Research Thoughts

Oh dear … judging by the comments on my first post, at least 2 people are actually reading this blog now !! I’d better come up with something worthwhile – here’s kind of where I’m at with the research …. The podcast link is very ‘Pinky and Perky’ sounding, but it seems to work perfectly if you click on the word link next to it.

I have been working hard on coming up with a clear ‘research focus’. Although we have a class blog and the pupils all have their individual blogs and wikis, I want to ‘move on’ with this and investigate whether it’s possible to create an online learning community. I touched on this during an ‘E-Learning’ module last session.

I’ve discovered this blog. Konrad Glogowski’s thesis for his PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto focussed on the use of blogging communities in education. His work was with pupils a little older than mine ( I teach p7 – his pupils are 13 – 14). He talks about how to prepare an online space for learning and plan a learning community. I enjoyed listening to his podcast and I’m looking forward to seeing if his ideas can work successfully in my own situation.

He also refers a Ray Oldenburg’s research into classrooms as ‘Third Places’ ?

Possible question :

Can a learning community emerge naturally by providing a supported environment for online learning? (needs a lot of tidying up!)

Aims:

  • create learner centred environment where participants have the freedom build and maintain their own on-line presence (I think this is already in place??)
  • encourage expressive writing to move beyond just what is being taught in the classroom. Use scaffolding to allow freedom to interact and form social networks
  • teacher’s role is to be part of the community, so I need to set up my own personal blog, too, and read others’ blogs – not evaluate them by focussing on ‘secretarial’ skills/errors
  • give them easy access to the conversations (I use google reader – this can easily be set up by the pupils as well by having them copy and paste the OPML file??)

It’s early days, so I’ll probably change direction a few times. Today we did look at other blog posts, but before we could do that one boy came rushing over because he had received a comment on his blog from a boy in a school in Inverness. We couldn’t link back to his blog, but a google search solved the problem and we found the link. We knew the blog was about football, but it didn’t make too much sense because it was full of large empty gaps (Daily Motion is obviously banned in school!) The big question from some of the boys, though, was … ‘Can we have a football blog?’

There are other blogs on the Dingwall site, too ……. my answer was, ‘Well, OK – maybe. What about using our wikis ?’

Anyway, thanks for the comments so far …… Kim was right – the 2nd post was just as much hard work as the 1st! Maybe Kim and John could be my Critical Friends 🙂 …….

5 thoughts on “Research Thoughts

  1. Hi Mrs V,
    i will be the third commenter!(if there is such a thing)I like your blog though it has to many big words in it for me! 🙂 Your secon post has come up so don’t worry :)i will see you tommorow at school!

    bye xx

  2. Thank you, Anna! …. 3 comments now – oh no!
    🙂

    I saw the post was visible when I came home – probably another school problem?
    🙁

    I’m away somewhere tomorrow, so see you all on Thursday. Good luck with the songs tomorrow. I’ll try to get them on to the class blog tonight.

  3. Hi Mrs V!

    Well there seems to be a problem with my blog because i changed my sites name and i clicked on update options and my name is still the same as it was before ? :S plese comment me back as soon as possible 🙂 bye x

  4. Your blog promises to be interesting – will keep popping back!

    It’s great to hear that the comment from the boys here generated excitement – my next blogging lesson willl be to remember to post the URL of your blogspot so people know who you are!

    The boys here will be looking out for your football wikki!

    It’s a pity DailyMotion is banned for you – I was so pleased when the boys told me about it most other video sites are banned here

    Good luck with the research!

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