Last week, Ollie Braycame to Falkirk to talk to a small group about Internet Safety and Responsible Use. I really enjoyed listening to what Ollie had to say, especially his views on raising awareness on how the web works (with teachers and parents/carers, as well as students) and about taking responsibility to protect reputations online.
We discussed how children as young as Primary 4/5 stages are now using social network sites like Beboand MySpace. These sites are not accessible to children in our Local Authority. Staff members, however, can access the sites after bypassing a warning message that they can proceed to the website at their own discretion. Although twitterwas also mentioned, it was more in a ‘while we’re on the subject’ sort of sideways conversation.
When I came home, however, I was surprised to read Anna’s new post about twitter and her thoughts about how ” it’s becoming the new bebo,myspace etc“. I’ve since been followed on my own twitter account by seven of my ex Carronshore bloggers and this has got me thinking about social networks in general.
When I received Anna’s request to follow me on twitter (my account was locked for a short time – but that’s another story), I thought long and hard about the ethics and whether or not this was acceptable. I remember creating a Bebo account in the past to allow me to keep tracks on my No.3 son while he roamed about Canada on a gap year. At the time some Primary 7 girls must have tracked me down on there and I noticed the requests. I (tactfully?) explained to the girls that this would not be appropriate …. so why the change of heart now that the same thing has happened on twitter?
I’ll try to analyse my thinking here:
My Bebo site was set up for personal reasons and I was a bit taken aback when the girls (very innocently) requested to follow me. We had shared exchanges online before via the class blog and their individual blogs, as well as this blog, but crossing that line to a ‘social network’ site was definate ‘no no’ at the time. The very thought of us exchanging correspondence out of the public eye just seemed instinctively wrong to me. Actually, it wouldn’t have made a difference if the sites were public – I would still have felt uncomfortable.
My twitter site, on the other hand, was set up initially for CPD purposes. A quick look back at my twitter account origin reveals that the people I first followed were already authors of educational blogs. I was a regular reader of John’s, David’s, Neil’s, David’s and Ewan’s among others and they were all twitter users, so I thought I’d give it a go.
I was amazed at the CPD opportunities that twitter offered and blogged about it on a number of occasions on here. And it may even have been similar CPD prospects that helped me decide (not lightly, I might add!) to allow the ex Carronshore bloggers to follow me – and why I feel comfortable following them back.
I feel that I know these students well. When I received the ‘follow’ invites from Anna, Nina,Bethany, Rhiann, Jaydean, Marc and Ryan I remembered the Blog posts and wiki stories we shared. I’ve blogged on a number of occasions about the change in the classroom climate that was brought about by this sharing. There was a level of trust involved in the set up – but the advantages outweighed any risks
A significant difference between bebo, etc and twitter is that twitter is somehow more accepted in educational circles. Twitter is less likely to be blocked by Local Education Authorities…. and even the CPD Scotland Teamencourage its use 🙂
Anyway, it seems thatAnna has started an ‘ex Carronshore students’ blogging trend …. I hope it continues. It would be great to read more posts from them 🙂
I’m now three quarters of the way through my secondment as an ICT Curriculum Support Teacher (the title has been changed to ‘support teacher’ from ‘support officer’ recently – I think I prefer the new one). During this second half of the secondment, I’ve felt much more confident addressing adults during CPD sessions. This was one of the biggest challenges in the early days.
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons that I feel more comfortable in this role now is because I have more ownership over the courses and activities on offer. Although I was able to introduce some new CPD courses during the first year of the secondment (almost all of these were a direct result of being introduced to new websites and ideas via twitter, by the way!), many of the courses were inherited. This was mainly due to the timing of the interview, as it was necessary to have some courses in place before a candidate for the post was chosen. In fact, apart from the job of supporting staff in developing their school website and maintaining the Virtual Teacher Centre (both the pupiland the staff side), everything else has been designed by me – and I’ve really appreciated opportunity!
As well as offering CPD courses on setting up and sustaining class blogs and raising awareness of free online tools to enhance learning and teaching, I’ve been involved in a number of interesting projects. One of these is an on-going pilot project with a group of children in a local primary school. I’ve set up ePortfolios for them, and in February I have a meeting with the Art Department in their feeder High School to discuss the possibility of developing this in to something that might help the primary/secondary transition stage. Hopefully, other departments will get involved as well. It’s very early days, but the eportfolios also have great potential for formative assessment, as well as self and peer assessment opportunities. Difficulties of setting up effective Personal Learning Plans may also be addressed. I do realise that, for this to work properly, it needs to be an Authority wide initiative. A long term strategy is required …. but it’s a start 🙂
Off On A Tangent!
….. just because it’s my blog and I can 🙂
It still amazes me that I’d scarcely heard of a blog until just over three years ago. I’ve written on here before about how I set off on a journey that would change my approach to learning and teaching. The journey also gave me the confidence to allow children to take more of a lead in their own learning. I’ve copied this brief summary from elsewhere on here:
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 wikispacefor 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 later discovered that Wikispaces will set up separate username and passwords for students if you email them the information required
Soon I wanted the children to have their own blogs, but still have control over how they were used. I learned that East Lothiancould help me set up individual blogs.
The next session, I managed to safely set up individual blogs on my own …… I found out about the ‘Gmail+’ trick. For example, If you have a‘yourname@gmail.com’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
One thing I miss while on secondment is the relationships that are built up with children in your own class. So I was delighted, recently, when Annacontacted me on ths blog by leaving a comment on my last post. She’s now in second year at High School, and has decided that she would like to start using her blog again. It was a simple enough task to transfer it over to primaryblogger (where there’s loads of space and a guarantee of no ads). I’m really glad that she wants to do this, and I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting one of my favourite blog posts. Anna wrote this in primary 7 (two years go) and it still makes me smile ….. and she kept her promise of writing her ‘thought of the day’ posts regularly. She also inspired others in the class (including me!) to keep their blogs going at the time:
“Well basically I’ve decided that I would like to have a future in blogging! I think that blogs are interesting and fun to write things on rather than writing something on paper. My thoughts for today are that blogs are a great way to learn, they are more interesting than doing something on paper. When I’m older I think that I might do something to do with computers. I’m going to be starting a thing on my blog called thought of the day! Thought of the day is when I write a post about something I have realised, thought or discovered on that day.”
So thanks to Anna’s decision to take up blogging again, she has inspired me (just like before) to write a blog post. It always feels like work at the time, but it certainly helps – me anyway – to stay focussed 🙂
When I first stumbled upon the idea of using ePortfolios, I wrote that this would be my new recommendation when teachers ask about giving children their own online space. Since then, I’ve spent a few afternoons (3 or maybe 4, I think?) trying to ‘sell’ the idea to to a few Primary 6 stage in Carronshore Primary School. I chose these particular children because I suspected that I’d be welcomed in the school – and I knew that they were already familiar with some of the online tools available to help them tell the story of their learning journey.
I worked with six children (3 girls and 3 boys). During my first visit I tried to explain the advantages of having an ePortfolio. However, researching lots of published information is one thing – but how do you convey that to 9/10 year olds? After I’d spent some time trying to get the message over in a way I hoped they’d understand, I asked them to go off with one of the school’s mp3 players with a built in microphone and produce a welcome message for their (so far empty wiki shell) ePortfolio. The children were familiar with the voki siteand were able to create their characters and then upload their own mp3 file.
Here’s Maryam’s voki – unfortunately voki.com was down at the time of writing this post, but I have a desktop version that I’ve uploaded elsewhere. I’ve learned to be prepared 🙂
I was satisfied that they had grasped the general idea and during my next few visits we discussed and planned more aspects of the ePortfolios, such as what pages to include and what the content should look like. But, of course, building an ePortfolio is a long process and we’ve barely scratched the surface …. but it is a start 🙂 I’ll put a page on the Carronshore blog with links to the ePortfolios.
I’m pleased that the Art Department of the local High School are keen to be involved and have asked me along to their next departmental meeting to talk about the experiment. It would be great if the discussion area of the ePortfolios could have input from them (at the moment, it’s just the children themselves – and me).
I was also asked to go along to talk to the L.A. Assessment Group today. I wasn’t sure what their knowledge was. I made a powerpoint presentation to try to show what I’ve learned about ePortfolios so far. I even tried to ‘wow’ them by uploading it to prezias well 🙂
It was great to see it all coming together as people worked very hard behind the scenes to make sure that everything was just as it should be. KatieJohnCassieRichPeter were all beavering about two hours before ‘kick off’. A mention needs to be given to the staff at Carronvale House, Larbert . The venue was great and we couldn’t fault the service and value for money 🙂
There’s loads of other people to thank, too. John deserves a special mention for doing a brilliant job as M.C. The presenters were all great – and Con had us laughing in the aisles as he entertained us with his singing during his talk on how twitter is a great tool for CPD 🙂
A great big thank you again, too, to all our sponsors …….. and the loan of the Smart Board from Steljes was just brilliant!
Unfortunately I didn’t get round to timing my presentation (and probably blethered some unnecessary nonsense as well) so I only told half of the ePortfolio story that I’ve been working on with a small group of P6 children recently.
I suppose that making a 7 minute presentation requires similar skills as the art of summarising what you want to say on twitter? I still struggle to join in with twitter converstations because I usually fail miserably to get points over in just 140 characters.
Here’s the gist of my presentation from TeachMeet Falkirk. It’s followed by some snapshots of the children’s ePortfolios …. and an explanation from one of them as to what he perceives an eportfolio to be about.
A month or so ago, I wrote a post entitled ePortfolios in the Upper Primary Classroom? I’m now investigating using the concept with upper primary stage children in Carronshore Primary School. The children are Primary 6 stage and last session they were given their own wiki space which they used to record some things they’d been learning in class. I want to carry out a wee bit of research to see if it’s possible to use the same type of wiki to create an ePortfilio.
Before I meet with the children, I need to decide on the purpose for the ePortfolios, and what sort of template design would be appropriate. I’ve already decided to use thebasic PBworks academic workspacewith the children because they are familiar with the layout so don’t need instruction on how to use it. The children are also familiar with a number of free online tools and how to embed these in to a wiki. As I’m not based in the school at the moment, I think it’s important that a teacher there is involved in the project. The class teacher isn’t familiar with using any type of online spaces, but Evelyn W, who is currently teaching art in the school has just begun to look after the Carronshore Blog, and is keen to be part of the ‘experiment’.
Before deciding on the structure of the ePortfolios, I’ve done a bit of background reading (again) and come up with some ground rules for myself. These ideas are taken from a variety of sources and are not listed in order of importance:
The first page should contain an overview of the eportfolio and provide an explanation of the overall goals.
Reflection should be the ‘heart and soul’ of the ePortfolio
Be wary of learners focussing to much on technology skills, thereby puting less emphasis on the content
Guidelines as to what is to be included shouldn’t be too prescriptive
The children should feel they have ownership of the ePortfolio
There should be a structure in place, but this should allow freedom for creativity
The learning takes place in the constructing of the ePortfolio, rather than in the end product
Children need to be introduced to the concept and given clear reasons for constructing an ePortfolio
Children should be given regular and useful feedback on their reflections
I also think it would be beneficial for me to revisit my own experience of using online spaces with upper primary stage children. These spaces were not ePortfolios – but I think that parallels can be drawn. At the time, background reading helped me to gain a clearer insight and the thoughts that follow have been influenced by; Buckingham, Stern, Lafferty, Green and Hannon – and others………….. that’s the disclaimer bit (I’ll not refer to them individually here).
Every primary 7 pupil was given the opportunity to personalise their individual blogs. The children chose their own theme and created avatars. This helped them to gain a sense of ownership of their on-line spaces – they were allowed to play and experiment with them. They were, in fact, testing out different versions of current and possible identities Up until then, the main audience for their online spaces was themselves, but they were also eager for peer approval during that stage.
So – when setting up the ePortfolios for the primary 6 children, Time will need to be given so that the children can customise their wikis. There won’t be as many themes to choose from, but they will be able to use various online tools to help them establish ‘ownership’. For example, activities such as making vokisand designing weemeecharacters might be useful here.
Once their new online spaces were ‘designed and furnished’, the children were free to choose the content of their blog posts and wiki writing. The informal learning that took place happened primarily by means of experimentation rather than by following external instructions and directions.
Although, the ePortfolios will be more structured than the blogs and wikis were, the children will be involved in the planning stage so that they can have a say as to what that structure should look like, and as to what sort of content should be included.
Guidance was given by providing a sense of online audience by submitting comments on the children’s posts regularly. Offline, new interesting posts were shared with the children. This had the effect of influencing the others to add to their own blogs – often on a similar subject. They acted as role-models for each other. The children were asked if sharing their online writing in this way helped them to get to know each other better:
“In our blogs, we’re allowed to write about what wewant to write about, so we’ve got to know each other better”
“Some people in class don’t talk very much, but I can read their blogs and find out more”
“I feel as though I know my friends even more now because of what they write on their blogs”
“I like when we read the stories that people in our class have written on their wikis, and how good they are”
You get to know what peoples thoughts and dreams are through their stories on their wikis”
By adopting a similar approach, I hope that it will provide opportunities for reflection and self-assessment … key ingredients for building successful ePortfolios. I also hope that this sense of audience will increase motivation.
I suppose that an important difference between the blogs and wikis that I’ve used with children in the past and the ePortfolios that we’ll set up soon, is the clearer motive for creating them. This will be discussed at the outset. Goals will be set initially to help establish a sense of purpose.
I hope to have my first meeting with the children next week and when I get the ePortfolios up and running, I’ll give a wee update as to how things are going at the TeachMeet Falkirkevent next month!
Recently I came acrossa post on the ltscotland glow blog about a transition Glow group success. It was set up to give the primary 7 pupils the opportunity to liaise with the senior pupils at their local High School. I wonder if this is the same Glow group success that was shared ata MIICE conference I attended last session? At that conference, I heard about Transition projects happening within Glow. As well as the one described here, there were others that linked Primary 7 and S1 pupils via a variety of curricular areas:
S1 pupils read poems to the P7’s in Glow Meet and there was a question and answer session. The teacher then provided a session on how to write poetry.
A High School maths dept. set monthly puzzles for the P7’s. This gave the teachers valuable insight into the levels that the P7’s were working at.
A P.E. dept. had a huge amount of questions asked about their subject and it gave them an insight as to how the P7’s were feeling.
The English Dept. gave the P7’s the task of writing a hallowe’en story. The feeder primary school children held back until the last minute to post their stories because they didn’t want their ideas to be ‘hijacked’.
Our local Authority has just recently signed up for GLOW, so it’s too early to be thinking about using it as a vehicle to support the changeover from primary to secondary.
I have, however, been pondering the use of online spaces to aid the transition process in some curricular areas:
The first one is a link between some Primary 6 children and the Art Department at their local High School. It’s hoped that senior pupils will be involved, too.
Evelyn is going to showcase the children’s artwork on the blog, and we’re hoping that the primary 6 children will use theclass blogand perhaps theironline wiki spaces to discuss their artwork. The children in this particular class used these spaces last session with Cassie, their probationer teacher. The aim is to get feedback from High School in the form of comments.
The second idea is to create a link with the same set of pupils and the maths department of the High School. I’m hoping to work with the class teacher, another teacher who has recently been seconded to promote CfE and numeracy across the curriculum and a teacher from the High School maths department.
I intend to re-invent the Carronshore Maths blog that I set up a while ago and the associated wikis. The Carronshore maths blog isn’t an edublogs supporter blog, though, so I’ll be moving it to primarybloggerto get rid of any adverts ….. and to get access to akismet spam blocker …. and get lots more space, too 🙂
I’ve made a ‘help slideshow’ of how to export blog data from edublogs to primaryblogger – it might be of help to someone …
In a previous post a comment by Ray Tolley got me thinking about what happened to the various online spaces I had set up for Primary 7 stage children in the past.
Ray commented:
“Perhaps one important point missed so far is about longevity. Having taken the trouble to help pupils build up an e-Portfolio, what happens if there is no ‘portability’ to the Secondary school or beyond? I doubt that promises of ‘interoperability’ will really materialise in the next 10-15 years! I think that it is very important to invest in a system that is future-proofed. I feel that children will get very frustrated if they have to start from scratch all over again when they move on to another school.”
I’ve been revisiting some of the spaces I set up and contemplating primary/secondary ‘portability‘ and ‘longevity‘ issues mentioned in Ray’s comment. Stories of some missed opportunities are outlined below:
Portability Issue 1 – Jamie’s Story
Jamie was typical of most of the boys in the class that year. They seemed less motivated than the girls when it came to imaginative writing tasks. When they were given their own space in a wiki, however, and allowed some freedom as to the subject matter, Jamie demonstrated that he was actually very capable of writing a great imaginative story. I’ve copied some of his story here:
His face shone dark in the moonlight, while his coat lay torn slowly floating in between the reeds. His shirt was dirty and wet. The dark waters that lay behind him gave him the appearance of a demon or a dark shadowy creature moving in the night. His sheath was well padded and worn away because of constant usage, it had three diamonds encrusted in it. It had a gold rim and a thin copper lining wrapped around it. This lay on his back but it never wieghed him down as it was as light as a feather. He had black boots on and they were half-covered by his camouflage trousers.
He walked on at a normal pace when he heard a purring noise, after a while he ignored it and carried on his stroll. He heard it again. He was watching a certain bush knowing that there was a creature behind it because of all the wierd purring noises. the world stayed as still as a stick insect as they lay eyes on eachother there was more rustling then the beast came out, a tiger that was as orange as sunset heading speedily at Kai. In reaction Kai drew his sword from his sheath and took a deep slash at the tiger’s leftpaw then stabbed it twice roundabout the same place the tiger had gave in to the pain and there it lay dead……
Everyone in the class was full of praise for his effort. It turned out that he liked a particular type of story and had read lots of them. He also enjoyed writing them in a notebook that he carried around. His Laughing in the Face of Death story started a craze and soon the boys in the class began carrying their own notebooks where they wrote similar styles of stories. I remember hearing them comparing stories, as well as seeking and giving advice.
Soon after Jamie’s story appeared on his wiki, we had a visit from two High School teachers from the English Dept. I’m not sure of the original purpose of their visit but at some point our HT had asked some of the pupils to share the class wikispace with them. They were impressed with Jamie’s attempt at story writing and had also heard about our primary stage ‘two stars and a wish’ assessment strategy and had left a comment for Jamie on his wiki space:
Star 1 ~ Fabulous use of imagery
Star 2 ~ Fantastic description
Wish ~ Develop the use of personification
… but that was the end of the High School teachers’ involvement. They had no idea of the ‘behind the scenes’ information I was privy to. On reflection, it would have been great if more had been made of that opportunity to bridge the gap between Primary 7 and S1.
Portability Issue 2 – High School Induction Days
In June each year, the Primary 7 pupils from our cluster spend three days getting to know their new High School. This is great for helping the transition to s1, and the children’s blog posts about their experience gave further insight into how they coped with adjusting to their new environment.
Lisa appeared to have no reservations at all! She wrote:
“I loved Larbert High, it has been one of my best experiences. I made a lot of cool new friends……”
Tessie, however, wrote about her confusion over the lunchtime arrangements:
“….after that it was lunchtime. a confusing nightmare. we had to line up and put money on our card which was easy. but then we went to the hub *dinner hall* and we got told to get a drink. easy. but then if you went and said can i have a burger please she would say something about do you have a meal deal drink. and i was like what??? it was weird.”
“I was shaking in the back seat. My Mum gave me £2.50 for my dinner money. Then when we eventually got there I stepped out the car not knowing which way too go then I saw some other people walking by that were in my class so I just followed them.”
Last year on the three day visit, I gave the primary 7 pupils some of our mp3 players with built in microphones (they had been used to using these in class) and they interviewed some of the teachers and ‘buddies’. We shared these interviews once the children had came back from their visit. I’ve included one of them here – I have permission from all involved to share this online:
I wonder what potential blogging has for smoothing out the primary/secondary transition journey?
Longevity Issue 1 – Marc’s Blog
Of all the primary 7 pupils, Marcwas the most successful in keeping his blog going as he moved on to High School. In fact, in April 2008 he received a comment from David Gilmour:
David commented:
“Hi Marc, this is just to let you know that last month, April 08, your home page was the second most popular entry page on edubuzz.org, with 2571 visits.”
Marc obviously enjoyed his blog that had been set up for him in Primary 7, and he continued writing posts until Second Year at High School. His main love was for drama/singing/dancing (and probably still is!). He began receiving comments containing words of encouragement from like-minded people … comments such as:
“Hi Marc, i’m the drama teacher at Knox Academy, just wanted to wow and well done for doing your own theatre company, it’s very hard work but liking your name and what you are doing! keep me posted in your future projects! break a leg!”
… and:
Hi Marc – can you give me the details of the Flannan Isle play that you are doing. I will be doing a project with my class based on the mystery of the Flannan Isle and would be interested to know where I could get a copy of the play. Thanks
and …
I’m glad you like Wicked! one of my favourite musicals! if you haven’t seen it yet you must! i seen Idina and Kerry and now booking to see the new Elphaba. We just took S2 and S3 students to see it in London
These comments were from Drama teachers – not from Marc’s own school, but from schools in another Local Authority. Despite the popularity of Marc’s blog, no-one in his own school ever commented (and the chances are that no teachers there were even aware that he had his own blog). It’s been a wee while now since Marc last updated his blog, but it is worth mentioning that he regularly posted to it for two years after he left primary School.
Longevity Issue 2 – Kayleigh’s New Home
Marc wasn’t the only one that year who continued to post to his blog after he’d moved on to high School. A handful of others posted during their first year of High School. Danni was one of these … and it was amazing to see a comment on her last blog post from Kayleigh.
Gi Day Danni
sorry it’s a long time since i spoke last. Iv’e just been so busy at school. I came 4th in the school cross country and 18th in the interschool cross country leauge out of a 110 people the lap was about 3km. They after that we had our faction sports carival (there like the houses we used to have) am in beard which is blue. these are the individal avents i took part in : 100m sprit i came 3rd out of the 8 people i raised ,i came 4th in the 200m out of 8 people, i came 3rd in long jump my longest jump was 3.29m and the last of the these events was the 400m i came 4th out of 8 people. After that we went onto team avents this is what they were: my team got second in leaderball, we came 3rd in flag relay, tunnelball,zigzag realy and shuttle relay But sadly we came last in passball. I have done other this as well i will tell you about them some other time
have a good on
from your friend kayleigh
The comment was from Kayleigh, who’d left Carronshore half way through primary 7 to go and live in Australia. It was just fantastic to read her blog post to say that she’d arrived safely and was settling in to her new life ‘down under’. It was also wonderful that there were 15 comments on that post in reply. These included comments from:
friends in her old Carronshore school
virtual friends she’d met via her Carronshore blog who live in another part of Australia
classroom assistants from carronshore
teachers from Carronshore
the HT from Carronshore!
a member of staff from another authority in Scotland
Longevity and portability Issues – Troubles with edublogs
The blog posts from the next group of Primary 7 bloggers didn’t have as much success when it came to either ‘portability’ or ‘longevity’ issues. Unfortunately just as these primary 7’s left primary school, edublogs began to have problems with bloggers logging on to their blogs. Passwords had stopped working and I looked for help on the edublogs forum – I discovered that others were also having difficulties accessing blogs.
I asked for advice:
I’m also very concerned that all the blogs I set up last session for my class now can’t be accessed by them. They were all added as users (admin status) but have now moved on to High School. If they try to log in, will they not gain access? Although I still monitor their blogs, I’ve no easy way of showing them a way around this new problem. Their blogs can be found at http://mvass.edublogs.org/examples-of-pupil-blogs/
Luke replied that I should ask the pupils to reset their own passwords … not straight forward in my case because I’d set up the blogs in such a way that I had given the pupils control over their own passwords … equal admin rights.
Hi Luke,
The students have their own blogs (set up with the gmail hack). I can reset their passwords because I know their usernames, but can’t then change the new passwords back to their own on because I don’t know what this was.
They’ve all moved on to High School now so i can’t even ask them!!
The blogs were set up in August 2007. I know that some used them just recently.
Because of the gmail hack set up I can access them with my own username and password as I also have admin rights to each of their blogs, but that doesn’t help them to gain access
The reply was:
@mvass:
Quite a sticky situation there. You could maybe add a contact form/note on your blog, asking students who can’t log in to contact you. You can then give them the new password. Other than that, maybe James might have a better idea.
This problem led to a lot of the primary 7’s being confused as to why they couldn’t access their blogs. I know this was happening because I was receiving‘change password’ email requests – but I’d no way of getting the new passwords to the ‘High School’ pupils.
Ok, that was hard work writing this and it’s time to press the publish button – but I’m thinking that there might be a way forward with some of these ‘portability’ and ‘longevity’ issues ….. watch this space 🙂
Recently, I’ve been reading about ePortfolios … e-portfolios …. and even Eportfolios (not sure which one to use!) Anyway, when I first heard the term I looked it up and immediately thought that the concept would be great to use when giving children their own online space. I’ve been introducing teachers here to class blogging … but after a time, they tend to ask me how they can give the children their own space. I can understand this – it’s exactly what led me to giving the children in my own class a page in a class wiki – then eventually their own wiki, and their own blog. The next question I’m asked is always…. ‘So – how should the pupils use the space?’ After more than two years of giving children their own online spaces, you’d think I’d have been able to answer that question straight away – but I always hesitate. I’ll attempt to reflect here on why that was.
Year One
The first attempt at giving the children an on-line space was viaa page on a class wiki. There were four wikis, actually – one for each type of writing. The children either wrote class work directly on to the wiki or, if they didn’t have the typing skills, they would put on a short section of whatever they had hand written. They also had a space on our topic wiki, and they learned how to upload pictures, slideshares, videos, etc. There were even maths group problem solving spaces where they wrote about on what they’d been doing in class …. and early attempts at making group podcasts to say how they’d solved some maths problems. At some point the children were given their own blogswhere they wrote about school related items.
Year Two
With my next class, I began to allow the children more freedom over how they used their on-line spaces. To begin with, I’m not sure they knew what to do with this freedom …. this quote from Anna’s blog will demonstrate what I mean:
‘Well a couple of days ago me and courtney were pestering Mrs Vass and asking her about blogs and stuff and me and courtney were a bit stuck about what we could write on our blogs.So Mrs Vass made it very clear to me anyway that a blog is like an online diary and i found it intresting because everyone in my class thinks a blog is only for school stuff and its not its like courtney has been writing about Dundee.Anyway i just wanted to make it clear that a blog is not only for school stuff so thanks Mrs Vass for telling me that! ‘
What happened after that was just great! The children began to use their blogs for reflection – what they wanted to do when they were older, worries – and hopes – for High School, thoughts about family life, hobbies, etc. etc. They were also keen for the blog posts to be read out to their classmates, and this led to inspiring others to go home and write their own post. I’ve written a few blog posts in the pastabout the positive impact of giving the children more ownership over their blogs.
The children also began to use their wikis for writing imaginative stories. The quality of writing on their wikis was far superior to the writing they were producing in jotters during class time. Again, I’ve blogged about the great teaching opportunities that arose from sharing these stories on the whiteboard ….. not to mention important lessons that were learned about copyright issues😉
So why the hesitation in recommending that other class teachers leave children to their own devices?
Well, on reflection, it may have worked so successfully for me because the children were actually very well aware of the fact that their use of their online spaces was going to be used in the case study I was writing up for my Chartered Teacher course. Because I was going to be quoting them in my write up, permissions had to be granted by everyone involved. They were also aware that I was blogging about the whole journey, and a couple of them even left comments on my blog.
I’m not sure what would happen if children were just handed these spaces and told to ‘get on with it’ …. would it turn out to be no more that a bebo or myspace type of thing?? ….. not that I think that would be totally wrong, either – but that’s another story 🙂 What I’ve been lookng for, is something in between simply using the space for classwork and a kind of ‘laissez faire’ policy.
Could a type of ePortfolio be the answer – and if so, what form would that take? I’ve been reading a bit about ePortfolios and here are some thoughts so far ….. wee snippets taken from literature I’ve visited (apologies that there’s no direct link to original sources)
What is an ePortfolio:
In general, an ePortfolio is a purposeful collection of information and digital artifacts that demonstrates development or evidences learning outcomes, skills or competencies.
A collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s efforts, progress, or achievements
What should they look like?
They should be purposeful. Without purpose, an ePortfolio is just a folder of student work
The student work included in the portfolio should be that which best tells the story they want to tell – so they need to justify their choice of content.
There should be evidence of student self-reflection
What’s the teacher’s role?
They will only have the desired effects if planned for carefully
There needs to be clearly defined criteria to allow students to paint a picture of their efforts, growth, and achievement
Effective feedback should be given to students, to encourage them to observe their own learning journey
Assessment techniques should improve achievement and not just monitor it
Assessments should align with what is considered important outcomes in order to communicate the right message to students and others about what is valued
What about the pupils?
Students need to see samples of good self-reflection so that thoughts and comments go beyond “I think I did OK” or ” I think I have more to learn.”
Criteria should identify what is most valued by students and teachers alike
Pupils should be monitoring their own learning so that they can adjust what they do when they perceive they are not understanding.
Well there it is! My new recommendation for next session when teachers ask about giving children their own online space.
Blogs or wikis?? I’ll suggest wikis – I have recollections of the primary 7’s not liking the fact that their blog posts seem to disappear (archived). Also, on a wiki, the menus at the side and the discussion facility facility on blogs just seem to lend themselves more to the purpose?
Wow! Writing this post has been a learning journey for me ……. and it’s only thrown up more questions that I want to find anwers to ….. time to hit the publish button 🙂
“I’ve been thinking on being a book writer.Well,i dont know yet but i love reading books and i always like writing stories.I might start writing more on my wiki.My room has quite alot of books flooding everywhere.He He!Anyway i was wondering if you could give me some tips how to be a good story writer.”
I posted a comment that led me to thinking about introducing the children to different Learning Styles. The children were very keen to find their preferred style. The quiz they took can be found HERE. This led them to want to research what job they might be most suited to .. and they began to Blog about this.
“i just love reading books i dont know how i just love it. I love to write stories and read stories. when i am older i want to become a writer and write lots of things ( but i dont know yet what i am going to write hehe.I love scary books , sad books , adventure books and etc. I dont read the news paper because i find it boring and i just dont like to read it but every thing else is fun to read. maybe you should try to rite your own book and i will to. i will come back to you when i have wrote atleast 4 pages hehe”
Nina wrote a great post at home one evening. It was obvious that she had put a lot of thought into writing it, and when I noticed it on ‘google reader’ that evening, I decided that I would share it with the others the next day ………. it’s interesting that after the post had been shared, there was a spontaneous ’round of applause’ and when she got back home, she re-vamped her post by adding paragraphs and some more interesting words and phrases here and there (audience awareness?). I’ve included a bit here:
“Decisions.There is so much decisions in life there right infront of you,some are hard and some are easy(i tend to ask for advice on the hard)
Like one for example what should i have for breakfast?But the one thing that is the hardest i think is what your career should be.Well when we were young we all wanted to be heroes and heroines like firemen,Police,Vets,doctor,teachers,dancers and more.But when you get older you start to think more about this. I’m not old enough to get a job yet of course but it just makes me think.
I wanted to be a Ballet dancer when i was small but i don’t go to dancing because of my spine, therefore ballet is not a job option for me as things have changed.Well i think if i go to Uni or College i could become most of the things because i think i’m quite clever not at language though,i don’t like it.
Here are a few jobs i’d like to do and why.Well my first one is a Journalist i’d like to do this because i like to find out things and it would be interesting and i think i’m alright at writing.I’d like to get in touch with a newspaper and get better at my writing…….”
“Nina’s Post kind of got me thinking…There are a lot os Desicions in life.I guess we make never really think about it!Well when i’m older i really want to be something along the lines of a Journalist. (eg;Fashion magazine editor;Write:Journalist) That kinda stuff.One time i considered being a Police woman but then i though nahh…The uniformas are hideous!! No i’m joking really i think if i were a police Woman I might get hurt or something So basically this post is to say thanks to Nina For giving me a bit of a boost and stuff like that haha xbye xxx”
Miss L is a final year Bed student in our class at the moment. She was keen to set up her own blog and added a post to join in with the ‘conversation’. A short extract is below:
“I thought I would write something about this as so many of you have. Although I have not fully entered the world of work officially I am nearly there! Fingers crossed anyway!Where to start? Well, when I was wee I always wanted to be a teacher. I used to make my little brother sit and listen to me when I pretended to teach him! I used to have to bribe him with sweets etc! However, when he got a bit older he did appreciate the help with his homework so I think we both benefitted from it!…………………..”
“I didn’t really know what to write a post on and everyone seems to be writing about what they want to be when they are older. It got me thinking of how many choices we actually make in life. I mean there is little ones like what will i eat for breakfast? or what will i wear tomorrow? There are also bigger choices like Will i buy the game i want that is £45? The choice that quite alot gets to me is what i want to play when i go to my friends houses. I can never seem to decide. I think a reason for that is that you are worried incase the persons house you are at does not want to play that thing and you are making it boring for them. Another choice that is hard for me is what i want to be when i am older? When i was smaller i used to want to be a ballerina or a nurse but now that has changed especially because i dont really like programs that they cut people open and things. I just personally could not do that and i cant understand how some people can do that! I also used to want to be either a vet or a teacher until i found out that being a vet can involve putting animals down.:( ! A teacher i am still considering with about a million other jobs. If you think about it there is so much out there so i will just have to go with the flow and see what life throws at me!”
“When i am older i would like to become a singer. I would go on the X factor. I have always been quite shy. So that would be a thing i would need to work on. I am not sure if i am a good singer or not lol. Its hard to say when your friends say you are good but then all the boys say you are rubbish. The only thing is i am not sure about going on the X factor is i might go on and make a fool of my self if i cant sing lol. But i will give it a try in the future.
Another job i would like to do is be a teacher. I would like to teach primary schools. Also i would need to be more confident to be able to speak in front of people. These are only two jobs i wouold like.
Bye x
Do you think i should go for the X Factor when i am older?”
So to return to Victoria’s email suggestions:
whether the use of co-existing online communities enhances and/or changes the offline context of my classroom
I have lots of thoughts on this and will devote a post to the topic 🙂
whether it shifts the ways in which both myself and the children in the class conceptualize and operationalize curriculum;
whether I find myself changing the ways in which I teach and deliver curriculum.
Although these two issues need to be looked at very closely, it is a fact that the ‘Learning Style’ quiz idea came from reading a post on one of the children’s blogs. I’ve also arranged for an author and a journalist to visit the class because of the interest shown in these careers in the recent blog posts quoted above …………
….. and If anyone knows a famous X Factor star, I’m sure that Monica would be very happy if you could arrange a class visit 🙂
the idea of exploring the area of gendered representations of identity
She was referring to the children’s use of ‘weemees‘ to represent themselves.
The children had great fun designing their characters. The girls (2nd row) all spent a lot of time getting their weemees to look like themselves …. eye colour, hair colour, face shapes, etc. The boys (top row) are less recognisable! They’ve designed characters to depict their interests. I know, for example, that the boy represented in the first picture is very interested in characters in computer games (this also shows in his imaginative writing tasks). The ‘guitar hero’ doesn’t really look like his creator, but I know that he does enjoy playing the guitar.
Jackie also highly rated:
the importance of allowing the children to drive the use of the blogs
I’ve tried very hard this session to make sure that this is the case and have just carried out a quick review of what has happened over this last month.
I looked at gender and types of posts. Here’s my ‘snapshot’ view of the situation in the month of January (2008!) ……… learnerblogs was VERY slow tonight, so may have got fed up waiting for a few of the blogs to load 🙂
Girls …. 30 posts
Boys …. 24 posts
I broke down the post into types:
basic pictures from web
what’s happening in class / school
playing with codes
own thoughts
The ‘breakdown’ is as follows – girls are blue, boys are red
Basic pics from web – 0 10
Class/School posts – 1210
Playing with Codes – 30
Own Thoughts – 15 4
These numbers are just for January .. the bigger picture might be different 😀
So basically this post is to say thanks to Nina For giving me a bit of a boost and stuff like that 
haha xbye xxx”
