Delicious links for 2007-02-10 and back to Finish the Assignment

Well this recent set of conferences around Connectivism and George Siemens have been excellent, it is a pity I have had no time to actual go into the Elluminate presentations and fully participate. They keep on pushing my assignment probably a way it should not go, as I think of how weblogs act as the first expert node that a school student would come across on the web.

Even though this environment is controlled if used correctly then students will legitimately participate in a number of ways, whether that is simply reading or more in commenting or beyond to becoming authors and posting with all the responsibility that suggests. Anyway I am posting the first shall we say unedited section below, to at least get some areas out in the open. And maybe clarify where I am going wrong:-

Introduction – Abstract

I will be looking into how I introduced weblogs into my teaching and learning as an example of how ICT change and adoption is managed on a small scale within schools. I will focus on areas that I had to change within my ways of working, organisation and teaching styles and then reflect upon how this could affect a whole school initiative to embed weblog use within teaching and learning.
‘Weblogs’ are one of many new tools that are part of a much talked about Web 2.0 or Read/Write web revolution. As Blood discusses the development of a weblog has been phenomenal with technical advances always adding to a weblogs appeal, even though to some ‘[w]eblogs have become so ubiquitous that for many of us the term is synonymous with ‘personal Web site’…’ (Blood, pg53) What was once a tool that needed coding is now in the hands of any user. The simplest definition of a weblog by another Web 2.0 tool Wikipedia is; ‘A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.’ These new web tools are considered to be most importantly social, and highlight collaboration and easy building of online communities. I will be looking at three case studies and my use of weblogs to see what and if such tools can enhance learning and be placed as an essential part of the school curriculum. I will be able to offer some conclusions that go beyond the usual hype of new technologies within education, to see in practical terms whether weblog use is worthwhile.
The amount of literature that is available both through academic research and less respected ‘grey’ research is phenomenal. Interestingly though there is little based on secondary school education and how weblogs have been implemented practically. This could be due to the inherent difficulties of security and control that figure, much more within school establishments. It could also be that the time factor is more prevalent, and leads to such technological tools only being used by highly motivated early innovators. This jump from innovators usage to uptake by others is then often poor due to pressures or lack of a belief that it will have any positive affect. (Quote here)
Interestingly the literature shows enthusiasm for research into weblog communities, and ideas of connected networks that build virtually online. However often authors seem not to think that building a blended ‘community of practice’ around one blog as of any validity. I will discuss and makes conclusions to this, and suggest that even within a teacher led weblog that is controlled (as it must be with secondary school students in a web publishing environment accessible by all) that 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 now living within.
From this review I will then describe my own motivations and rationale for starting to use weblogs in an educational context introducing the case studies within my recent school community including:-
• Sevens Vs Nines Blog – to publish work for specific KS3 classes promoting cross-curricular work and horizontal integration of ICT.
• CreativICTism Blog – a human portal for GCSE ICT students, which has grown with two student authors and acts as a virtual extension, a link-log and a support mechanism.
• AS Student Blogs – individually created for their AS Applied ICT E-Portfolios.
• INSET Training – ‘Blog to Teach’ – to introduce the idea of weblogs and see if any teachers would take up the ideas and adopt weblogs. The session was completely practical and only a one off session with guarantees of support throughout the year and links to an online course with resources for support.
These case studies will lead into a discussion of the wider issues of adopting such a technological tool within the extended classroom from an individual point of view and how this has changed my ideas and styles of teaching and learning. I will reflect on the successes and failures and how I have evaluated these. The review will be qualitative and quantitative, with comments and data collected from a small questionnaire review with students and evaluative informal feedback from teachers about the INSET. I will also use some technical analysis of the CreativICTism and SevenVsNine weblogs, with the use of Google Analytics software to show numbers and patterns of use.

Background – EABIS and ICT within the School

The base of my research will be within one international school in the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The school is private and within the last few years has been investing heavily in its ICT infrastructure. However the increase in organisation, support, resources and hardware has not been immediately followed with change in pedagogical style or uptake of ICT within classroom teaching. The ICT department has began to try and change this uptake be leading the first INSET to using ICT within teaching. These are voluntary after school sessions that have only begun to gain rigorous senior management support and be placed within the school policies of adoption of ICT to support teaching and learning.

Literature Review

To begin I had to understand and decide upon the reasons why I had decided to use weblogs in such an extensive way. I will start this process by looking at the areas of academic research that have written about weblog use both inside and outside education.

The literature I have placed into 5 distinct but wide boundaries. I have reviewed and read over 44 articles and papers of which I have then chosen those that have most resonance academically or whose authors are important nodes within highly active connected online learning communities. Often these authors do publish both types of work. I have also discarded those that are general descriptions of weblogs.

Promoting Conversations… (7)

These papers deal with the idea that the most important aspect of a weblog is that it allows for easy discourse between reader and author with the use of comments. They can be written and posted without any technical knowledge and shown often directly below what has been written by the original author. A large amount of academic papers have thoroughly and quantitively researched the amount of comments that particular weblogs have, suggesting that ‘[t]he number of comments per post is perhaps the truest and most diagnostic metric of the nature of communication on a weblog’ (Krishnamurthy) (Gilad Mishne, 2006) Their research suggests that on average from a general sample of weblogs about ‘29% posts had comments.’ This analysis of comments and how they interlink as ‘knowledge flows’ is looked at in detail by Anjewierden although it is acknowledged that ‘[m]any people can read a blog and be influenced by it without ever leaving a trace.’ (Anjo Anjewierden et. al, pg 2)
Some authors go as far as to say a great problem with using weblogs as an educator is that the weblog is controlled by the teacher, and often does not allow discussion to flow organically through the weblog community; if they are in fact part of any community. It is obvious that with a classroom weblog for example the conversation and comments will be mostly between a small and known community within the classroom, or maybe school.
Some more practical based research pointed to the simple fact that ‘…students can log on at any time from any Internet -enabled computer to seek clarification for issues they encounter in their coursework, to discuss topics raised in class…’ (Sarah Horton, 2001) I am interested to see in detail within the communities I create if the lack of motivation to participate and comment does relate specifically to controlled educational contexts or if there is a more complex discussion to whether an online community takes its rules and norms from the actual classroom itself; if a classroom does not encourage discussion and high level thinking and opinion sharing then will the same be true online:-
‘…if there is little exchange in the classroom, there isn’t likely to be much online.’ (Sarah Horton, 2001)
However it is suggested that if the ‘real’ classroom environment itself might not lend itself to discussion and the space and flexibility of weblog commenting could allow students that are quiet and unwilling to contribute’… may find an online discussion area the perfect place to discuss class topics…’ (Sarah Horton, 2001) As with any environment the importance of the activities and how they are conducted is crucial so that discussion is fostered and collaboration encouraged so that ‘…commenting helps foster community..’ (Carolyn Wei, 2003) Within Stephen Downes Educause article he looks at practical case studies where ‘[t]he student who usually talks very loud in the classroom, and the student who is very timid have the same writing space to voice their opinion. It puts students in a situation of equity.’ (Mircille Guay 2004)

Motivations to Blog… (8)

This literature focuses on why bloggers decide and continue to blog. What are their motivations to spend a time posting day in day out? Are the motivations for bloggers that are posting for personal reasons mirrored by the motivations of bloggers that are professional? Does this lead and then link with my motivations within school for technology use in general and was these reasons; my main driving force to use weblogs?

Adaptable to Your Personal Needs

Weblogs are highly adaptable and can be presented and used in many forms. It is widely acknowledged that there are three main categories of weblog: Filter Blog, Personal Journal and Knowledge Log (K-Log) (Menchen, 2005). As Menchen suggests maybe the simple publishing power of these forms might be the motivation for their popularity; ‘simple: people read them.’ (Menchen, 2005 pg 14) Only a few years ago the Internet did not promote such activities as personal publishing but hid this behind a miasma of technical wizardry. Now the Read / Write web has been born the era of media as ‘a one-way street’ (Rosenbloom, 2004) is almost forgotten.
The Filter Blog is written by an author who trawls the Internet for information, and relates their findings back in ‘a log of web surfing pre-digested with commentary for the reader.’ (Blood, 2000 pg 2) A personal journal is like a diary placed online, where each new page is a new diary entry and posted as the first article on the front page. The Knowledge weblog, is one in which the author or authors writes about a specific domain of knowledge giving their viewpoint on this and usually hoping for some kind of community to build around this domain.
These categories are not cemented, as Nadi suggests the mix of what happens on a weblog can lead to all manner of different contexts and uses. In fact almost as many as there are authors. The author suggests a widening of categories of uses: Blogs to document my life, Blogs as commentary, Blogs as catharsis, Blog as muse, and Blogs as Community Forum. (Nardi 2004, p41) It seems that maybe the wide variety of uses acts as a motivation allowing the user ‘power over the web site’ (Menchen, 2005) and the ability to follow their ideas and methods to communicate with an audience.

Needing Feedback

Not all but most bloggers want their blogs to be read, and to know they have been read through feedback of some sort. Almost all weblogs encourage their readers to comment on posts, to say what they think. As such authors want to be heard and become part of a network of people that are able to communicate and share knowledge and experience.
A weblog must be able to pull readers into their world, both real and virtual. They would like their weblog to be at least ‘partially interconnected and sporadically conversational.’ (Menchen, Herring et al., 2005) Unlike most computer mediated communication the act of ‘blogging is the most convenient ‘pull’ medium where people who want to can ‘check in’ with the blogger…'(Menchen, 2005), on a regular basis to see what has been written. This ease and simplicity with which blogs pull in readers may suggest why bloggers continue to be motivated to write.
To Communicate with Those Known and Unknown
Bloggers feel they control the power to publish and this is seen as an essential factor to them continuing to post. The need to start a community can come from either the need to find and branch out to new people or to continue and improve already existing relationships. The motivation can be seen ‘as either intrinsic, that is, started to contact the people on the Internet or extrinsic, to maintain relationships formed elsewhere’ (Menchen, 2005.) The author considers the ideas of Csikszentmihalyi’s extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and is important especially within the context and use of blogging as the medium offers both ideals.
Whether students feel that they are either improving relationships with piers and groups from within their local school community, or beyond this students’ can see that the public – the anonymous people surfing the Internet are interested and coming to view and participate within their work.

Social Vs Technological… (6)

I found little research in the area of weblog design and how this affects the readership and effectiveness in keeping a weblog vibrant able to encourage return readers time and again. This is an important aspect of any weblog, as without considered thought within this area a weblog initiative could easily fail in an educational context. Students are as such controlled to be within a face-to-face classroom situation, but a virtual weblog environment can not be forced.

The technological aspects of a weblog in how it is designed and what it can do have led the ‘social’ uses that engage communities. The weblog revolution is part of a wave of ‘social software’ including social networks , wikis and social bookmarking. These have been driven by the ’…desire for more features that enables conversation and community such as comments, trackbacks, and web feeds.’ (Menchen, 2005) The research of Wagner suggests the success of a weblog, is down to the way the background technology reinforces and makes the social aspects of a community improve. (Wager et al., 2006 )
How these social communities evolve is an intriguing and ultimately selfish process in which the needs of an individual must come first, before participants commit and contribute to any online social community. An example of this is the use of social bookmarking site del.icio.us discussed by Sessums showing that if it is ‘…is useful for the individual using it, they’ll use it…’ (Barnett, 2006) Examples of tools that add this value include shout-boxes, community trackers and RSS feeds. This seems an arbitrary comment, but one which affects all social software and so weblogs, and must be part of how the weblog is designed to incorporate tools that add this value:-
‘The one major idea behind del.icio.us is that personal value precedes network value. What this means is that if we are to build networks of value, then each person on the network needs to find value for themselves before they can contribute value to the network. In the case of Del.icio.us, people find value saving their personal bookmarks first and foremost. All other usage is secondary.’ (Joshua Porter, 2006)
These pointers argue therefore that not only does the design of a weblog have to pull school students rather than be able to force students to take part in a community, but also that a student must first and foremost be given something that is important to themselves and then only from this premise will they begin to contribute and continue to return to the environment.

Motivations for Change…

Stakeholders in Initiative

There can never be an isolated initiative within a school environment as there are many other stakeholders concerned with the learning process of the students; including the Senior Management Team, the ICT Teaching Team, Parents and Students themselves who were all affected adversely or positively by my practice and initiative. In fact even though it was an individually driven iniative a real motivation for its introduction was cross-pollination of ideas across departments and a more natural discourse with often sidelined stakeholders.
These stakeholders not only demand communication and their thoughts on teaching and learning, but also view and have their own thoughts on the use of new technologies within a school environment. There are many reasons new technologies in general are brought into schools and classrooms including: – ‘Vocational, Social, Pedagogic, Catalytic, Industrial, Cost Effectiveness, Symbolic and Special Needs.’
As one stakeholder and a technology enthusiast I can be seen to be an ‘optimist rhetoric.’ (Reynolds et al., 2003) That is one that allows the allure of technology to override sensible analysis and research into how technologies are really affecting the quality of teaching and learning within schools. The teacher element of technology adaption in schools is imperative. Also that I as an early adopter and innovator was able to easily realise and implement my iniatives was of paramount importance:-
‘…the early adopters of ICT tended to be people who were technologically confident and competent. Secondly, they tended to operate on a small scale, which enabled them to avoid many of the systemic constraints that act as barriers to larger-scale adoption of ICT.’ (Twining et al., pg 70)
For this study I will focus on the following personal rationale that maybe reflects my points of view for adopting technologies within an educational context as a whole. I will reflect on the success of these after my case study analyses and how this will impact on the school as a whole.

Enable Communication with All Stakeholders

The school as most has ways to link different stakeholders together within the school community. Often the measure of success of well a school is delivering and supporting learning comes from the communication between these stakeholders. The British National Curriculum often compartmentalises departments and sections of the school, and beyond this the subject and pastoral section often has to specify particular tasks and communication. Within the current school the pastoral side mostly deals with contacting parents and discussing issues and so often leaving the department teams less able to specifically show what they and they sons/daughters are doing within the department.
The initiative of using a weblog would provide a natural way to communicate what is happening and often what there sons/daughters are doing within the classroom in a positive way. The use of ‘…social software could end ‘teacher isolation’ by building networks within (as well as outside) the school infrastructure between teachers, students, parents, principals, school boards and district personnel.'(Sessums, Cultural implications of Social Software) This is a very bold statement but one in which I would at least want to begin a process of better communication. Tyson reiterates these thoughts although does begin to worry that the time taken to fulfill this communication role may end up with teachers’ blogging way into the night due to the anytime, anywhere nature:-
‘….says that his blogging teachers ‘welcome parents into their classrooms by facilitating active at-home participation in the child’s educational experiences at school’ (Dr. Tim Tyson, pg 2)

Educational Blogging… (13)

This was the largest section of research that I found, also having the widest variety. It was interestingly skewed towards the study of weblogs within further education or with professional ‘edubloggers’ discussing and journaling their work or studies. Studies from secondary schools or associated teachers were sparse, and most of my reviews came from looking at existing case studies and ‘grey’ research. I have also combined this section with my own motivations and rationales for learning for brevity, and so I was able to combine the theoretical aspect with what I felt I would achieve and more importantly the students could achieve and learn from their experiences.
The reasons for the initiatives have partly been retrospectively thought through, but were always the underlying my underlying ideals. It must be understood that the nature of weblogs is that they are highly flexible and can be configured and used in numerous ways and forms and so can lead to many different motives for using them. Those that I have concentrated on might not be the same as other practitioners when implementing weblog environments.

Uses and Blending

Most research focused on the variety of uses that weblogs can bring to teaching and learning, that mirror those spoken about in my research. What is most interesting is the way that these are then blended within current practices and ‘real’ classroom activity.

Glogoff considers that there are two ways in which weblogs can be blended either as a receptive or directive tool, where either the weblog is used to set and deliver interactive assignments or as ‘… a directive learning tool to provide students with equal access to important information, to expand students’ understanding of specific issues, and to direct students to explore additional material. ‘ (Glogoff, S. 2005 pg 2) The idea that the teacher can be a guide ‘…to encourage guided discovery and knowledge construction'(Glogoff, S. 2005 pg 2) both inside and outside the classroom is a persuasive one. Especially when most educators today are bound by very restrictive curriculums that skim the surface of topics and allow little flexibility or creativity, the idea that there is a route to motivate and stretch students beyond this curriculum is important for student development and learning enabling ideas being linked together and finding their relevance within real world situations:-

‘Students that have been used to surface learning display some resistance towards reflection and deep learning and these issues are often noted in their blogs’ (Bartlett-Bragg, 2003 Rosie 2000 pg 2)

So the use of the weblog can ‘…offer students and teachers a support tool to promote reflective analysis and the emergence of a learning community that goes beyond the school walls.’ (Downes, 2004, pg 14) A weblog can not only allow for a higher level of thought on a particular domain but also reinforce and develop new skills and literacies.

Guiding to Digital Multi-Fluency

In the current age of information technology, research has begun to focus on ‘what is literacy?’ Is literacy simply a term to describe the ability to communicate well with other people in a variety of ways? Other research would say you are literate if ‘…sufficiently capable to participate in our technological society’ (Prestridge, 2005)
Have we passed the ‘print’ age and associated print literacies are now only one of a number of ways we need to be literate to live and communicate? Some researchers believe that ‘…blogging is a set of intellectual habits and skills that ARE worth learning for themselves.’ (Miguel Guhlin, Dec 2006)

Has it already changed in the last centuries to mean different things depending on the technologies of the time? Sade discusses the role of a teacher as a gardener that maintains a set of technological tools that not only improve the quality of the learning process but enable students to discover, explore and improve their technological literacy:-

‘Gardeners are viewed as important roles in the maintenance of a sustainable information ecology, and are described as playing important roles in the maintenance of a sustainable information ecology, and are described as liking to help other people solve problems as well as explore the potential of the technological tools and processes themselves.’ (Gavin Sade, 2005, pg 10)
The new literacy skills are suggested as very important to students that are leaving a formal educational environment needing to be able to use these skills on their continual lifelong learning journey. They often need to become independent and less reliant on a gardening guide so that ‘… the skills they obtain will transfer to environments in which an instructor and evaluation system are not present.’ (Oravec, 2003, pg 226)
Digital fluency includes the daunting skill of finding information from an increasing bottomless ocean of knowledge; ‘It is estimated that 1.5 Exabyte’s (1.5 x 1018) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.’ (Karl Fisch, 2006) The ability to search and find the correct truthful sources of information on the Internet is a difficult skill and one which a weblog can ‘…help to make the Internet more human scale, providing access to a ‘human portal’ who carefully selects web resources for consideration.’ (Oravec, 2003, pg 231)
In short the use of a weblog can help students with developing new skills and ways of thinking, which should be of ‘…great value in terms of developing all sorts of critical thinking skills, writing skills and information literacy among other things.’ (Richardson, Downes 2004, pg 24). Simple tools like blogrolls will lead students even if ‘… occasional readers [to] find trusted ‘sources’.’ (Efimova, et al, 2004 pg 492)
These information literacy skills within the Read/Write era can be categorised in ways that describe people that are part of the communities: – collectors, creators, editors and distributors . Ohmuaki discusses in depth these activities suggesting that weblogs can fulfill most of these roles. Students become ‘…users and creators of information rather than consumers and receivers of information’ (Prestridge, 2005)

For example in the act of a student reading a post about technology and its advances in 2007 by a teacher, they are already collecting information as the post also links to different sites and weblogs. When a student that comments upon this post which asks the student to find and think about what would be their future idea that will be the technological breakthrough in 2007, they are not only creating they are also finding information, editing that information and then distributing that information to the whole of the class. The remixing of information into small packets of data is often very difficult and needs to be taught carefully so that plagiarism does not become a norm. Simply through the nature of using a practical weblog ‘…students learn about web page creation, idea sharing, hyper-linking, and the nature of the WWW in an intuitive way.’ (Wagner, 2003)

To Publish and Filter the Web

This could be considered part of my rationale for enabling the students the opportunity to develop ‘digital fluency’ but I believe that this is important enough to be considered separately. The idea that the web is now becoming so vast that it takes a very skilled researcher to find out information that is truthful and peer reviewed is beyond discussion. As suggested by the recent Fisch presentation remixed by Dyer ‘We are living in exponential times. There are over 2.7 Billion searches performed on Google every month. To whom were these addressed B.G. (Before Google)?’ (Fisch / Dyer 2006) The way a student is able to find and analyse and then use this information is becoming increasingly complex:-

‘Beyond search and retrieval, information is contextualised, analyzed and synthesized – complex skills that require critical thinking.’ (Lorenzo, pg2)

The earlier those students realise this and begin to take part and understand the wider interconnected networks of knowledge led by expert nodes the better. The weblog I hoped would be a filtering portal enabling them to slowly branch out onto the web but at the same time not become continually frustrated when they could not find something. As other k-log authors I hope to ‘become ‘human information routers’ for like minded readers.’ (Efimova, et al, 2004 pg 492)

Believe it or not more to follow, and hopefully in a more compact and efficient way…..