At first I found it hard to identify areas
in which blogging would be useful in the teaching of secondary science. There is a lot of declarative knowledge to be
taught in secondary science. And blogs
didn’t really appear to provide a particularly good platform for teaching this
sort of knowledge. To use a blog with
correct technological pedagogy, it needs to provide more than just presenting
the same information from a textbook on a new media.
One of the potential uses of blogs, as
suggested by Stephen Downes (2004), is as a class web page. This could initially provide information such
as class assignments, rules and homework.
For science, I could envisage a blog site containing a plethora of
additional educational tools. As the term
progresses the teacher can provide additional online links to help with
learning by placing these in a blog relating to each topic, week or class. There are many online science tools that a
teacher could embed into the blog but may not have time to cover during the
formal lesson. This way the students can
review the additional material when convenient and easily return to the
appropriate blog when needed. Many of
the sources used during a class could also be linked or embedded onto this type
of blog. Gone are the days when the only
information that a student can take from a lesson is what they remember or
manage to write down in notes. A blog
could provide the one-stop shop needed by a student to access to all the
information relevant to their studies.
It could be argued that this online
class-related information could also be posted on a website, and it can
be. However, as Downes (2004) argues, blogs
tend to be easier and quicker for the user to modify or add content, and allows
for students to leave comments or questions relating to a particular
posting. Also, it can be hard to
identify when new information has been added to a webpage. Whereas, a blog easily allows each student to
identify when new information has been added, as each post is dated and
displayed in reverse-chronological order.
The student simply needs to scroll down the page until they find the
last posting they read. All new postings
will be displayed after this (or above it).
Postings within a blog can also have relevant “tags” attached to them,
allowing the students to search for a particular or similar posting.
A more student-centred approach to blogs would
be to get students to post their own work on a personal blog (Downes, 2004). This could include homework, assignments or
lab reports. Anything that might be used
to reinforce the new concepts could also be posted, e.g. drawing a concept map,
construction an event sequence, answering homework questions. However, blogs by their nature are for sharing
information and ideas between people, so this would only be appropriate for
tasks where it was appropriate for ideas to be shared amongst the
students. Assessment tasks in which the
content needs to be the students own work are probably not suited for posting
on a blog. There are options available
for teachers to be able to restrict who sees a blog (Downes, 2004). So, it would be possible for a teacher to
only allow themselves to see each student’s blog, however another form of
technology would probably be better suited to these types of assessment e.g.
submission of files via email or an online school website.
Blogs lend themselves to reflective
writing. This is a good way to support
constructivist learning (Fasso, 2013). A
reflective activity that could be undertaken would be to get students to blog
after each lesson. In their blog they
would have to include at least one thing that they understood and one thing they
didn’t understand. Then each student
needs to read their fellow students’ blogs and see if they can help anyone else
with their questions by posting comments on each other’s blogs. This would give all students an equal
opportunity to reflect on their most recent class, voice their opinion and
learn from each other.
One of the criticisms of students blogging raised
by Downes (2004), is that the student might only be writing for the
teacher. However this statement could be
made of many other forms of writing and assessment pieces, including the traditional
essay. And so, is not a new issue or
solely linked to student blogging.
Another issue that arises from using blogs
is whether or not the blog should be an ‘open’ blog (i.e. able to be viewed
publicly on the internet) or a ‘restricted’ blog (i.e. protected by a password
and only able to be accessed by students, teachers and parents). According to the National Copyright Unit
(n.d.), the answer to this can be quite complicated as it depends on the type
of information being posted and what its copyright restrictions are. Basically, if the blogs are only going to
contain the students’ own work or free for education material, then it can be
open. But if third party material
protected by copyright will be used (covered by fair dealing), then it needs to
be protected. These rules will also vary
according to each school’s own web publishing guidelines, whether or not
personal student information is being published, student could be identified by
the information and what sort of parental consent has been given (Education
Queensland, 2012). This can create quite
a headache for the teacher. It might be
difficult for the teacher to predict what sort of material the students will be
using. To be safe, it would be easier to
simply restrict access to the blog, something that is recommended by Education
Queensland (2012), especially if there is the potential for personal information to be included through which a student may be identified. But then this removes
the global element that becomes possible when people from all over the world
are able to comment on a student’s blog.
As can been seen, the use of blogs in
education contains many benefits as well as hazards. However, I believe that through proper
planning and monitoring, blogging can be a beneficial educational tool with
very little negatives.
References
Downes, S. (2004). Educational Blogging. EDUCause Reviewi, 39(5). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/educational-blogging
Education Queensland (2012). Web
publishing for schools – Risk management.
Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/web/schools/riskman.html
Fasso, W. (2013). A brief overview of learning theory. Retrieved from CQUniversity
e-courses, EDED20491: ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au
National Copyright Unit .(n.d.). What can a teacher do on a wiki or a blog?
Retrieved from http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/cache/offonce/pid/946/ctnscroll_guidelinesContainer/1_1
No comments:
Post a Comment