Blogging as a Collaborative Tool: The Pros and Cons

In my last blog I spoke about a recent experience I had with using My Big Campus (the blogging tool I use in my classroom) as a collaborative tool.  The experience overall has been very positive, which leads me to reflect upon why blogging can be such a positive tool in supporting collaboration.  

The Pros: I was fortunate to have another class and teacher who were willing to participate and commit to making this experience successful.  As my students continued to grow confident using My Big Campus as a blogging and collaborative tool, I learned that in order for this experience to be successful, my students had to be engaged.  I think it is important that students are active, and are given ownership to their blogs and posts.  By having student engagement and interest, the students consistently blogged and collaborated with their peers from the other school.  It got to the point where students wanted to continue communicating about the project even at home!  Without student buy in or interest, the collaboration through blogging would not have been as effective.  Using blogging as a collaborative tool allowed my students the opportunity to engage in a profound experience where without blogging, the level of interaction would not have been possible.  Fortunately, this project in particular was extremely successful.  I owe the success not only to my students who worked diligently and preserved over several days, but I also owe the success to the other class we were communicating with.  The other class was just as engaged and interactive as my students.  They too came up with excellent projects and provided my students with insightful feedback.

The Cons: Of course, being in fourth grade we talked about how to extend the conversations in the blogs to further understanding and knowledge.  We tried to stay away from comments such as simply “good job!”  We wanted our students to try to keep the communication and conversations going to enable the opportunity to deepen their own understanding of hydroponics.  If the communication between peers are not timely, consistent, or meaningful, this could have made the experience not as valuable.  Using blogging as a collaborative tool, you have to rely on yourself, and each other to keep the conversations going.  The time it took to create, post, and collaborate between blogs was lengthy, so as a teacher you have to set aside some time for students to work, and become familiar with the tool.  However, I think if done appropriately, the time it takes to successfully use blogging as a collaborative tool is well worth it!  

Overall, in my experience with using blogging as a collaborative tool, it allowed my students to extend to levels of learning that would not have existed or have been possible without the use of blogging.  As teachers we continually have to reflect and be instructional decision makers.  We have to remember that once again, blogging is simply a technological resource that can be used to enhance and support student learning.  If blogging will further the student’s understanding and provide support towards the standards and objectives, then it is well worth the time.  Simply put, don’t just force blogging in your classroom to say that you have done it.  Use the blogging tool as a collaborative tool when you feel it is appropriate and an effective tool for your students to accomplish a goal or objective.

To learn more about the pros and cons of blogging as a collaborative tool, check out these websites:

http://www.ehow.com/info_8121319_pros-cons-using-blogging-classroom.html

http://meblog.pbworks.com/w/page/11074184/FrontPage

http://www.molly-greene.com/author-blog-pros-and-cons/

The Path to International Student Collaboration

In my last post, I discussed the program My Big Campus; the blogging tool I am currently using in my classroom.  After reflecting upon the positive experiences I have had with this blog in my classroom, I have been giving great thought to the idea of expanding our classroom’s blog and reaching a bigger audience.  As I become more comfortable with blogging and promoting blogging within my classroom, I thought this would be a great time to start my journey towards reaching a larger audience, in hopes to eventually take our classroom blog interational.  I do know that My Big Campus is being used within my county, so I thought I would start this process by collaborating with another fourth grade class within my county.  I recently came in contact with a fellow fourth grade teacher at a different school and discussed my interests in expanding my classrooms’ blog.  She was delighted and happy to help!  In our county, we are both currently teaching hydroponics to our students.  I have created a Project Based lesson where students collaborate in groups to gather information on hydroponic plants and construct an actual environment for a hydroponic plant to survive.  I thought this would be a great opportunity for my students to blog about their thoughts, ideas, and observations.    

As I spoke with the fellow fourth grade teacher, we came up with the idea to take pictures, and videos of the students completing this project.  Through the process the students would also blog about their thoughts, ideas, and observations.  Students could also add websites to their blog where they have gathered information on hydroponic plants and could take pictures of the environment they created for their group’s hydroponic plant to grow and survive.  Students could also blog about their daily observations and post progress pictures of their hydroponic plant.  Students at the other school would have access to my classroom blog so that they could comment, and provide additional information and insight to the environments they have created for their hydroponic plants.

This initiative to expand my classroom blog has taken a great deal of time and communication with the other teacher.  But the time and effort has definitely been paying off!  The students have loved this activity!  It has taken an extensive amount of time to help students learn how to add pictures and videos to the blog, but many students have taken additional responsibilities in becoming ‘tech experts’ and helping other students with adding multimedia to their posts.  The students at the other school have been extremely positive and supportive!  The other teacher has done a wonderful job with keeping consistent communication with me, and having her students continue communication and collaboration with my students.  The project is still in progress, but I must say I have seen some valuable engagement and student learning so far throughout this process.  All groups created slightly different environments for their hydroponic plant, and I believe this project has been positively influential to all of these students to be given the opportunity to collaborate and communicate with a larger group of peers.  I am looking forward to seeing how the hydroponic plants turn out!  This project has been one of my highlights as a first year, fourth grade teacher, definitely a wonderful time to remember!

As I move forward, my next step will be to think about how I can take my classroom’s blog even further and expanding to an international level.  Baby steps!  But I think I am heading in the right direction.  This process has taught me that in order for this kind of blogging to be successful, all participants involved have to be consistent with communication.  All participants need to have a clear understanding of the expectations involved, and continuously working together to complete a common goal.  With these key components, international collaboration through blogging can be successful.

If you are new to expanding online student collaboration like me, check out these websites that provide great tips, activities, and resources to help you get started!

http://edtechteacher.org/blog/?p=1937

http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/08/free-online-collaboration/

https://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/Idea/collaboration.html

Bringing Blogging into the Classroom

Last week I introduced my students to the world of blogging.  In the county I teach in, the students have accounts on a program called My Big Campus.  This program allows for students to communicate and connect with teachers, classmates, and peers nation wide.  I decided last week to really explore what My Big Campus had to offer, the results were amazing!

I decided to try this program during reading.  My students are normally responding to text questions by using post-its, completing small projects, or written responses in their notebooks.  Instead, last week I decided to focus on creating discussion boards on My Big Campus for my students to enter their responses.  A few students were already familiar with this program, but many students had not taken the time to log in on their own.  So on the first day of using this program, as a class we took some time to learn how to get on the program, and enter their username, password, and school.  It was neat to see some of the students become 'tech experts' and help students navigate and log into the program.  Once all of my students were logged on and ready to post, they were so excited!  I couldn't believe how engaged they were, and wanting to explore the program.  As a class we discussed the expectations of how to respond on the discussion board, and what responses should look like.  On the first day, after students had read their text, a question was posted on the discussion board for students to post their response.  At the end of class, we took the time to read through some of the responses and discussed some praise and polish points.

The next few days the laptops were signed out for students to continue to post their responses onto the discussion boards.  Everyday there was a new discussion board ready for the students to enter into and respond to the question displayed.  I found out one of the great ways to differentiate the questioning was to provide multiple questions with varied levels of difficulty and either allowing students to choose which question to answer, or, assign students a specific questions to answer.  I also thought about creating multiple discussion boards so that each reading group could be assigned an area to respond and post.  This would allow each discussion board to be differentiated to meet the needs of each reading group.

Near the end of the week, we started talking about reading each others responses and adding comments.  Once again, as a class we took the time to discuss expectations when responding to classmate's posts, and how to create their comments.  One of the expectations that I emphasized the most was not only to create positive comments, but to also try to keep the conversation alive.  For example, if a student simply writes "good job!" where can the conversation go from there?  We discussed how to add onto posts so that students could continue to respond to one another by either asking each other questions about their responses, or providing additional information about the subject or topic.  The students had so much fun with this!

Overall, it was such an eye opening experience!  I was so pleased with the way the students responded, their engagement and curiosity, and developing and furthering their own learning and understanding of content.  I am looking forward to trying more things on My Big Campus. I think this is a great program that allows students the opportunity to explore the beginning stages of blogging, and allows teachers to effectively integrate blogging into the classroom.

To try out My Big Campus for yourself, check out this website http://www.mybigcampus.com/

For more information on bringing blogging into the classroom, check out these great websites:
http://educational-blogging.wikispaces.com/Curriculum+Examples
http://edublogs.org/curriculum-corner-using-a-blog-with-students/

New to Blogging

This is my first experience using Google's blogger.com.  Right now I am a little apprehensive and hoping that I have set up and created my blog successfully.  The setting up of the blog went pretty smoothly, it is the account settings and creating the RSS feed that I am a little nervous about.  However, I am excited to share this blogging experience with my peers so that we can work together to create and complete successful blogs.  I think as I become more familiar with this type of blogging I will gain a deeper understanding on how blogging can be valuable and how it can be effectively integrated with education.  I am looking forward to learning more about this tool and becoming more comfortable with using blogging personally, and in my classroom.