Learning, Teaching and ICT

I contacted someone via email recently to ask for advice about my research. The response is very much valued  - I don’t yet have permission yet to quote the ‘mentor’s’ (?) advice, so I hope that it’s ok to do this anonymously.

My research Question:

Can Weblogs and Wikis and other associated emerging social software tools be used to create an effective on-line learning community? 

Some points to consider here:

•  ’effective’ is quite a problematic term - do we mean effective within the current standards driven climate or is ‘effective’ relating to a different way of working/ learning? 
•  ’learning community’ is defined and understood in different ways, too, so it would be necessary to explore this - perhaps looking to see what kind of community develops rather than trying to mould it to become something specific?

My research Aims:

Aims 1 and 2:

•         To investigate the useful features, and barriers, when using blogs and wikis in a supportive on-line environment
•       To set appropriate tasks and to guide and monitor progress

The advice here is:

• this may be a point of contention - if you are setting tasks to guide progress that could be in contradiction of the underpinning nature of web 2.0 and approaching the project with a viewpoint of learning and teaching. 
•  it is really important to be clear about your own underpinning understandings and assumptions about the nature and purpose of learning and teaching and what the underpinning principles etc are.  
• What is your theoretical framework for the project?

Aim 3

• To evaluate motivation, as well as formal and informal learning

 Advice is:

• How do you propose to go about collecting/ creating data for this project?
• what will you be looking for and analysing in your data?
• Will you be analysing the blog contributions made by the pupils?
• if so what will you look for?  

Lots of thinking taking place …. and some more posts pending  - one step at a time

 By ‘our community’, I mean our online community …. quite separate from our classroom community (discussed HERE).

The following quotes are from wikipedia

Quote 1

An online learning community is a common place on the Internet that addresses the learning needs of its members through proactive and collaborative partnerships. Through social networking and computer-mediated communication, people work as a community to achieve a shared learning objective. Learning objectives may be proposed by an instructor or may arise out of discussions between participants that reflect personal interests. In an online community, people communicate via textual discussion (synchronous or asynchronous), audio, video, or other Internet-supported devices. Blogs blend personal journaling with social networking to create environoments rich with opportunities for reflection.

Much literature promote online learning communities as environments conducive to communities of practice as described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.

Quote 2

A primary focus of Wenger’s work is on learning as social participation – the individual as an active participant in the practices of social communities, and in the construction of his/her identity through these communities. From this understanding develops the concept of the community of practice: a group of individuals participating in communal activity, and experiencing/continuously creating their shared identity through engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities.

I’ve tried to involve the wider community.

For example …..

•  Our parent evenings.

Thank you to all the mums and dads …..     (and grans and grandads, and brothers and sisters, and aunties and uncles!!!) for coming to our ‘Blogging Evening’!

…. But most of all THANK YOU to Primary 7 …. You were all ‘mega stars’ and you made the whole event great - I was so proud of everyone of you!

• Visits to the local community

Every year at this time, the primary 7 pupils deliver groceries to the elderly people in our community. Today the weather was not good, but there was a smile on everyone’s face …. the givers and the receivers!

• Our World of work series

Yesterday, John told us about a photograph he was glad to have taken. He explained how he happened to be in a position to be able to capture the moment.

Isn’t it great!!!!

copyright of JSP-photography & John Summers.

……… My hope is that (eventually) other members of our wider community will contribute

I’ve been following some recent posts about how to manage class blogs. The Connected Live blog mentions how John Connell points to a post entitled Class blogs - management, moderation and protection by Al Upton.

This blog mentions the ‘G-mail +’ option.

It’s very important to me that our community is a safe one. …  but I also want the children to have the freedom to have their own space and not feel that there’s a ‘Big Brother’ culture present.

So here’s what I’ve done to try to create that balance:

• First I created a Class Blog so that I could give the pupils an audience for their work
• Very soon after creating the class blog, I realised that it was important to allow access to the children’s own work so I created a wikispace for the class to post their writing
• This didn’t work well, because if we all logged on and edited the space at the same time, problems occured (a ’someone else is editing this space’ message)
• I wanted the children to have their own blogs, but still have control over how they were used. I discovered that East Lothian could help me set up individual blogs . These children have now moved on to High School.
• I’ve now managed to set up our own individual blogs without the help of East Lothian. ……  I discovered the ‘Gmail+’ trick. For example, If you have a ‘yourname@Gmail’ account, it’s possible to create lots of new blogs using that same e-mail address. You can do this by creating new blogs with a ‘yourname+student1@gmail’ , ‘yourname+student2@gmail’ etc.
• One advantage is that, although the pupils have admin rights, the teacher can also login to the blogs at any time.
• Another advantage is that any comments appear in the teacher’s Gmail account - even although the children can moderate them, the teacher has a record of what has appeared
• It’s quite easy to keep track of what is being posted on the children’s blogs by using ‘google reader’, or something similar
• I’ve since discovered that Wikispaces will set up separate username and passwords for students if you email them the information required.

It all seems to be working well so far ……..

On the post before the last one I said that I would investigate:

Since beginning blogging with classes, I’ve always thought it strange that what happens ‘online’ is not (obviously) transferred to the ‘offline’ classroom context. For example, if I comment on a post, it’s (usually) never mentioned in the ‘offline’ classroom situation.

Miss Law , our B’Ed student, has also been leaving comments on the pupils’ individual blogs - and she agrees with me that there appears to be a divide between the ‘online’ and ‘offline’ communities.

She mentioned a comment left on one of her posts by a pupil. He showed another side to her when he complimented her teaching…………. this isn’t something that he would have done in the everyday classroom situation.

I think, however, that the lesson contents do change as a result of the online communications. Tomorrow, for example, we are holding our first ‘Book Appreciation Group’ meeting. This came about due to the number of pupils who posted about their love of reading on their individual blogs.

 The ‘World of Work’ posts are still appearing on the pupils’ individual blogs. The children’s posts now show evidence of building on the ideas expressed by their peers. They’re referring to each others’ blogs - some even adding links. I’m glad now that I made the decision to ‘take a step back’ and allow things to develop naturally.

A few children who don’t normally ‘blog’ from home are beginning to do so. For example, Russell  recently updated his blog so that he could join in the ‘conversation’:

“One of the hard things in life is choise some are easy like what should i wear and others are hard like what car to buy. BUT THE HARDEST ONE IS WHAT JOB TO HAVE BECAUSE THERE ARE LOADS. When i grow up i would either like to be a normal police officer which is like solving crimes and stuff. Or in the traffic police, which is like catching speeders and arriving at motorway accidents or illegal number plates. Or be in the armed responce unit which are the police with guns and go to accident which suspects are armed. ”  

Jaydean also wrote from home:

“Our class, P7V had a visitor, Miss Hart. Miss Hart is a journalist, she told us a lot about journalism its made me think. I love performing but journalism sounds quite fun. My passion is to perform as I love singing, dancing and acting but if anything goes wrong and Im not able to perform, I’ll consider being a journalist. Just as my friend nina said in one of her posts there are so many desisions!!!!”

Other children who don’t normally blog are choosing not to write about the ‘World of Work’ thread, but are posting new topic conversations.

For example, Kieran S recently posted:

“I am going on a trip to Ardeonaig. On the 9th to the 20th of may you get to go lots of places like up a mountain and go Canoing. You get to go on the high ropes there is a games hall to there is lots more stuff.I went last year to. With my friends Russell Adam and Stewart It was SO funny. but the bad thing is that you have to do the cleaning up after you has finish your dinner. It is still very good. one of the funny thing that happened was when Russell and Adam put Stewart’s pajamas in to the water and he had to take my one’s but it was not funny for me. I hope i have fun when i go.bye”

Courtney wrote:

“hi well i know that i haven’t been on but ive been bizzy well you know that i’m in da scouts so you might know that i do badges well i’ve been doin ma photogrephers badge and we’re doin five aside footi and goin up kanarde wood oh and a beaver trail. finaly were goin t a bothy but i dont know if i’m goin as it’s two hours in a bus and it is really snowy so it will b cold in da tent!!!!”

The children who do tend to post in their own time are becoming more adept at it.

For example, Anna wrote recently:

“ I’m gettting the hand of writing posts now! At first i was totally stuck but now i write about anything really. I like to comment on other peoples blogs to,especially people from the allstars and even our class write gr8 posts that you have to comment on. I reccomend Moni’s Blog, Because she has lots of posts about what we have been up to in p7v. I also like looking at Beki’s Blog because she has interesting posts like book reviews and stuff. Ninzy’s Blog. I like to look at other peoples to but i dont have time the now cause i’m going out with my little cuz. …To be continued “

 Maryam tends to write posts regularly. A recent post received a number of comments. One of them was from Nadine  from  Allstars.

Nadine commented:

‘Hi Maryam!!!
I am Nadine from The o8 Allstars!! I am from Australia and i am almost twelve years old.
You sound like a really nice person and i’d really like to be a friend!
Anyway, i am soooo into writing too! My whole class says i’m so good too.
I want to be a writer so badly!!
I might be a doctor too, but i hate having to inject needles and see blood! ‘

I’ll need to devote some time to investigating the impact of comments on postings