Blogging - What is it?

So, What is Blogging?

Well.... Cambridge Dictionary states that a blog is "a diary (= regular record of your thoughts, opinions and experiences) that you put on the Internet for others to read and which often contains links (= words or pictures that connect to other places on the Internet)".  I fully agree with this. Whether people blog for educational purposes (like myself) or whether they want to share what they have been upto, it is all a way of sharing things on the internet with other people.

We learn from others, but this does not necessarily mean that we have to be face to face with people to learn from them. We can learn from their thoughts, opinions and perhaps research that they place online. BBC reported 3 years ago that blogging was starting to be used for academic purposes. It is another communication tool between lecturers and students, but I feel this can be used within a classroom as well. A blog can be set up by the teacher that directs perhaps tasks or homework that the pupils are to feedback usign comments. The only issue I see with this, is that they do not use it in the correct way. A lesson would be needed to teach the pupils what is meant to go in a blog and perhaps how the class is using it, if in a different way from others. I would make the pupils aware that anyone can see this, and in this case I would tell them not to put their name on their posts. Although pages can be made private, I would prefer to not have an issue arising.


Although I would use blogging for educational purposes, I think pupils would need to be aware that blogging can be used for personal purposes also. Pupils need to be taught how to do this safely and that this should be shared with parents. I feel that blogging should be shared with parents, both for academic and personal purposes. Parents should be able to be a part of the child's learning.

At university, we communicate with our tutor/lecturers in a variety of ways. (Email, Blogger.com, facebook, blackboard etc. ) Email is good for communicating quickly but I feel that blogger is much better for giving my views and opinions about education.

I believe blogging is good both educationally and personally, and is a good tool for both reflecting and learning from.

Week 3

Once again we were doing digital movie making this week. We had to plan what topic we were going to discuss and whether the movie would be for pupils to watch, or for pupils to record (i.e. a piece of formative assessment). We decided to go from the point of view that the pupils would watch the movie, and use the information they are given to create their own seismometer, as our topic is Earthquakes. This is a very relevant topic due to the recent Haiti disaster and therefore would fit in well with pupils interests.

So whats better - An iPhone app or a make-your-own??

On Monday, we made our seismometer, and this was simple enough that a class would be able to do this. I would give this task as a co-operative learning task. We also discovered an App on the iPhone called seismometer. This is much more accurate than our own hand-made one, but perhaps, the pupils would learn more out of making the object. My reasons for thinking this, is that the app on the iphone clearly just measures vibrations that are then displayed on the screen, without any real understanding then pupils would not see the benefit in this. On the otherhand, if pupils made their own seismometer then they would actually see it moving and have the waves on the page as well.
In my opinion, on this occassion, actually getting to make their own seismometers would be more beneficial.

The New iPad

Yesterday the new iPad was released. My first opinion of this is that I don't fully understand how it is any better than an iPhone. It is obviously bigger, i.e. so better screen quality, but does that mean that its better? Thinking of using it within a classroom, I would argue that it is perhaps too big to use with a class. If a child is struggling, it is not as discreet as using the iPhone to message the teacher for help. I feel pupils would feel much more self-concious about using it in this way. However, thinking about the size of it, it would perhaps benefit children with additional support needs. Due to the size of it, and perhaps not having developed fine motor skills to use the iPhoen effectively, then the iPad would be better suited. It can play powerpoint, which is a huge bonus in educational terms. But the downside is that it cannot take videos or photos, which to me is vital in a classroom for recording work, learning from and showcasing pupils achievements. With regards to education, I am not sure whether this would work better in schools than the iPhone. I believe that the iPhone would be better in school due to its size, its ability to record videos and take pictures.
Perhaps my opinion will be changed with the more information released.

Lets all use Primary Pad in the classroom!

This tool was mentioned in the passing in our class today and what a fantastic thing it is. Primary Pad is an easy tool to set up, is easy to use and would work well within a class. It literally takes two seconds to set up and can be used by simply pasting the URL to other people. I have set up a primary pad for followers to add their comments about the new apple iPad. Using the following URL http://primarypad.com/pvosJ5LRPj add your post. This is a free tool.

As with all software, there are disadvantages. These include, not being able to delete posts in the chat. I do not believe this is a huge issue, however if being used in the classroom and something inappropriate is written, then there is no way of getting rid of it. Another disadvantage is that if too many people access the pad, some of them can be assigned the same highlight colour. This is not a major issue as names can be changed, but this may be an issue within a classroom, if pupils are purely looking at the colours rather than the names.

I love this piece of software and would use it within my class. I would use it in a collaborative way, either between groups or as a whole class. However thinking of the implications above, I would need to consider how to manage the learning effectively so that everyone has their say. I would also consider not getting pupils to put their names to posts, but perhaps only on certain occassions. My reasons for doing this would be that some pupils do not like to speak out in case they are wrong, so will hold back posting if their name is against it, but if it isn't, I do not thinking pupils would be so hesistant to add posts.

Week 2

This week we looked at Digital Movie Making. This is something completely new for me and at first I found it very daunting. I feel its a good resource to use as it can be used in most areas of the curriculum either to teach a part of a topic, or for the children to demonstrate what they have actually learnt. I think that this has a good place within the classroom, however I believe that the teacher has to be knowledgeable themselves to be able to teach it. (which of course can be argued about anything they teach!) I feel as though it does require a lot of skills and it is something that perhaps not everyone would be confident teaching. At this moment in time, I would not feel confident enough to take Iphones out to a classroom and do a set of lessons on Digital Movie Making. This is purely because I do not have enough knowledge to be able to teach it.

Digital Movie Making can be used as a learning tool as well as an assessment tool. Either pupils can make a video perhaps on a certain part of a subject, which is then fed back to the class. I feel this is a good technique as it means that they are sharing what they learn and this is a vital part of development. As mentioned, it can also be used as an assessment tool, i.e. recording what they have learnt. My main issue with this is the fact, that they will probably demonstrate what they know instead of the skills that have been learnt. Although its good to have knowledge, is there really much point in learning facts and figures?

We also looked at the use of iphones in the primary classroom and infact the nursery classroom. There are a multitude of ways that iphones can be used within the classroom. Firstly as an anonymous text in. I personally love this idea. I.e. have a phone either per table or per pupil (not neccessarily an iphone) and pupils can text in any questions they have. I feel this is excellent because I know from my experience that pupils will just sit if they don't understand anything because they are scared in case they get in trouble for not knowing something. I believe that no child should feel this way, so I feel that by having this in a class, pupils will not have this barrier.

Another way to use iphones, is to use it in the same way as an acti-vote system. Pupils will use there phone to text in either as a mulitple choice or for anything else. (www.polleverywhere.com) I feel as well this is a good thing to use within a classroom because my ICT elective lecturer informed me that only 5% of every class will answer 95% of the questions asked. By using phones, this enables every pupil to participate and because its anonymous, pupils will not be worried about being 'wrong'.

Also, an interesting blog was discovered and shared with the group. http://theappleblog.com/2010/01/18/i-gave-my-3-year-old-an-iphone-have-i-created-a-monster/ I feel that this shows that iphones can be used within a nursery as it can be an effective learning device, however I would argue, that in the case of this blog it is too extreme. My reasons for thinking is that :

'Her first words upon waking from sleep are “Where’s my iPhone?”... she uses it constantly: sitting in a chair, laying on the floor, walking from room-to-room… head down, focused on the iPhone screen, it can be a challenge to get her to disengage with the device and engage with us.'

I feel that this is too much. I feel its fantastic that she can use it and is using it in a educational way, but this is too much. Surely she needs to learn in other ways also, such as with traditional toys etc. It needs to be a whole rounded learning experience, instead of purely what is being learnt from the iphone. Although, I would argue iphones should be used in nurseries...how is this child going to be able to cope when she goes to nursery/school, when she cannot have it 24/7?

Week 1

This week was an introduction to the ICT elective. Sharon and Collette explained each part of the elective that they would be running. It was interesting to see everything that we would be tackling within this elective.

We had a look at wallwisher as an introduction. I feel that this is a good collaborative tool as everyone can have their say and feedback within the group. The only issue I found with wallwisher was that all the post seemed to post on top of each other. I feel this can be fixed, and its just a matter of finding out how! As an example of Wallwisher, Sharon had set up a few walls for us to post 'sticky notes' on. This was enjoyable and although we didn't use this function, you can post your views/comments anonymously. I feelt this would be beneficial in a class as some pupils may not like expressing their views, in fear of being wrong, and this way, they do not have to worry about this issue. http://jacquisharp.blogspot.com/2009/11/wallwisher-in-classroom.html discusses how to actually create a wallwisher (which we didn't do in this lesson) and it seems to be quite easy to create.

During this introduction, we were shown animations and videos that last year's students produced as well as p3 pupils. Although there is a huge difference between the quality of the two different videos, it is clear that they both put in work. I was impressed by how well the p3 videos were and I would consider using this within a classroom, after seeing the outcome and the benefits of using this.