Blogs are Great!… If you follow the guidelines

Blogging is a great tool for teachers to connect with their students and the parents, but it is also important to keep in mind what you are posting, if it follows the privacy that the students require and what the parents have requested. We have found some great blogs but we have been slightly skeptical of some due to the use of the actual students’ pictures being posted onto a public blog of which anyone can access as well as giving information (nothing personal, more-so on what activities they have been doing) on the child’s progress and active participation.

It will be important for us to remember students’ privacy and to make sure that the blog is set to an adequate privacy setting (ie. Dayforce has manageable settings in order to allow the students’ privacy and will require permission from the parents). Screening who views the site will also be helpful to make sure only those who should be looking at the site can. Sites such as ePal are very interesting and, luckily, only allows verified teachers to use the site and can only be used via permission from both parties. Sites that allow sharing are best if there is a mutual agreement as to who can view and add to blogs and discuss teaching strategies.

I am not meaning to negatively portray anyone’s blog as they clearly put a lot of effort and time into making sure that people can view and navigate the site in order to access the information that they are searching for, but there are some aspects of blogs (such as the use of children’s’ pictures on an open website) of which may endanger the children or overlook the parents’ wishes. The blogs that did have information about the kids may have had permission from the families, I don’t know, but that is just something we noticed could become a problem if the proper steps have not been taken. This tech class as well as many others have emphasized the importance of confidentiality so that is why we quickly became aware of the blogs where the teachers posted information about their students and we have all become greatly aware of what we should do to make sure that the parents and the students are okay with their educational experience being shared on the digital world and in which way.

I still believe that blogs are a great way to connect to your class and will be using them in my own teaching practice, but the negatives and the cautions of blogging need to be discussed in order to avoid making the mistakes.

Magical Math Blog: Group Tech Inquiry 336

The blog Musing Mathematically is a useful tool for both teachers and students. Nat Banting (@NatBanting) posts regularly on how to teach math to students in a fun and encouraging way. The blog has an entire tab that provides classroom resources to use in order to teach some of the more difficult topics, explains why they are useful and gives the links resource. I like this blog as it caters to three audiences; parents, students and teachers. Not only does Nat provide resources, explain the difficulties of teaching certain mathematical concepts and teaches the reader how to teach/learn the skills; but they also blog on their home page that documents their experiences as a teacher, how they overcame problems and what they have noticed about other exceptional teachers. Each post on the home blog has a title, gives a small paragraph as to what it will be about and then has a “continue reading” tab if the reader would like to learn more. The fall-down tab allowing the reader to continue is useful for people browsing the blog as they will not have to scroll through extremely long posts in order to see what they are looking for.

Musing Mathematically’s main menu consists of Home, Musing Mathematically Blog, Presentations, Publications, Classroom Resources, Math Fair, Links and Contact; this is helpful as it is accessible and easy to understand and move around in. The blog is organized in a way where even those who do not use much technology can easily search the blog and find useful information or resources.

I enjoyed this blog as one of the subjects I am anxious to teach and provide tools for is math; this blog can help me in the future if I am ever stuck teaching a topic and need help as to how to address the class’s or students’ needs. I am very happy that I found this blog and believe that it will be very beneficial to me throughout my career.

I have provided the link to this amazing blog:

http://natbanting.com/blog/

ePals Blogging

A different view of the use of blogs is the international opportunities that they can provide. International blogs and teaching sites must be thought of very carefully in order to prevent just anyone from following the blog, but it does provide opportunities for the students to share their culture with those around the world. The article “Boundless Opportunity” by Diane Schaffhauser (2009) presents the case of two partner schools whom of which connected and shared blogs that could only be seen by the other class and their guardians in order to share their work and to see the diversity of the classes. The class used ePals (an online blogging site) in order to communicate with the other class; one was in Isreal while the other was in the United States. Schaffhauser states that the blog between the classes was used “so their two classes could express their unique cultures and learn about music and dance specific to other parts of the world” (p. 13); this would be very useful if the class were to be creating a project in those subjects and would like to share that work while also being introduced to a new type of music and dance found in other cultures. Collaboration between the classrooms will also allow the students to study and understand other countries to a better degree, this would also be helpful if students were studying other places in the world and would thus get real-world experience with them rather than reading from text. The article wrote that “in the midst of doing a unit on Latin music, teaching her class dances, instruments, and music styles. Baugher [The United States teacher] said ‘Then it occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity for them to express their dance culture’ [and then posted a video labelled] ‘This is how we dance in DC” (p.14). The teacher got a reply from the other class showing a very different form of dance that was very choreographed and unique to their culture. Also, ePal allowed the teachers to help teach the opposing class their language. This site could be very beneficial to the classroom and has safety measurements to protect the teacher and the students alike. Only teachers are allowed on the site so students would not be online posting, the teacher must approve another classroom to connect with them and the teachers come from qualified schools. Students, as always, would also have the opportunity to not be included in any photos or videos that are shared on the site and this blog would only be used if the parents have given consent for the students’ photos to be taken and shared with the other class(es).

Bibliography

Schaffhauser, D. (2009). Boundless Opportunity. T H E Journal, 36(9), 13–18. Retrieved from

http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ap

h&AN=44706034&site=ehost-live&scope=site

EDCI 336 Tech Inquiry

While reading Isabelle’s post, I was introduced to brand new blogging website, Edutopia, as well as having discovered different uses for blogging in the classroom (Great find Isabelle!).

I looked around Edutopia and found many interesting blogs that gave a lot of useful information. One blog that I found very interesting was Cindy Bourdo’s blog where she recounted The Biggest Lesson of My First Year Teaching. Bourdo talks about the stress that she experienced and the change in her life once she witnessed an important strategy that other teachers practiced. Cindy said that she spent all of her time writing lesson plans and thinking of new learning and teaching techniques, yet still felt stressed every day and had a difficult time working with the students. Throughout this program we have been taught how to assess, how to write unit plans and different ways to teach certain subjects; all of these are extremely important to know and master, but Cindy points out that the missing part you can never study in university is how to create a welcoming teacher-student relationship with the students and how much that can alter your own and the child’s experience in the classroom.

Building upon what useful information the blogs on Edutopia provided, the site also gives inspirational and interesting videos on different strategies of teaching and how to help children of diverse needs. This part of the site included videos such as The Sensory Room: Helping Students with Autism Focus and Learn, 60-Second Strategy: Participation Cards, The Power of Relationships in Schools and so on. What was very helpful on this blog was how these videos were organized; above the title of the video there would be words in bold classifying the video and what it is meant to teach. Titles included “Learning Environments,” “Student voice,” “School Climate,” “Teaching Strategies,” and “School Leadership.” I think that videos can also be a useful tool when blogging but must be managed correctly and, must make sure that each student shown in the video has given consent to have their image taken.

While making my way through this blog and looking at the different videos, I realized the importance of organization in a classroom blog, hopefully reflecting what my real-life classroom looks like. It gave me some ideas on how to present my classroom by updating it to briefly explain what we worked on that week and what will follow it. I liked that Edutopia had a drop-down menu revealing the topics that the blog covered including assessment, integrated studies, project-based learning, social and emotional learning, teacher development, technology integration … etc. I found that the technology integration aspect was very interesting due to me not knowing much about technology but also knowing the importance of technology in today’s time and age.

Isabelle had a great find when choosing this site and I am happy to say that I will be bookmarking it on my computer and using it for years to come. I think that it provides so many important sources and information that will benefit myself, my classroom and any future students.