I was quite nervous about my presentation. It is so hard to know what others are interested in when you don’t know your audience. Consequently, I decided to focus on what might interest my staff. (To date, I’ve still not had time to share the whole presentation with them, but I’m ready whenever there is time.) It took me several hours, or perhaps it was days, to prepare. (It’s hard to remember now. I just know that with the pressure of everything else that needed to be done in May that it seemed like it took far too long.) With no idea of the size of my audience, I prepared handouts for about 20. I even had burned a few cds for anyone who might want to take a closer look at examples. Again, I had my staff in mind if I had too much. I practiced the timing and typed out a script for myself. I thought that I needed to be ready to present for one hour. (In reality it was changed to 45 minutes, but no worries.) Once I got everything prepared, I purchased some speakers so that my examples could be heard. I tried to consider all potential problems that could occur. I remember reading everything over on the bus ride out to SFU and changing the order of my plan.

When it was time to present, I was ready for my audience, but … there were only two people there. Both were mentors. I thought I was nervous before. Finding out that I had to share things with those who already knew what I was going to share was very unnerving. Both people had already seen a lot of what I had prepared. I was encouraged to pretend that they didn’t have prior knowledge – ya, right! In the end I felt like I babbled for the whole time. I skipped around my script so much, that I’m not sure what I actually presented in the end. My audience was very encouraging, and if not really interested, they were good actors. Hopefully, I was able to share something they hadn’t already thought of. I feel I was able to answer all questions at least.

In summary, I’m glad my presentation is over. I’ve shared a small portion to the teachers at school at one of the staff meetings. Perhaps there will be a time when I can use all of the handouts that I prepared. Ask me about digital storytelling sometime. I should be an ‘expert’ by now.

This would be a blog if I could get into my blog site. I’m very frustrated with edublogs. I have tried several times to get a new password. There has been a problem with the site. I’ve tried every procedure to get this fixed, including emailing edublogs, as instructed. No one answered back. Unfortunately, I set up blog sites for my class using Edublogs. I was looking for another blog site, but each one I tried wasn’t active and suggested I go to Edublogs. I was a little leery because I had heard someone at TLITE mention that they really didn’t like it and that they were using another source for his blog. I didn’t hear what site though. In any case I went with Edublogs.

It took me forever to set up an account for my students and myself. I had to set up a google mail account so that I could assign a hack email account for each of the 44 students. Once I got the teacher page set up, I was able to add 15 users at a time to the class site. I received two emails for each student page. Over the course of several days (a few hours each night) I finally had each site ready to go. I went into each account and set up what looked like an easy to use theme page. At first every site had the same name, “School Blog.” This was really confusing as I was reading through my 88 emails, so I started changing the name to each by adding their account number to each title. No student name is ever used, which is a good thing as I set them up in August and didn’t know who they were anyways. Needless to say the whole process was extremely time consuming, BUT I was finally done and ready to go. I also went into the class site and set up a link to all of the other sites. I think this will make it easier for the children to comment to their “blog buddy.” Another hour or so later and I was finished.

Before starting the above procedure, my SFU blog was working. Unfortunately, it did not last long. Had I realized this before starting, perhaps I would have hesitated on using the site for my classes. Oh, do I wish I had had second thoughts. I say this because the password problem has now occurred on every site. Imagine my surprise when I went in with my class to explore their blogs only to discover they wouldn’t open! (They worked fine a week ago.) While the kids explored other programs and Internet games, I worked on trying to get at least one blog to work. Of course I started with the teacher page. As with my SFU account a new password was not emailed to me. I didn’t give up, as much as I wanted to, and I was able to get a new password for one student site. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to change the password to something a little more memorable than what Edublogs sent me. I thought I would remember how to change it, but the site wasn’t working properly. After logging out and back in a couple of times I was able to finally change the password. I have never been so frustrated. All I can think about is the many hours I will need to get things working again. My fear is that it won’t stay fixed. If  blogging wasn’t such a large part of my field study, I would forget the whole idea altogether. I am very discouraged, to put it mildly.

Before beginning to fight with Edublogs, I thought I might be able to find another blogging source. The first one I went to wouldn’t load. The next one, “Xanga”, lists popular blogs. The title one example was not appropriate for a child to read. There are also a lot of advertisements. Of course, I knew I had a few ideas on my SFU blog, but then again I couldn’t even open that site to read what I had written. It wouldn’t load. I am definitely an unhappy camper.

I searched for other sites for another two hours. There are so many other things I need to do write now that I’m going to put things on hold. We have Meet the Teacher Night tomorrow. I think I will present the one student account that works for now. I will have to let everyone know that appearances may change. Ultimately I really need permission before proceeding in any case.

Almost a year later, and I’m ready to embrace the blog. I am now willing to share my ideas with others with my own posts and comments to others. I can imagine that online journaling would be a great way to encourage my students to write. Many ideas are keeping me awake at night, as I ponder the uses of this technology. Will it help my students though become better writers, or is it just a new tool to learn? The purpose of this paper is to help me answer this question. With much searching I have been able to find more than one opinion about the blog and its value as a writing tool.

Gleaves, Walker, and Grey conducted a study comparing digital and paper diaries that were created daily by higher education students. The researchers knew that the journal was important way to show growth of reflection, creative writing, and critical thinking. They wanted to compare how different types of diary were used and for what specific learning purposes. With that aim in mind, they had one group of undergraduates use a Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to contribute to a blog daily. The second group wrote their reflections in hard covered paper diary. They found that the students who wrote digitally typically wrote shorter entries, but they were more diligent at posting every day. The pen and paper group tended to write longer journals, that were more pensive and more polished than their counterparts. They did not always remember to write daily, however, and there was no way to ensure that they didn’t write several entries in one day (the digital entries were date stamped so this wasn’t possible) . Some of the discrepancies between the groups were due to technology isssues. They PDA’s would sometimes drop their internet connection and therefore the students would write quickly so as not to lose their posts. This wouldn’t give them enough time to polish their diary. In summary, does this study show that the blog is way to improve student writing? Not in so far as becoming a more polished author perhaps, but it does encourage them to write more often.

A second article that I read, entitled “U R What U Write” examined the way students often use shortcuts or “Netspeak” when writing blogs and other electronic entries. Nelson and Feinstein wanted to discover how this would effect student writing when completing school assignments digitally. It became apparent that although the participants in the study could adjust their writing style when writing for the “teacher”, those who did not regularly communicate with their peers electronically had stronger grammar and punctuation skills. Teachers had hoped that by editing their work the students would gain more practice and improve the quality of their writing. Unfortunately, they didn’t take into account all of the ‘practice’ students were already getting when creating their new form of communicating with their friends daily. Without a lot of further instruction, students did not know how to adjust their language from social writing to academic writing. The study noticed that overall knowledge of writing conventions had diminished from what students once knew in the past before electronic communication had become so prevalent. This does not mean that children cannot learn to become stronger writers. It tells us, that as educators we have to work harder to ensure that our students know how to use the appropriate conventions. Blogging by itself is not going to make a stronger writer, especially if the child is already a prolific social writer electronically.

“Collaborative Literacy: Blogs and Internet Projects” by Boling, Castek, Zawilinski, Barton, and Nierlich demonstrated many positive aspects of blogging in the elementary classroom. Students created a variety of written projects that were shared online with their peers. All of the children mentioned in this article were very excited about writing. By sharing their work on blogs and wikis with an audience of their classmates, they were determined to edit and revise their writing until it would be very clear to their online partners. Unlike the first article mentioned in my paper, this group spent a lot of time polishing their work. In fact, they were much more engaged in their writing than they had been when only use pen and paper. The children found blogging empowering as they shared their ideas with others. Teachers found that students who were more computer literate, but sometimes poor readers, were asked to help others and share their expertise with others. This was a good way to increase their literacy engagement and proficiency. Overall the children in this study were excited about their learning and were more engaged. In this case, blogging helped students become stronger writers.

After writing this position paper, I think I need to be careful when approaching blogging with the classes that I teach. The younger students, who are less apt to already know how to communicate electronically will possibly benefit the most from using this technology. The older classes will need more monitoring to ensure that they are using academic language instead of “Netspeak”. In the elementary school, this will be a smaller problem. I believe that using a blog can be a very powerful tool as long as it is open to a wider audience than just the teacher (as with Gleaves, Walker, and Grey). I am looking forward to giving it a try and keeping an open mind.

Bibliography

Boling E, Castek J, Zawilinski L, Barton K, Nierlich T. Collaborative Literacy: Blogs and Internet Projects. Reading Teacher [serial online]. March 01, 2008;61(6):504. Available from: ERIC, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 3, 2008.

Gleaves A, Walker C, Grey J. Using Digital and Paper Diaries for Learning and Assessment Purposes in Higher Education: A Comparative Study of Feasibility and Reliability. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education [serial online]. December 01, 2007;32(6):631. Available from: ERIC, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 3, 2008.

Nelson L, Feinstein S. Research on Writing Conventions: U R What U Write. Online Submission [serial online]. January 01, 2007. Available from: ERIC, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 3, 2008.

http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml

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