Blogging in High School Education

Author(s):

Panagiotis Kalagiakos

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures

Format:

Paper

Session Information

06 SES 10, Teachers and Media Competencies

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

14:45-16:15

Room:

NIG, HS 3C

Chair:

Kristen Snyder

Contribution

A blog is a Web log: an online journal web site organized in reverse chronological order with one or many contributors. Besides straight text and hyperlinks, a blog may incorporate other forms of media, such as images, video and animation. Their popularity is in their ease of use; a blog a) can be created in a few minutes with very little technical know-how, b) is easy to personalize and update, c) may allow its administrator to invite and add more authors, whose permissions for creating content are easily managed, d) has the ability to link and inter-link forming communities, and d) may serve as a digital portfolio; it is these characteristics that make weblog an interesting case for investigating its effectiveness and influence as an educational tool. The Greek Ministry of Education has realized that the student today grows and lives within a ubiquitous digital environment where he/she blogs, plays games in immersive 3-D worlds, listens to podcasts, instant-messages friends, absorbs information quickly in images, video, text from multiple sources simultaneously, authors, uploads and produces artifacts for virtual communities; the student today requires new pedagogical and learning vehicles to be explored shifting educational practice towards a ubiquitous student-centric, student-content produced and student-content-consumed guided experience. The Greek Ministry of Education believes that Blogs YouTube and wikis are illustrative and typical examples of technologies that reflect the changing landscape of the Web 2.0 learning ecology and is eager to participate to that change and take advantage of its benefits to upgrade the educational process in high schools. This paper presents our experience gained and the results of the pilot phase from initiating blogging within the educational activities of high schools in Greece. Under the directions of the Ministry of Education, the Advanced Technological Institute of Athens supervised a project for high schools (February 2008-December 2008) which focused on the pragmatic exploration of blogs. Fifty high schools participated at the project from different areas. To these high schools blog became an indispensable tool of the educational process. At the beginning of the project and for two weeks the teachers of the participating schools attented a seminar on the blog technology and the requirements of the project; during the seminar it was emphasized that instructors should constantly encourage their students to create and maintain their own weblogs where they could reflect upon learning that took place in class sessions, express ideas and concerns.

Method

1) Students were encouraged to blog -their reactions to thought-provoking questions. -journal entries. -results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit. -their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class. 2) Instructors used Blog as the main resource distribution medium and students were allowed as readers of teachers’ reflections to post their comments 3) Students were asked to complete learning tasks, present them in their blogs and invite others to comment. Teachers used the Really Simple Syndication tool (RSS) to keep track of new students’ posts and provide suggestions; in this way students could receive immediate feedback they could use to revise exercises while at the same time they had the opportunity to learn from others by reviewing their work and their received feedback. 4) Instructors were developing weekly summaries of students blogs’ activities and discussing results in class, publicly recognizing blogs' contribution.

Expected Outcomes

1) The weblog conversation was proved to be an amazing tool to develop community of learners. The students got to know each other better by visiting and reading blogs from other students. They could discover in a non-threatening way their similarities and differences. The student who usually talks very loud in the classroom and the student who is very timid had the same writing space to voice their opinion; it putted students in a situation of equity. 2) Within the structure of a blog, students took creative risks, and made sophisticated use of the language and design elements. In doing so, the students acquired creative, critical, communicative, and collaborative skills useful in both current scholar and future professional contexts. 3) Instructors used blogs to communicate with parents, post prompts for writing, provide online readings to inspire learning, publish examples of good student performance in class, share ideas for teaching activities.

References

[1] Duffy, P., 2008. Engaging the YouTube Google-Eyed Generation: Strategies for Using Web 2.0 in Teaching and Learning. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp 119 – 130, [Online], Available: http:// www.ejel.org [14 Oct 2008]. [2] Gillmor, D., 2007. We the Media - 2. The Read-Write Web, [Online], Available: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/ wemedia/book/ch02.pdf [22 Oct 2008]. [3] Marzano, R. J., 2006. A Different Kind of Classroom: Teaching with Dimensions of Learning, [Online], Available: http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/ dol02/1992marzano_chapter1.html [3 Dec 2008]. [4] Boulos, M.N.K., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S., 2006. Wikis, blogs and podcasts: A new generation of Webbased tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education, BMC Medical Education, 6(41), [Online], Available: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf [6 Dec 2008]. [5] Alexander, B., 2006. Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Educause Review, Vol. 41, No. 2., pp. 32-44. [6] ARIADNE, ARIADNE-Foundation for the European Knowledge Pool, 2008. [7] MERLOT, MERLOT:Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching, 2008. [8] Manjoo, F., 2002. Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog. Wired.com, Feb. 18, 2002, [Online], Available: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/02/50443 [4 Dec 2008]. [9] Krause, S. D. Blogs as a Tool for Teaching. Chronicle of Higher Education, June 24, 2005, [Online], Available: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i42/42b03301.htm [11 Nov 2008]. [10] Olsen, S., 2005. The 'millennials' usher in a new era, [Online], Available: http://news.com.com/2009-1025_3-5944666.html [14 Nov 2008]. [11] Chen, H.L., Cannon, D., Gabrio, J. Leifer, L. Toye, G. & Bailey, T., 2005. Using wikis and weblogs to support reflective learning in an introductory engineering design course. Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland. Oregon: June 12-15, [Online], Available: http://riee.stevens.edu/fileadmin/riee/pdf/ASEE2005_Paper_Wikis_ and_Weblogs.pdf [2 Dec 2008]. [12] Duffy, P. & Bruns, A., 2006. The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities. Proceedings of the Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, [Online], Available: https://olt.qut.edu.au/udf/OLT2006/gen/static/papers/Duffy_OLT2006_paper.pdf [14 Sep 2008] [13] Barnes, K., Marateo, C., & Ferris, P., 2007. Teaching and learning with the net generation. Innovate, 3(4). [Online], Available: http://www.innovateonline.info [6 Nov 2008]. [14] Rosen, Dina and Nelson, Charles, 2008. Web 2.0: A New Generation of Learners and Education. Computers in the Schools ,25:3, pp. 211- 225. [15] Ankolekar, A., Krotzsch, M., Tran, T., Vrandercic, D., 2007. The two cultures: mashing up Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on World Wide Web, Alberta, Canada, May 2007, pp 825-834.

Author Information

Panagiotis Kalagiakos

Advanced Technological Institute of Athens

Computing

Peristeri

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