Creating Community In The Classroom: Student Blogging

MSD Teacher Academy

Creating Community In The Classroom

Session #2: Writing As A Public Act

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Today’s session will revolve around the notion that writing is a public act.  This belief pushes students to embrace a greater sense of transparency and see value in sharing one’s thoughts with a class or learning network.  New York City teacher teacher Ileana Jimenez believes writing is a public act and as a result, encourages her students to blog. According to Jimenez, rather than having students write a paper and hand it in only for the teacher to read, waiting for some kind assessment, writing should be public, it should give a sense of urgency and visibility and for students to feel that their writing has a voice in the world.  

Writing for an audience that extends beyond self or just the teacher can lead towards creating a stronger sense of community in the classroom.  Creating spaces where learners can share ideas and offer feedback, threads stakeholders together.  Students come to see themselves as valuable resources and an integral part of a learning network.

During this session, teachers will be introduced to sample blogs from classes throughout the district.  Teacher initiated blog assignments and students posts will be shared.  A few teachers from the high school have been invited to explain how/why they infused the use of blogs into their respective classrooms.  This will eventually segway into a discussion of Kidblog.  Kidblog is a blogging platform currently being used by over a million K-12 students.  Several teachers in district employ Kidblog.  It is a secure site and students can develop accounts without the need for an email address. 

After the Kidblog discussion, the session will end with the Moodle pilot program.  Next year, the district will pilot the use of Moodle in several elementary school classrooms.  This will introduce, at the elementary level, a course management system to students.  Additionally, embedded into Moodle are tools such as discussion forums that promote the publication of ideas and transparent learning.  Moodle like Kidblog is safe and secure and student accounts can be generated by a teacher or administrator.   In an attempt to support the fluid integration of technology K-12, elementary students need access and experience playing with what is often considered tools of the 21st Century. 
 
Resources for Today’s Session

Sites:

• Kidblog
• Moodle
• MHS Moodle Site

Blogging Resources

• How Should My Students Approach Blogging?- ideas for sustaining student blogging in the classroom
• Making Educational Blogging Work For You- teacher shares experiences blogging with students, helpful links and samples embedded in the post
• Books, Blogs and Videos To Transform Learning- grade 4 teacher shares how blogging changed the culture of her class
• Online Journals for English Classes of Mr. Christopher Waugh- examples of student and teacher blogs from an English classroom
• Student Blogging Guidelines- tips for posting and commenting
• Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog- Six and Seven Year Olds Inviting the World Into Their Classroom
• Teaching and Learning With Social Media- small case study on use of blogs in classrooms
• Why Students should Learn To Write For The Public- pushing idea writing should be a public act and how blogs facilitate this notion
• Blogging Is The New Persuasive Essay- how blogging can help students become better writers
• Olin Student Bloggers Wanted- Olin Business School (Washington University) turns to blogging as a public relations tool

The Power of Community

Yesterday I was part of a panel discussion about the future of education.  The session was developed and facilitated by a quest teacher at the middle school and several classes of 7th and 8th graders.  Joining me on the panel was a representative from the Board of Education and two college professors.  The board member had a grandchild in the audience and one of the professors was the parent of an 8th grader.  The students developed an extensive list of challenging and complex questions for the panel to address.  We only had about 80 minutes and just touched a few of the prepared questions.  

It was a fun and engaging experience.  The students were great.  It was evident reading through the questions that they spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on the future of school and in particular the impact the Digital Age has had on learning.  Additionally, my co-panelists were enthusiastic about the opportunity and collectively presented a series of genuine responses.  

After the session ended I had a brief conversation with the rep from the Board of Education.  She shared how much fun it was as well.  I shared that we should do more events like this.  She agreed as well.  We started to talk about ways in which we could leverage the power of our community to facilitate exchanges between students and professionals.  We just do not do it enough and it is unfortunate.  So much can be gained from tapping into resources that reside within a school community.  This panel was small example of what can be gained.  We had two parents who are college professors and one had written several books about public policy and education.  Through informal word of mouth the quest teacher was able to connect students interested in education to a professor and author.  

I was glad to be part of the event.  I hope that we can continue to explore these avenues and create vehicles for students to connect with a diverse range of talented adults. More so, this event is what community is about.  People came together who shared similar interests and passions or believed in sharing insights with others.  It involved stakeholders from a wide range of community groups- teachers, students, board members, parents.  The panel discussion reminded me of this definition for community:

Community is a group of people who work with one another building a sense of trust, care, and support

  

That is what yesterday felt like.  Caring people coming together to support each other and help one another grow.

Space As A Change Agent

Sharing highlights from the e-book Space As A Change Agent.

The emphasis today is on active construction of knowledge by the learner. The importance of prior experience, the fitting of knowledge into existing schema or the establishment of new schema, and the active processing of information are all components of this model that emphasize high learner involvement. Environments that provide experience, stimulate the senses, encour-age the exchange of information, and offer opportunities for rehearsal, feedback, application, and transfer are most likely to support learning. 

Spaces that are harmonious with learning theory and the needs of current students reflect several elements: Flexibility. A group of learners should be able to move from listening to one speaker (traditional lecture or demonstration) to working in groups (team or project-based activities) to working independently (reading, writing, or access-ing print or electronic resources). While specialized places for each kind of activity (the lecture hall, laboratory, and library carrel) can accommodate each kind of work, the flow of activities is often immediate. It makes better sense to construct spaces capable of quick reconfiguration to support different kinds of activity

Decenteredness. Emphasizing the principles of socioconstructivism, spaces must convey co-learning and co-construction of knowledge. Implications for architecture include thinking of the whole campus as a learning space rather than emphasizing classrooms

The key, therefore, is to provide a physical space that supports multidisciplinary, team-taught, highly interactive learning unbound by traditional time constraints within a social setting that engages students and faculty and enables rich learning experiences

real community, however, exists only when its members interact in a meaningful way that deepens their understanding of each other and leads to learning. Many equate learning with the acquisition of facts and skills by students; in a community, the learn-ers—including faculty—are enriched by collective meaning-making, mentorship, encouragement, and an understanding of the perspectives and unique qualities of an increasingly diverse membership.

that in a world where wireless connectivity is increasingly ubiquitous, and with wireless devices that enable navigating a proverbial sea of digital resources, practically anywhere but the classroom is an informal learning space. The majority of space on any wirelessly networked college or university campus is informal learning space. On campuses not fully wirelessly enabled, the preponderance of informal learning spaces still exists, but the potential for them to be recognized and “activated” depends on the disposition of the digital learners and the tasks they wish to accomplish. 

The learning commons is human-centered. The term learning signals a significant change: the focus is not just finding information but applying that information in productive ways to deepen and strengthen learning as well as to construct knowledge

 

If people aren't comfortable and don't have a sense of well-being, they become distracted. We must first consider what will make people feel comfortable, freeing their brains and bodies for learning.

Social, community space. Learning is a social activity. Community and social space connects individuals with other people and other activities. Students and faculty participate in a mutual endeavor—learning—and forge connections that reinforce learning and create a sense of belonging.

People learn from other people. If the environment limits random encounters, discourages conversation, or provides no comfortable place to sit, learning opportunities are lost.

 

Worth Reading

Sharing a few gems I came across in the past week.

1 Coaching, Care and Kids (Lehman)- questions why administrators are not allowed to coach or lead certain extracurricular activities but also brings up the point that educators should find a way to get involved in activities that transpire outside of the classroom

Having that incredible relationship where we, as educators, really have the opportunity to care for kids and have that transactional relationship where both teacher / coach / mentor and student make a difference in each other's lives, is a big part of what makes teaching such a profound profession.

 2. Complexity and Constructing Community Knowledge in the Classroom (Reilly)- building community knowledge in the classroom.  This post serves as another reminder about the need to build a community or network of learners in the classroom.

Constructing community knowledge is very much connected to individual agency.  Brent Davis and Elaine Simmt (2003) suggest that five conditions are present in complex learning systems: internal diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organized randomness, and neighbor interactions. These conditions are the basis upon which a team, such as PLC, or a classroom of students and a teacher build community knowledge that is rich and larger than any one individual. We can understand these co-specifying conditions in the following way.

 3. Gaming for Understanding (Brathwaite)- It's never easy to get across the magnitude of complex tragedies -- so when Brenda Brathwite's daughter came home from school asking about slavery, she did what she does for a living -- she designed a game. At TEDxPhoenix she describes the surprising effectiveness of this game, and others, in helping the player really understand the story.

4. Texting That Saves Lives (Lublin)- When Nancy Lublin started texting teenagers to help with her social advocacy organization, what she found was shocking -- they started texting back about their own problems, from bullying to depression to abuse. So she's setting up a text-only crisis line, and the results might be even more important than she expected.

 

Worth Reading...

Sharing materials I came across this week.  Feel free to comment on any of the links provided below.


1. The Creativity Crisis (Bronson and Merryman)- discusses the current creativity crisis in America

With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

2.  Leveraging Learning by Organizing Technology Use: A Modest Framework (Reilly)- structuring curriculum to privilege connections, critical consumptions and creativity.  Brings up crucial points to consider and in particular, the importance of creating an environment where students are building a network or participating in a learning community.

Facilitating learners' cross-cultural collaboration is an important aspect of our work as teachers.  Finding and framing questions, solving problems, creating works, and sharing resources, insights, ideas, and dreams represent important 'content'. Technologies allow for this to happen in unprecedented ways.  What we make of this is of course in our hands and our students.

3. The Next Book Must Be... (Warlick)- attempts to bring clarity and a sense of direction to the future of textbooks and digital resources

Be Provocative (fueled by questions) – The textbook should tactically and strategically leave things out.  It provokes questions, the answers of which provide mortar for the personal and participatory construction and reconstruction of the book.  It is always broken and always fixable, and the rules belong to the reader.

4.  The Transformative School (Lehman)- striving for more than being a "good" school

But there's another level that schools can achieve. Schools can transform. They can eclipse content and skills and become about something more. They can be about realizing the best versions of ourselves. 

5. What Tech Wants: A People Agenda (Hardy)- thoughts about how we should look at technology and what tech allows us to accomplish.  If you are not familiar with Monika Hardy please check out Lab Connections and the concept of "Detox" to better understand the changing conversation.

Tech wants us to change the conversation. It wants to free us up for more pausing, and listening, and breathing. In a sense, tech is giving us an incredible mic and mirror, to talk to ourselves about whether what we are doing matters. It’s giving us an incredible kitchen table, (AI-infused conversation so we can hear each others’ hearts) to talk to others about whether or not our gatherings in a space or room, matter.

6. Deb Roy: birth of a word- (Link found in What Tech Wants) MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn.