Emerging Technologies

This is an excellent way to help stimmulate student thinking and develop communication skills for the 21st century.  It also develops written language. It provides me with a way to communicate with parents and have parents communicate with their children. 

One new skill I think we need to make sure students know is the difference between fiction and factual information. Too often students believe all of the information that they find, and assume that it is factual.  Students need to distinguish between the two.  Students also need to have netiquette reinforcement as to what is acceptable and unacceptable when it comes to blogging. 

answer to question #2   students need to use proper sentence structure when blogging.  it is not instant messaging.

  1.  What are the “affordances” and “constraints” of the technology? In other words, what does the technology allow us to do or prevent us from doing? This fundamental understanding is important to answer the next questions…

Affordances: Expansion of the classroom into the larger world. Input from parents. Input from outside experts. Ability to hop in and guide a student after each comment. Ability to include other websites and media to support your argument. Archived record of classroom discussion.
Constraints: You relinquish total control of the direction the students are going. You can act as a shepherd and guide them, but not as a drill sergeant. It’s possible for a discussion to go completely off topic and enter into a new discussion which does not feed your objective. Students with limited experience with computers will face a steeper learning curve. Students could potentially face ridicule and disrespect from other students as a result of their postings, thus harming the feeling of community/classroom safety.

Students working through interface issues to get a computer to do what they want it to do is a form of problem solving. If a student is confident enough in him or herself, any time spent on a computer is a learning experience. However, students who lack confidence in their ability to work through problems could quickly get frustrated when faced with the additional obstacles using a computer faces, as opposed to pencil and paper.

Blogging allows for flexibility within the curriculum and instruction. Students can express their opinions and personal perspectives. As teachers, this gives us a chance to gain insight into student thoughts that we would not usually have access to. The constraints are time and access. It takes time to teach and guide the students through the expectations. Students need to be aware of the language they use to express their thoughts. Maintaining the blog and guiding the students to proper usage could be time consuming.

Blogging could change the way that I teach my classes in several ways. Instead of being the primary purveyor of information I could instead prompt the students with a general topic or problem and then allow them to explore. In this way, Students would not be limited by a text or set curriculum. They could explore current information, generate their own questions, and analyze each others thoughts. I feel that in this setting I would learn as much if not more than the students.

How will I use blogs as a resource with parents?  Will I create a blog and upload documents used in class?  Will I upload rubrics so parents can view them when students are not forthcoming with information?  How would a blog empower me to be a better communicator with parents?  How would a blog empower parents to be more active in their students’ work?  How will I manage the actual postings?  Is there some way I could build time into the schedule and have students take ownership of the task?  Hmm…  I have a lot of questions about using a blog to increase my parent communication.