Leading Learning Conference :: Forum

All great ideas are useless unless they have practical application.  That seems to be the case in life both inside and outside of the classroom.

So my question is this: how do you use Web 2.0 tools in your classroom as an effective learning tool? 

Here is one ideas that I like: using blogs for student communication of ideas in literature circles.  The idea is that each literature circle group has it's own blog where it's members (or others in the class/world for that matter) they can post ideas and discuss each chapter of the novel as they read it.  Each student can still have their traditional role of discussion facilitator, connector, etc. including recorder whose role would be to summarize the ideas discussed for each chapter.  The illustrator can use traditional tools and scan a picture to the blog or even use Flickr images (or collages of Flickr images) to express a visualization of the chapter.

The neat part is that literature circle blog discussions do not need to replace traditional face-to-face discussions but can supplement that traditional conversation.  In the end, there is no need to photocopy paper as all written work can be done electronically.  The best part - the conversation need not be confined to the group as the whole class, or the whole world, can access, be a part of, and contribute, to the discussion through their comments.  The quality of the discussion seems to improve as well as students are aware that anyone can see their work.  Thus, they are more conscious of what they publish.

Hi Rob,

I have been listening (on my PDA - not iPod ) to the november learning podcast series.  The latest podcast was great.  It talked about educational uses on instant messaging.  One idea was IM'ing with students from another country fo learn spanish, and printing out the log of the conversations for authentic assessment.

Global Conversations with Instant Messaging 

In this episode, Brian Mull talks to Seth Bowers of Deerfield Public Schools in Illinois, who has been doing some exciting work with his teachers using blogs and instant messaging technology. Seth starts off by discussing a globalization project he was involved in, and he continues the conversation by highlighting other projects his school is working on and how the community has become an important role player in his school’s success.

Just found Jane Smith and Nathan Toft in Commun-it from A. Lorne Cassidy School and their Podcast from the portables.  I love students producing content for a worldwide audience in their portables.

http://portableradio.edublogs.org/ 

Hi Rob,

I completely agree with you when you say, "The quality of the discussion seems to improve as well as students are aware that anyone can see their work. Thus, they are more conscious of what they publish." I have noticed the same in my classes. Each of my ESL students has a blog where they post weekly reflections on their stay in Toronto, reports on movies/books, or commentary on what's happening on campus.

We all link to everyone in our class so that each student has access to other students' blogs. As part of their weekly assignment, they have to comment on 2 or 3 other blogs. At the beginning, I need to encourage them a bit but as the weeks go by, students began to be more active in their blog conversations. Very often, these develop in lenghty conversations. It's also really great because they often post very supportive messages, give each other advice, or sometimes engage in critical evaluation of each other's writing. This is what makes them, in the end, become more conscious of what they write.

I think I am far less experienced in this than others here so seek some guidance on something ...

I wonder sometimes if all the new terms (e.g., blog, wiki, podcast) don't add to the confusion some of the 'immigrants' have?

For example, couldn't a blog simply be described as a discussion conference or forum where individuals are encouraged to post journal-like entries and the community responds to them?

Wiki ... isn't that just shared/editable documents made available online for group editing?

Aside from subscribing and 'push', podcasting is much like downloading is it not???

I wonder if sometimes we have too many terms for things and sometimes the less-tech-savvy teachers feel unnecessarily befuddled.

 Just a thought.

Thanks Jeff for you comments.  I think your point is well taken - why create new terms to express the same processes or experiences?  However, the next question becomes, "are blogging, writing in wikis, and podcasting the same as posting journals online, group editing, and downloading?" I think that the whole point in creating these new terms is that they, in fact, express new experiences.  The main differences are the ease at which one can post online and the ease at which one can share and collaborate online.  In the case of blogging, the main differences between it and posting journal entries is that the later requires knowledge of web design, uploading files using ftp, etc. and is only one way communication - from author to reader.  The former, on the other hand, requires little technical knowledge and allows for conversation - anyone in the world can comment on anyone's blog post.  This is sort of the same thing as we are doing here right now.  Without that ability to converse, I couldn't respond to your concerns (nor would you have been able to express your concerns in the first place!).  The same goes with podcasting - one can download a picture, text, etc. which does not express the ability for anyone to broadcast their ideas to the world.  In the case of wikis, think of Wikipedia...would you say that this is the same setup as Encyclopaedia Britannica?  How easy would it be to correct inaccuracies in Encyclopaedia Britannica? The purpose of wikis is to allow anyone to edit material to create a database of communally created content.

Essentially, then, these new terms reflect new experiences of collaboration and ease of publishing.  I think the difficulty digital immigrants are having lie in the fact that many of them have not yet participated in these new experiences thus do not understand the need for the new terms. 

Hi Everyone;

I'm just jumping in because I've been curious about everything since the conference and don't want to lose momentum by not trying to read what's going on at least every couple of days. 

I'm particularly interested in the literature circle idea that Rob has suggested.  I'm wondering if you have used this at any particular grade level?  I would like to suggest it to our grade 7's and 8's - to get them on board with actually incorporating technology rather than using it as an add on. 

And any other useful ideas for blogs etc. would be most appreciated.  I did a small survey of a grade 6 class and quite a few have their own blog - although most had a myspace/facebook 'entry'.

Hi Pam,

It's great to hear that you are trying to move from theory to practice.  This tends to be a difficult leap as it always seems to happen that once teachers return to their own classrooms, they close their doors and continue to do what they have always done.  Making that leap is both exciting and scary but very worthwhile!

Essentially, the choice in setup is yours.  If you feel that both you and your students are up to it, you can completely replace face to face discussion with blog posts and use class time to get students on the computers during class time.  If you think that this may be too much too fast, create a hybrid model: maintain the face-to-face element but supplement these online discussions using blog posts.  I used to have students talk face-to-face about the novel they were reading everyday for 40 minutes during the novel study unit. To create this hybrid model, 3 days could be spent on face-to-face discussions and 2 days on blog discussions.  What is critical is that you ensure that you communicate with students that you will be evaluating their responses online.  You could even include a minimum number of blog posts/comments that each student must make each week (i.e. one blog post and three comments to other members of the group per week).

The nice part about using blogs is that there is ultimately no one way of using them.  Just ensure that the main focus for learning is reading and discussion and not blogging! Use blogging as a tool to enhance communication, incorporate writing, and publish online to a larger audience.  Will Richardson wrote on this topic of using blogs within literature circles in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom.  You can look there for more academic guidance.

I would be very, very interested to see this in action.  It would be great if you could share your efforts here with the community!