Using Classblogs and Teacher blogs together to information teaching through reflective practice
Step 1 – Get information
As part of my role working with Edna and working with classroom teachers implementing technology I need to come up with ideas. Luckily the internet is full of very smart people writing about their thesis, reflecting on research, discussing teaching methods and comparing teaching tools.
The first step in understanding the impact of the web on teaching practice was really just reading all these recorded thoughts that are out there.
Eg Blog of Proximal Development
I basically started by typing in topics I was interested in. For example using technology in the classroom. Thousand of blogs appeared. When you do a google search, particularly on current topics of interest many blog results are returned.
When I’m writing lesson plans I need to have the best information available to make good decisions about what will work at this time for these students. This information needs to be current and it needs to tell you information on what works and how you came to that conclusion.
Reading blogs has really opened my eyes to power of words, not worksheets. Most of the time I want to create my own worksheets. The multitude of blogs, teachers, researchers and students help me get ideas for what I want to teach.
Step 2 – Practice
We’ve set up this blog in the classroom and it’s just amazing. The quality of learning experiences is great. We still have a lot to learn but because the idea is to just keep working at it, improving it, I feel that the students are learning how to add to each others learning.
What kinds of things we post:
- videos
- lesson reflections
- examples of work
The most amazing experience has been the work we have done on speeches. The students have put their speech topics on the web.
Our classblog is a place to start conversations about learning and we wanted to help the students experience this. We have asked the kids to provide all of their knowledge on a topic. We’ve then engaged other teachers, parents and students to help the students make their speeches better. The level of comments have indicated that the students really understand this idea.
For example: Isobel
I’m learning from these 10yr olds.
Not only this but next year I’ll be able to come back to the blog and use it to demonstrate learning for the next group as well as reuse some of the content. This will mean we’ll get the benefits but it won’t be quiet as much effort.
Step 3 – Record the sticky notes
… said ‘Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.’ Blogs are a vehicle for reflection.
It’s a place to record those sticky notes so that next year I can go back and read what I thought and use this in my programming. Additionally I can link to my classblog and see what the students were writing about, I can also see the links that I found at that time and I can ask others to add their links and opinions.
Everytime you teach a lesson you have things you think you may have been able to do a little better. Where do you record this information? Sticky notes? Daybook? Program? Paper? In your head?
So then I would end up losing these bits of paper and thinking ‘what was that I wanted to change?’ What was it? So you end up repeating old mistakes or not capatilising on the great ideas you had.
So I decided to set up this blog (which I work on with another classteacher) for collecting our thoughts.
The benefits are:
I can come back to my blog next year
We can add links at the bottom
The great thing about establishing a blog is that if you commit to it it can help you build this time for reflection into your daily life. It starts to just make sense to put things on it.
Step 4 – Share with peers
Was the worst lesson you’ve ever taught a result of lack of skills on your part, bad content choices. How did you work out what to do next time?
Often you have a conversation with a fellow teacher about what worked and what didn’t. <stat> This is good because you can debate pros and cons of different approaches, take the context into consideration for if the class you were teaching were excellents that might have an impact on your planning.
Activity – Tell someone a great idea or a problem you’ve had this year, Now respond. (3mins, 30 secs to tell 30 secs for feedback)
Did you learn something?
Did you see another persons perspectives?
Slide – you + you + conversation = better practice
Imagine if we captured everything that was said in this room. The potential benefits are huge. Not only that but you start to realize that not only is the conversation recorded but all the reference material and tools are recorded as well. It makes it easier for you to be better.
Everything that is useful sits together in context:
- content
- your opinion
- other opinions
- links
- resources
Because we have all the information their including relevant information about the time that you had those thoughts, tags to help you find the information etc. We are now ALL able to resuse this information the next time we go to plan an activity. This will mean that we are able to plan for learning that is informed by these reflections and has the potential to be more effective.
Conclusion
Kids, teachers, communities and researchers are all participating in this conversation about what works and what doesn’t and then immediately applying this to practice
This amazing network just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The potential is to make things better and easier. It just takes a little bit more work to start with.
Connecting with other people really means that you can take the pressure off yourself. You start to realize that everyone is making mistakes but that if you’re learning from them and doing new things then your still way ahead of the race.
Not only this but I can take the pressure of of myself by allowing others to help me and also by accepting the fact that as long as I’m doing a little bit of reflection often I don’t need to be perfect and me and the class can draw on many sources to help us become smarter. So information and people both contribute to our knowledge.
And from what I’ve seen up at the next level researchers and policy makers are able to hear what’s happening on the ground and be better informed about practice.
Where do you start?
Read some blogs to get some ideas. Start a classblog. Start your own reflective blog.
