Jan 12 2007
Brainstorm outline shows the complexity of Weblog Studies within education.
Well in between playing with animation at PICTAPS below I have finally finished brainstorming and categorising the literature review for my assignment into using blogs as a particular example of how difficult ICT change and adoption management is within schools.
The amount of literature that is available both from academic research and ‘grey’ (web) research is phenomenal. Interestingly thought there is very little based on secondary school education and how blogs are implemented and used. This maybe due to the inherent difficulties of security and control that figure ,much more highly within school establishments than say university establishments. Beyond that the TIME factor seems very prevalent, and leads to such technological tools often used by highly motivated early innovators and then little uptake by others due to pressures or lack of a belief it will have any positive affect.
The areas of literature I rounded into 5 broad areas:-
- Comments and Conversations
- Blogging Motivations
- Social Vs Technological
- Educational Blogging
- Blogs and Virtual Communities
Interestingly their was a great deal of enthusiasm and research into weblog communities, and ideas of connected networks that build virtually online. But often authors seem not to think that building a blended community of learners around one blog as of any validity or worth. I will undoubtedly disagree with this, and suggest that even within a teacher led weblog that is fully under control (as it has to be with secondary school students) levels of trust and freedom can be given to students to improve learning and motivation and lead to digitally literate students ready for the connectivist world they are entering.
Hopefully from this review I will then draw out my own motivations and rationales for starting to blog in an educational context introducing the variety of ways I have used blogs within school communities including:-
- Sevens Vs Nines Blog – To publish work for KS3 groups of students and promote cross-curricular work
- CreativICTism Blog- A Human portal for GCSE ICT students, which has grown with two student authors and acts as a virtual extension to the classroom. And beyond that a support mechanism.
- AS Student Blogs – Created for their AS Applied ICT e-portfolios
- Year 7 – Individual blogs, for a promote Egypt project
- INSET for staff at my school, to introduce the idea of blogs and see if any teachers would take up the ideas and adopt the methods
This will hopefully lead into some of the wider issues of adopting such a technological tool within a classroom setting from an individual point of view (apart from the INSET) and how this has changed my ideas and styles of teaching and beyond….I will reflect on the successes and failures and how I have evaluated these. Mostly the review will be qualitative, with comments used from students and maybe questionnaires from teachers and students.
Click here to find my overall mind-map/brainstorm and yes it is as massive as before – but as usuals has helped me to bring connections between my research and my practice (Warning the mind-map will take a while to load and you will need to scroll around a great deal…sorry.)
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Stunning Fabulous and quite fun too. While Plugging away on Dreamweaver have a look at this site, in which you can quickly draw a character and then animate them to dance to a soundtrack. Clever – huh…..post your examples as links in your comments…
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