For years research has said that education should be student-centered and collaborative. Now teens have found a way to do this and most educators are going out of their way to stop them-sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?
However this what is happening with social networking. The commentary Don’t Tell Your Parents: Schools embrace myspace looks at the use of social bookmarking in schools. Many schools are trying to block sites that waste time and attract nasty attention-think bullies and pedophiles. However these negative views often overlook the many positives that can be gained from social networking. This is a student-centered way of learning, dialoges and conversation are generated around the knowledge. For many years we have known that group study works and technology now offers a whole new way to embrace this.
Papertexplores the complex underpinning of constuctionism and the importance of choice and passion. In this article Papert tells the story of how as a young child he was fascinated with gears, through his obsession Papert discovered a lot about how cars and gears work, he learnt about cause and effect, he was able to create his own simple models. I think we can all relate to this story, the idea that if learning is pitched in an area of interest it is a fun and exciting task rather than an onerous, dull workload.
When I was in school my mother was a quilter, she used to always ask me any maths questions to do with her latest project. I would draw, cut and calculate trying to work out exactly how much fabric she needed, what shape would fit together or how to create an interesting pattern. For a recent maths project we were asked to create a video that shows maths in real life, when I started putting sylabus outcomes to the things I learnt with my mother in the sewing room and I was shocked, it never seamed like work!
Papert connects these experiences to e-learning by summarising
‘”What the gears cannot do the computer might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes. This book is the result of my own attempts over the past decade to turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears were for me.”
I know I have already posted some blogs on why it is useful for students to blog and the research supporting the use of blogs. Now I have some real peoples experience I want to add. I have just read Twittering with Sue Walters and wanted to read why other teachers blog. I have shamelessly admitted that I only started this blog as an assignment, but lo and behold I may have really gotten something out of it! In Share your blog experince bloggers were asked the following questions
Where you blog and how long you have been blogging for?
Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work?
How blogging has helped your students and how long have you been blogging with students (if applicable)
Why you feel blogging is important
What are the 3 most important tips you would share with a new blogger?
I was amazed at the diversity of answers especially to question two and three. The final question was of course the most informative. Many bloggers expressed the need to be yourself and let blogs flow naturally. They stressed that your blog voice will evolve, I can’t believe how much easier blogging has become with time and I wish I read these tips when I first started blogging. Another common tip was consistency and keeping the blogs flowing. Many thought it was more important to have short, frequent blogs .
Okay, well not a normal blog today. I have been reading others blogs and found a lot of talk about twitter, I signed up but I still can’t understand the craze. I was reading the blog Is twitter shifting blogging to a new phase,when I just had to laugh, the widgit on the side of the page said translate this page, I had a sudden urge to try it because the blog made no sense at-all to the computer illiterate fools like me. So I have watched the tutorial twitter in plain English, I know that twitter is all about keeping people up-to-date on what you are doing, but is it possible that someone can recommend me a good site to read which will explain this to me more fully. This seams to be a common theme amongst the advice pages on promoting blogs although the justification is often unclear.
Sorry this blog is more questions than answers but I’d really like to find out more!
I was discussing my blog with other students in my course when some-one mentioned they haven’t got any comments yet their blog. It made me realise I had no idea how you find other blogs and how to generate interest in your blog. So far I have been connecting to others through my blog-roll and sheer dumb luck when I unexpectedly stumble on a fascinating blog.
I had a read of two recommended teacher’s blogs which deal with this issue. In batting for 1000+ Mrs W. talks about how in two months she has built a blog up so much that now she is getting over 1000 readers through her site. She uses twitter to generate interest and connect with like minded people on the web. She aldo cites reading and commenting on other’s blogs as another important skill.
This brings me to the second part of the question, where do you find other relevant interesting blogs. In Why does technorati still mock me I learnt that there are blog search engines. Sue Walters recommends visiting technorati and google blog search. Hopefully these will take the guesswork out of finding good blogs for me and make searching for blogs a skill rather than a lucky dip!
I hope my comic really speaks for its self. Today the students in my prac class used the website makebelief comix, all but one student was highly engaged. In fact all were concentrating so hard on their stories that the teacher reminded them they could discuss their ideas if they wanted too! Comics are a great text type and they get students to think creatively, using langauge and telling stories.
