cheaper and more versatile than Blackboard.   It has lots of themes and plugins making it fully customizable.  Logs on the website allow the administrator to follow every mouse click of a user.  Versalite editors allow uploading of all file types and embedding of html code.  This allows posting of every type of resource you can think of.  Since the site requires a login all resources are private and the environment is secure for educational purposes.

Google Apps

Tool website - http://www.google.com/educators/p_apps.html 
My version - http://docs.learningsmart.org/ & http://calendar.learningsmart.org 

Use - Online calendar accessible to all students and parents.  The calendar can be used to plan lessons, post student deadlines, and provide reminders to students and parents.  Online document authoring (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentations, and forms).  Documents can be submitted to the teacher without the need for e-mail.  Documents can be collaboratively authored by students.  This allows for powerful peer editing and novel forms of group projects.

Reason for selection - Google offer their suite of applications for free, without advertisements to educators.  Student logins can be created en masse and students can have access to the calendar, e-mail, documents, wiki, websites and chat functions.  It is also possible to limit the applications they can use.  I have blocked their use of e-mail, and chat.  I may use the website and wiki functions later in the year.  Zoho provides a similar suite, but does not supply the same ad-free or administrative privileges for educators.

Wikispaces

Tool website - http://wikispaces.com 
My version - http://wiki.learningsmart.org/ 

Use - The wiki is used for a-synchronous activity online.  It provides a wiki function where pages can be edited by individual students, or groups of students.  The discussion board on each page allows for a second means of interactivity.  Wikispaces allows for rich text editing and the embedding of images and flash objects.  The wiki will be used for collaborate notetaking in World History AP classes, online lessons, collaborative encyclopaedia pages and other activities.

Reason for selection - I have been using wikispaces with my classes for two years.  They provide a private wiki free of advertisements to educators.  Wikispaces also provide an easy way to upload student accounts without having to give a student e-mail. While google apps and wetpaint provide comparable products this has the best customer service and has been focused on education for three years.

Wordpress MU