Techquest

TechQuest: Communicating With Classroom Blogs

Educational Need or Opportunity

As media specialist, I have twelve classroom preps therefore I have limited time to converse individually with my students. This school year I also organized an after school Journalism Club for fourth and fifth grade students. The student response for this club was great, however I lacked time to actually “create” and print the newspaper for students to take home. We only had one issue printed this past school year due to time constraints. I would like to find a way for my students to come to the Journalism Club, after school and create the School Newspaper themselves. I would also like to integrate more of Michigan’s Language Arts Curriculum into my computer classes.

Students love to have their work published, so why not let them publish it online? As a chair on our School Improvement team, we came to the conclusion that boys score significantly lower than girls on standardized tests in the area of writing. Boys just don’t like to write. Why not take my Journalism Club blog and imbed it into some sort of classroom blog? Where my students can freely write and respond to each other?

Technology-Integrated Strategy

When I went to MACUL back in March, I attended a presentation that really blew me away. Teachers implemented the use of classroom blogs in their classroom, they also had their blog attached to a classroom Wiki. I am still very new with working with Wiki’s, but I would like to eventually have both a classroom blog and a wiki. I believe that a classroom wiki with a link that leads to our classroom blog would be a great addition to my classroom.

Blogging has allowed me to create a forum where my students discuss current events connected to our curriculum, while developing language arts skills like critical thinking and persuasive dialogue. It has also given my students the opportunity to be creators—rather than simply consumers—of online content. Finally, blogging and podcasting have given my students an audience for their ideas, which has increased levels of interest and motivation (Ferriter, 2008).

InternetResearch For TechQuest Project

Upon researching information in regards to implementing a classroom blog, I found many resources from teachers who are in favor of classroom blogs. I first began researching general information on incorporating blogs into the classroom using Google and Google Scholar. It was no surprise to me that the vast majority of the results came up in a blog form. There were so many positive explanations and ideas for incorporating blogs into the classroom, but all of my search results were very broad. I thought about my research and decided that having a classroom Wiki would fulfill two requirements at one time and allow me to utilize blogs in the classroom as well. I decided to change my search to Wikis in the classroom. This search topic came up with many more results and reasoning’s for incorporating blogs into the classroom.

Using a wiki in the classroom gives students the opportunity to write in a collaborative environment, while at the same time they are able to:

• Learn from others. Collaborative writing allows students to learn from one another – both in terms of viewing each other’s content but also by seeing the quality of other students’ work. In a traditional classroom, a student writes a paper, the teacher grades it, and then returns it to the student. Other students rarely have the opportunity to see and therefore learn from the information in that paper. Seeing other students’ work on a continuous basis can cause a student to evaluate his or her own work and see how it compares in quality. The comparison may cause the student to raise his or her work to a higher level.

• Develop a higher level of critical thinking. Students can develop critical thinking skills by critiquing other students’ information and learning how to defend their views when critiqued by other students.

• Deepen investigative skills. Working collaboratively on one document can encourage a student to do more investigative work. When information is critiqued as incorrect or underdeveloped, the student is encouraged to do additional research to respond to the critiques.

• Develop skills for negotiating conflict and facilitating effective teamwork. In writing and working collaboratively with wikis, students must create and agree on the structures, forms, and methods that are necessary to accomplish their collaborative task. Wikis not only build constructive communities of writers, but also accommodate differences among members of these communities, which in turn can allow all voices to contribute to the conversation.”

• Build a class community. Working together in a collaborative process helps students get to know one another and build relationships. (Boston College 2009)

Blogs are springing up all over the Internet,but their introduction into the educational arena affords this communication tool a new format and set of users. Generally, blogs have been considered a personal online journal where outside users can comment on an individual’s postings. Blogging as a classroom application allows for enhanced comprehension and communication among students as well as the ability to build deeper understanding across the curriculum. Creating a collaborative learning community brings a whole new life to blogging. (Learning and Leading with Technology, 2005).

I decided to refine my search as to using wiki’s to encourage writing in the classroom. I was very impressed with the search results. All of the results basically stated the same thing, that wiki’s could be used for students to work on writing projects collaboratively. Unlike blogging, though, wiki’s generate more of an interest in writing for students than traditional writing assignments. This high interest in writing is also known to benefit students who have learning disabilities.

Students are able to edit each other's work, comment on inaccurate information and share their ideas. Again, writing for an actual audience may help motivate reluctant writers and improve writing skills. This method of incorporating writing and technology into the classroom not only provides students with learning disabilities valuable feedback on their writing but it can also give them a platform for sharing something they know a great deal about. Many students with learning disabilities may be depressed because of their struggles within school. Incorporating a wiki into the classroom could boost a student's self-esteem and help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

I decided to take my research one step further and search wikis to increase writing among boys in the classroom. This search topic seemed to be too vague as everything that came up touched on the positive impact that wikis in the classroom would have on boys and girls in general.

Whenever I conduct research I tend to lean toward Google and Yahoo. Believe it or not, I am not really familiar with many other search engines. So I Google searched Search Engines to see what was out there and to see if I could get other results when researching wikis to increase writing among boys in the classroom. Every search engine that I tried (Dogpile, Ask, and MSN.) gave me the same results as Google and Yahoo and even linked me to these search engines.

Since my past searched were so redundant, I decided to try out some databases. I first tried MEL (Michigan Electronic Library). I began searching wikis in the classroom, classroom wikis, wikis+ classroom, and classroom + wikis. Frustration began to take over, as no results were displayed that matched my search results.

I took it upon myself to conduct two more searches. I first searched the MSU library. I began searching wikis in the classroom. I expected nothing, but so many results came up. However, I quickly discovered that all of my search results were books that had to be checked out on the main campus.

I then went to the ERIC Database. I was amazed with my results. I searched, "Wikis in the classroom." There were so many articles that came up. What I liked about using the ERIC Database is that I was able to read the abstract of each of the articles beforehand. Everything that came up proved that my research was worthwhile. Most articles stated that the problem with wikis in the classroom was that teachers looked at wikis and did not understand why people would want to have them in the classroom as they would be more work and take up more time in their day. They did not look at how wikis benefit students, how they engage students in a collaborative learning process and environment. Those students would no longer complete journal assignments. They would instead engage themselves in thoughtful discussions that would continue even after a lesson ends.

I have learned a lot about implementing wikis in the classroom and am very excited to implement this next week during Journalism Club. We have our last publication to produce and I think the students are going to like this. Judging by the response, I will, hopefully be utilizing a classroom wiki on a regular basis next school year.

Connections to the Four Common Places

How this project addresses the four common places of education:

• Someone Teaching: This will ease my workload. I won’t feel obligated to create a hard copy of the school newspaper to publish my students work. I also won’t be taking piles of papers home at night to correct. This will reduce some of my time constraints, allowing me to focus more on my daily lessons and differentiation.

• Someone Learning: My students will gain excitement and interest to write. They will be able to voice their thoughts and collaborate with their peers online and discuss their thoughts and feelings. Having a classroom blog will also help the shy and withdrawn to play an important role in my classroom.

• Some Subject Matter: I will be addressing the subject matter of Journalism and Language Arts. Not only will my students be writing, but they will also be reading and responding to what their classmates are writing and collaboration is key.

• In Some Setting: In my computer lab, online, integrating classroom GLCE’s into my technology curriculum.

Project Implementation

I was excited to implement my classroom wiki into my technology curriculum. I researched many wiki’s and discovered a huge pitfall. First off, most wiki’s were blocked in my school district. This was a little discouraging at first, but I did end up finding two wiki’s that my students were able to access. One was Wikispaces and the other one was PBworks. I then quickly discovered that in order for my students to post anything to my classroom wiki, they needed to have a valid email address. This was a problem for me because the vast majority of my students did not have an email address and it was far too late for me to create emails for them.

I decided to change my techquest up a bit. Instead of a classroom wiki, I decided to create a