Blog Log

This has been the perfect week for me to do a lot of thinking and research about blogs. Before this course, I have followed travel adventures of friends via blogs, but I haven't (successfully) created my own (somewhere in Cyberspace floats a single blog entry from a few years ago about teaching to which no one is able to reply!). After learning about RSS feeds this week, I might have been better at following blogs if I had known about the tool earlier. It seems an ingenious solution to the 'drifting' phenomenon I sometimes feel online - floating from one site to another, checking an e-mail account, and then the same a few minutes later, only to shut down my computer and then remember to check a friend's blog, restart the computer, find the blog in My Favourites, and discover there is no new entry today. I look forward to using my own feed for this course.
As a grade six teacher this year, one of my challenges is to motivate students to write. I realize now that in grade one, children are eager to please their teacher, and not yet bored of the school processes and hoops. By grade six, they have been asked to do some of these activities dozens of times, and they have come to the conclusion that much of school is completely unrelated to their real life.
Our grade team at my school is hoping to change that this year. Each week we have students write a Friday letter to their parents about the week at school. TWAS (this week at school) has apparently become painful for all involved in the last few years. Students don't want to write, and parents rarely reply to their children's writing. We are considering the idea that a handwritten letter to parents seems difficult and lacks authenticity for students. We are fortunate to have access to 60 wireless laptops at our school on an as-needed basis, and the students are excited to use these as often as possible. I already know from teaching grade one that writing on the laptops is both exciting and easier for students who have difficulty printing, or who find editing challenging (I would venture to say most children in grade one would agree with at least one). Deleting, adding, and moving ideas in a passage are much easier on the computer. In addition, using technology in the classroom seems more closely related with the life students are living - particularly in the affluent neighbourhood in which we are situated. Students live a life of iPods, MSN messaging, e-mail and video games.
So it seems successful teachers must meet students where they are at, and help them to extend opportunities and learning to 'the next level.' As a grade six team, we will approach parents at Meet the Teacher night (a relative dinosaur of an event in the teaching world) about the possibility of creating student blogs this year. We are excited about students writing weekly entries on a password protected blog, which parents/grandparents/aunts and uncles (near or far) can check each Friday/weekend. I am very curious what parent response will be to this idea. As most, if not all, parents at our school are connected to the Internet on a daily basis, we hope that they will be more likely to check the blog than to read another piece of paper that comes home. More importantly, we believe that parents will be more likely to reply to their child's writing, thereby sustaining an authentic purpose for writing each week. The online conversations which we hope will develop are a part of an interesting experiment which I will follow with great interest. If we offer students the technology and appropriate Web 2.0 tools, can we motivate writing and revive a tired tool of communication? How will this tool serve students who otherwise find writing challenging or limiting? What will the style of writing be? I know myself that I have a different tone when writing on a blog or e-mail than I do in an academic paper. As teachers we must clearly outline our purpose(s) and intent before evaluating the tool. What voice is appropriate in the students' writing? Must they still write in traditional letter-writing format? I have a feeling the blogging may take on a life of its own for some students, in the spirit of Web 2.0, I think we must accept this. What we must also accept is that some of the traditional ways of teaching are changing, or in fact are already obselete. As reflective teachers, we must investigate new tools, and new ways of incorporating technology if we are to serve, sustain and engage our students.

I'll keep you 'posted!'