Final Vision: Blogging with Kids!

Here we are at the end of the course and ready as I’ll ever be to share this project! This has been a big learning experience for me for many reasons. Here, I’d like to share a bit about the process leading up to the finished (but still very much in-progress!) class blog.

Triumphs

Firstly, I’d never have dreamed of doing a class blog before being presented with this project! In fact, I’d never have blogged myself if it weren’t for Aaron forcing me to in this class and in LIBE 467. And I’m not going to lie, I really hated it at first! The thought of putting myself out there for others to judge really scared me. But, as the story goes, the more we do something the easier it becomes. This class in particular with it’s weekly postings really pushed me over that line from discomfort to developing confidence and voice. Because of this, I’m hoping to give that same experience to my students. Thank you Aaron!

I’ve been contemplating for years how to have an online presence with my class that really connects students, parents, home and school. Davison (2019) states “Parents want to be informed and be able to contribute and have conversations with their children about their day in school. Blogging is a vehicle to help make this happen. The blog is a way for parents to engage and have face to face conversations with their children about their day in school.” Some colleagues have created Facebook groups for their classes and this never really sat well with me as the forum I wanted. As I’ve mentioned previously, I have created class sites before, but they were stagnant one-pagers simply for kids to link out to other sites. I’ve also used FreshGrade successfully as a tool to share student work, but it is lacking the student voice. I truly believe that blogging might be the happy medium I’ve been striving for.

When I presented this idea to my class they were over-the-moon excited! I explained to them why we were doing it - to give purpose to their writing - and they immediately started shooting ideas at me about what they wanted to write about. I’ve never experienced that reaction when telling them to get out their journals! We discussed the things we need to pay attention to when writing for an audience and they seemed to take it seriously. Once the basic design elements of the blog had been decided and implemented and they saw what we could create they were amazed. These kids look at websites all the time, but I don’t think it ever occurred to them that they would be able to make a “real” website themselves.

Process

I began by showing the class quite a few different class blogs that were already up and running, as suggested by Kathleen Morris in her article Blogging With Very Young Students. The first step she suggests is commenting on other class blogs. We did not write any comments but we did look at where comments can go. We focused on looking at the design elements of the blogs and the content they were posting. One surprising but happy result of looking at other blogs was that my class decided they didn’t really like the ones with busy designs and backgrounds. In the end I chose the theme as there are just way too many choices to leave it up to the whole class, but I did consider their thoughts in choosing.

I created the “Teacher’s Corner” and “Learning Games and Resources” pages on my own. I still wanted all of their educational links in an easy-to-access place, from home and school. I also created the “Teacher’s Corner” to distance my voice from the students. I knew that it might be hard for me to not post on the blog as it’s such a great way to communicate with parents, but I really wanted the main feed to be student-centred and created.

Once the site was designed the class and I wrote the first post together. I typed while they gave me ideas. I took the pictures and added them to the post. I expect the first few posts might happen like this until they are comfortable with the process, have learned how to login and have an idea of what a blog post looks like.

We haven’t yet shared the site with parents. I am leaving the password protection off until this class is wrapped up and then I will send the following letter home complete with password.

Challenges

The biggest challenge by far was writing a blog post with the input of 22 kids ranging in age from seven to nine years old! As I mentioned above, they all had really great ideas about topics they want to write about and it was challenging getting them to stay focused on just writing an introductory post. The other challenge was to hear all the students and make sure that everyone had a say in how the first post should look. I think the posting will get easier as they begin to write individual entries but will present a new challenge in teaching them how to login with their own accounts and edit their work well. Time can only tell us how this will go!

My own challenge was learning a new blogging site in a relatively short amount of time while also working on it with my students. I’ve had a year to learn the dashboard of my personal blog and it’s quirks. It might have been easier to use the same blogging site with my students as I’m already very familiar with it, but I wasn’t keen on some of the features and I wanted something tailored to use in an educational setting. Jackson (2012) supports this sentiment: “Although easy to use, [some] tools are not specific to the education community and might not have all the safety and supervisory features a teacher, particularly an elementary grade teacher, needs.” On Edublogs I can create an account for each student so that they can login with their own credentials and post with me as moderator. 

And so now, without further delay, I present to you my class blog! I am really excited to see where this project takes us this year and so see my students’ writing flourish! 

http://mrslosell.edublogs.org/

Works Cited

Davison, Sharon (2019, February 21). Blogging with Elementary Students. Powerful Learning Practice. Retrieved from https://plpnetwork.com/2019/02/21/why-i-blog/ 

Jackson, Lorrie (2012, February 28). Blogging? It's Elementary,My Dear Watson!. Education World. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml 

Morris, Kathleen (2011, July 19). Blogging with Very Young Students. Primary Tech. Retrieved from http://www.kathleenamorris.com/2011/07/19/blogging-with-very-young-students/ 

Vision Project: Learner and Audience Considerations

For my final vision project I am creating a class blog. This isn’t the first time I’ve created a web tool to use with my students. Just last year I created a one page website that had all of the web-tool links on it so that my primary students could easily find the sites from one place. The site I created was heavily used by my students and served its purpose, but it had a very limited audience...my students. Also, my students had no input into the site. It was basically an index of links.

My goal for this project is to get the students involved in blogging (basically online journaling) and widen the audience a bit. As Jackson (2012) points out, “Educators know that students write better when they have a real audience -- not just a teacher with a red pen. In the past, finding such an audience was a challenge. But with Internet access and some basic software, any student can write for the world to see.” Although one page of the blog will still contain those web links for online tools, it won’t be the main purpose anymore and it won’t be on the home page. The intended audience is the students and their parents. For the students I really think that blogging will give some purpose to their writing and will hopefully motivate them to take some pride in what they are writing. It will also be a positive way of incorporating technology into the classroom. For the parents, they will gain some insight into what their children are doing at school, reported by their own children. As a

parent myself, with kids who come home and report that they “can’t remember” what they did at school I can’t tell you how much I’d love to see something like this. The hope is that the blog will be something that the kids and parents can sit read through together and bridge the home and school gap. Kathleen Morris (2011) supports this, writing  “A blog is something that parents can sit down and comment on with their child at home. Blogs can create a bridge between home and school. There is numerous research which suggests that family participation in learning is one of the most accurate predictors of a child’s success in school and beyond.” 

So far, the individual pages I’ve considered adding to the blog, besides the home page where the student blogging with be showcased, are a resources page (as mentioned above) and a “teacher’s corner” page where I can write about things without interfering with the kids’ work. Over the next two weeks I’m going to spend some time with the students introducing them to the idea of blogging, viewing some other class blogs and working together to create our first post. Down the road I’d like the students to create the posts, but I think it’ll be really important to model what that looks like in the beginning.

Some considerations that I’ve had during my planning process is that some parents might be apprehensive about their children having an online presence. For this reason I will send a letter home explaining the safety precautions that will be taken, which will include password protection (after sharing for this course!), students’ first names only and no identifying photos. I will sit down with my admin and beforehand and make sure they are supportive going forward and seeing if they have additional suggestions.

As a secondary audience I think that my colleagues might be interested in seeing the blog once it’s up and running and possibly try and start their own class blog. As of yet, I’m not sure how I would present it to them because I haven’t gone through the process yet and I’m not sure what challenges I’ll face. One challenge I can anticipate is simply the time it takes to learn the dashboard on Edublogs. It’s not a difficult site to navigate, but it does take some time to learn how to set up the blog on the back-end. I’ve spent some time this week adding a bit of content and editing the theme. I could see this being quite daunting for someone who isn’t comfortable with technology. These people may need some more mentorship to get a class blog up and running.

Works Cited

Jackson, Lorrie (2012, February 28). Blogging? It's Elementary,My Dear Watson!. Education World. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml 

Morris, Kathleen (2011, July 19). Blogging with Very Young Students. Primary Tech. Retrieved from http://www.kathleenamorris.com/2011/07/19/blogging-with-very-young-students/ 

* All pictures acquired through Creative Commons and are labelled for noncommercial reuse

Final Vision Project Design Considerations

When considering ideas for this final project the concept of win-win-win was the one that really resonated with me. I want something that will benefit me in my studies for this class and stretch my learning a little beyond my comfort zone, something that could possibly help my colleagues and most of all something that would be useful to my students. The idea that I’ve landed on is a class blog. Blogging is something I am becoming more comfortable with, thanks to this class and LIBE 467. 

In this class we’ve covered a vast array of topics. Many of them were ones that I felt very comfortable researching and commenting about, but one that is really out of my comfort zone is ICT. It’s not necessarily that I’m uncomfortable using technology, it’s that I have a hard time wrapping my head around integrating it into a primary classroom! Especially as I feel that kids are exposed to a lot of tech in their lives already. A class blog will force me to branch out of my comfort zone in terms of incorporating a little more technology into my classroom and will also teach the kids how to use technology in a productive way.

I work with a really tight-knit group of colleagues, for which I am really lucky. There is a lot of collaboration and support on our team. I’m hoping that if I can be successful with class blogging that I might be able to support some others to do the same. Especially as I am deeply involved in professional development planning, it could be something that I could run as a workshop in the future.

Finally, I think my students and parents will benefit the most from a class blog. How many of us in the elementary classroom struggle to get students to write in journals? I know I get a lot of one or two sentence entries and whining complaints along the lines of “I don’t know what to write…” Jackson (2012) points out that “Blogs, because of their ease of use, and because of the context of news and editorial column writing, have become a highly effective way to help students to become better writers. Research has long shown that students write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet.”

Following are some useful resources to help me get started:

In Blogging with Very Young Students Kathleen Morris explains the process of getting a blog started, particularly with younger primary students. She also has an extensive list with links to other classroom blogs.

In Blogging with Elementary Students Sharon Davison shares her own journey, tips for blogging with students and the benefits of blogging with students.

https://edublogs.org/ In my searching for a blogging platform, I came across Edublogs (a Wordpress product). Edublogs offers a free account to educators and allows the admin (teacher) to set the level of privacy and control at whatever level they feel appropriate. This means that it can be used across a wide age-range of students, the younger the students the more control the teacher can have. There are also options to have the blog password protected, which means the parents can be given a password to access the blog but it won’t be available to the general public.

Works Cited

Davison, Sharon (2019, February 21). Blogging with Elementary Students. Powerful Learning Practice. Retrieved from https://plpnetwork.com/2019/02/21/why-i-blog/ 

Jackson, Lorrie (2012, February 28). Blogging? It's Elementary,My Dear Watson!. Education World. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml 

Morris, Kathleen (2011, July 19). Blogging with Very Young Students. Primary Tech. Retrieved from http://www.kathleenamorris.com/2011/07/19/blogging-with-very-young-students/ 

* All pictures acquired through Creative Commons and are labelled for noncommercial reuse

Phase 2 Reflections: Stretching our Thinking

The last month has been filled with many new ideas as well as some reinforcing of pre-existing ideas. I was pleasantly surprised to read other people’s blogs and find that the same topics could take us in so many different directions but that we usually arrived at similar conclusions! Following are some of my take-aways from the past few weeks of exploration.

1) Getting kids to love reading is simple.

Get interesting books into the hands of students and they will develop a love of reading on their own. This seems fairly simple, and it is an oversimplified statement. Reading levels matter and there still needs to be explicit reading strategy instruction. However, the biggest push in the right direction is for kids to discover the joy of reading. To accomplish this we must get interesting (to them!) books into their hands and model our own love of reading. 

2) Working together makes us stronger.

This is an idea I’ve encountered many times during the course of my studies, being close to finishing the teacher-librarian diploma. But the fact that it keeps coming up just reinforces the importance of positive working relationships and collaboration with colleagues. Beyond that it is important for teachers (be they classroom or non-enrolling) to take on leadership and professional development responsibilities in the school and beyond. 

3) Libraries around the world are more important than ever.

Nobody needs to worry about libraries becoming irrelevant as long as they are keeping up with the needs of their patrons, and it seems that they are. Now more than ever they are so important in bridging the economic and digital divide. Internet access is almost a life necessity these days and yet it can be prohibitively expensive for some households. We perceive North American countries as “have” nations, but there is a good portion of the population living beneath the poverty line with no hope of getting ahead without being able to do online training or apply for jobs over the internet.

Libraries in  developing countries are also providing access to relevant reading materials and internet. I have learned a lot about school libraries in this program, but stretching my thinking and research to public libraries has been eye-opening. For example, I had no idea the prevalence of mobile phones in developing nations. Simply having access to a mobile phone can go a long way in connecting people to resources.

I’m going to sign-off with a video I found called “Do We Still Need Libraries?” (2019). It’s a fun watch as it goes through the history of the library, ending on current relevance. One point made at the end of the video was that some people are calling for public libraries to be open late like restaurants and bars to give people a social space where they don’t have to drink or spend money. In the town where I live there’s a cafe/bar that caters to board game lovers. They have hundreds of board games on the shelves and for $5/person you can play as many games as you want for as long as you like. Mere blocks away is the public library. They also have board games, probably upwards of 50 of the most popular games, that patrons can play for as long as they like...for free. They’ll even let you bring in your snacks and (non-alcoholic) beverages as long as you are respectful of the space. It would seem that our libraries are paying close attention to the needs and wants of the 21st century patron.

Works Cited

Origin of Everything (2019, June 18). Do We Still Need Libraries? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfhvDhnA5U