Blogging for Reflection

In the Upper School courses that I teach (Photography and Film, Advanced Photography, Programming with Swift and Physical Computing) each student will use a blog for their digital notebook. Blogs are part of the universal access of information culture of WIS. This supports our ongoing culture of thinking and reflection. Blogs reduce student stress- no need to keep track of a physical notebook. This supports our ongoing culture of reimagining the school experience to support a student's health and wellness.

Mx. Redding has been using blogs in some form or another for student engagement in computer science and the digital media arts for over a decade in my teaching and learning. Although the tools I use have changed as technology develops, I find the use of blogs to be useful for both the student and the teacher when the technology infrastructure is there to support their use.

Here at WIS we have a 1:1 BYOD for Upper School students, our course meets in a computer lab, we have a healthy amount of bandwidth on campus and it is an expectation that our students can access their digital resources from home. We have a great physical infrastructure to support us and we have a community that embraces appropriate use of our powerful digital tools.

In my courses, I really want you to focus on the content and the process rather than distracted by keeping up with your materials. I want to free your minds to the process. Your blog serves as a digital multimedia notebook and is easily searchable/ accessible from any device with a wifi connection. This digital storage allows our students to access and reflect on their engagement anytime, anywhere.

• The dog cannot eat your blog.
• You cannot "forget" your blog at home.
• We are utilizing the power of cloud computing for organization and at the same time hopefully reducing the student's stress around organization of school materials.

We use G Suite- meaning this is one of our primary digital tools used by the entire community. Blogger is a Google app/product that has a low learning curve and is offered as part of our GAFE suite of tools. Students involved in Journalism in the high school will use the Wordpress platform for digital publishing. At this time although Wordpress is a more robust blogging platform we don't need that robustness for our purposes in this course- Blogger is the right sized tool for our needs.

A "curriculum" is a living organization of ideas concepts that is constantly evolving. My courses both have a framework and at the same time are flexible and responsive to welcome continual innovation. In order to keep our opportunities open for collaboration and incorporation of "the new" (there is always a "new" in the digital media arts world) I prefer to keep my course blog in the public domain in a format that is easily accessible by those outside the community. In 2017 99% of teenagers are already published on the internet through social media. At this time we keep our student blogs public and unlisted.

During each semester there are many opportunities for collaboration and feedback through sharing and publishing on the internet. In my years of working with students in educational technology and the digital media arts I have learned that utilizing systems that allow for easy export and sharing of information across school communities enriches your student's experience in the following ways:

• develops the disposition of intellectual openness
• reinforces digital citizenship through active practice
• through regular publishing on for academic discourse students gain experience engaging with others about their work online
• through the repetition of regular documentation and reflection with a digital tool students will learn to internalize the concepts of design thinking and the design cycle

Using the blog empowers each student to assemble and control their documentation and reflection process outside of our class meeting times. This is why I *still* choose to use student and course blogs.