Reflection on my experience with Blogs

Over the past 3 weeks (this may sound melodramatic!!) a whole new world has opened to me on my computer all thanks to Blogs. My husband and kids have been neglected as scroll, read and comment on a vast array of others Blogs. The use of Blogs as a teaching aid has so many potential benefits for our learners if we use the correct pedagogy with this tool. From my readings and research into Blog use, I have found that one of the main benefits of using blogs for learning is its ability to encourage students to write for a broad audience and that it has a positive impact on the learners' writing fluency. Another great benefit of the blog is that it offer students an opportunity to interact with peers and to learn from each other. Because they enable readers to post comments to blog postings, they offer a forum for discussion, a great example of constructivist learning.


By listing some of the great benefits and also some of the limitations of blogs I can now use this to scaffold how I could use blogs in my teaching context. A great scaffolding tool that can be used in your pedagogy with ICT is the PMI Chart. Below is an example of a PMI chart I have completed to demonstrate how an analyse can be conducted to show the dangers and benefits of using blogs in schools.

PLUS	MINUS	INTERESTING FACTS
Students can comment on each others’ blog posts outside the classroom. This contributes to creating a sense of community, and takes learning and peer interaction outside the confines of the classroom.	Many blogs are very much opinion based and not factual	The majority of minuses are purely based on the pedagogy and scaffolding tools used by the teacher.
Blogs are often used as a tool for reflection	without effective scaffolding proper reflection will most likely not occur
Used as a way to get students to produce a multimedia portfolio	with the adequate level of ICT knowledge students will be left behind in terms of multimedia
Blogs are an excellent source of up to date reading material: encourage your students to find a blog they really enjoy and subscribe to it.	Blogs can be time consuming and eat into other important learning areas
encourage students to write for a broad audience and that it has a positive impact on the learners' writing fluency	If not assessed can lead to bad habits forming in punctuation and grammar

 

Blogs and their potential for education fit within a social constructivist approach to learning where blogs play a role in both internal processing of the material by the student (reflection) and the external communication (comments, peer review) about it.

Bruns and Humphreys (2005) suggest that the pedagogical models need to change from the traditional linear learning paradigms to a social constructivist pedagogical model which includes problem solving in a collaborative environment that requires students to enact knowledge through a process of shared understanding. (Minocha & Thomas, 2007: 190)

When I enter the field as a primary school teacher I feel that to not give my learners access to Blogs and the potional they offer would seriously hinder their learning progress.  As part of my literacy teaching I feel it would be a wonderful tool to allow free thinking/writing. As we are very time limited in what we teach our learners the use of ICT and blogs in particular, cover so many learning areas at the one time. For example I could give my students the task of learning about rainforest's. For me to use a blog in the teaching of rainforest's I would have to carefully scaffold with analytical tools what the students where required to post on their blogs about rainforest's. I have selected the KWL strategy.  Now my learners know what basic information I require initially on their blog I would then require them to research using the Internet the information gaps they were wanting to know about rainforest's. My scaffolding questions would form the first part of the assessment as I would ask them (in comments on the blog) to show on their blog, maps of where rainforest's are located around the world. Furthermore I would then move them onto to create outcomes with the knowledge they have formed on rainforest's.

From this one assignment on rainforest's, by using a blog we have covered learning area of writing, reading (literacy), geography, problem solving, multimedia to name a few. By commenting on the blogs I as the teacher are continually assessing the students works and allowing the student to redraft and add to what they know. Allowing the students to to determine what they want to learn about rainforest's through the scaffolding tool KWL allowed the learning to be student-centred. Also by letting them find the research via the Internet is another example of student centred learning.

Refernces

A. Bruns, and S. Humphreys, "Wikis in teaching and assesment: the M/Cyslopedia project" 2005

S. Minocha, and P.G.Thomas, "Collaborative Learning in a Wiki Environement: Experiences from a software engineering course" 2007 p190