The title is one thing but I am also extremely grateful to receive funding to attend ISTE in San Diego, meet with our “blogging buddies” and help other local schools get involved in blogging and global collaboration. I hope this award will ultimately have an impact on the education of many students.
There was no time for public thank yous on the night but this individual award would not be possible without a great team of people around me!
2012 is the third year I have team taught with Kelly Jordan. This experience has been like no other professional development and the success we have achieved in our classrooms is definitely a team effort. Kelly deserves to be recognised as a big part of this award and I couldn’t have done it without her!
This is the ninth year I have worked at Leopold Primary School. I’m grateful for the way the staff have supported me since I was an inexperienced graduate teacher, and allowed me the freedom to try new things. The liberty and trust to innovate is a real gift for teachers who can sometimes feel bound by regulations and uniformity.
The students I work with make every day bright, interesting and rewarding. Seeing blog posts by former students such as BB, Rhiannonand Jarrod appear within hours of the news of my award is so touching. Within 24 hours of Kelly posting the results on our class blog, there have been nearly 30 comments from students and parents (on a weekend!). I’ve been lucky to be a part of the lives of many amazing students and families.
My professional learning network is a huge part of my career and my life. Every day I am learning something from the educators I have met through Twitter, blogs and conferences. The messages I have received on Twitter and Facebook have been truly overwhelming.
It has been a real honour to particularly work with inspiring teachers such as Linda Yollis, Shawn Avery, Jonah Salsich, Judy McKenzie and Melody Watson on a number of global projects and everyday blogging activities. They too are a huge part of this accolade.
Finally, I am lucky to have such a supportive husband, family and friends who put up with me working my nights, weekends and holidays away! The line between teaching being my career and a hobby blurs even more every year…
When I began teaching in 2004, my main forms of parent communication were:
the occasional class (paper) newsletter
chatting to parents at the classroom door
signs on the classroom window with reminders
reports and parent teacher interviews
communication books for some students
phone calls or notes home if issues arose
While some things have stayed the same, many things have changed. I’ve noticed a decrease in the number of parents who visit the classroom every day. Moving from the junior school to an older grade also means parents are around less.
Since I started teaching, advances in technology and online communication have changed the way people interact and access information. It has been important to keep up with this, not only with what I’m doing with my students, but with how I’m interacting with parents too.
I now don’t worry about putting signs on the classroom window. I doubt they’d be read. I don’t see as many parents on a regular basis to pass on messages. Paper newsletters were time consuming for me to make and often got lost or buried at the bottom of a child’s bag.
As always, an ongoing stream of two-way information is important. I have found the more parents are kept informed and involved in their child’s learning, the more successful and smooth the child’s education is.
Every fortnight I email parents a class newsletter.
I wrote about this in 2010 but the main points of my system are:
I collect parent email addresses via a Google Doc form. I invite families to complete this at the end of the previous school year. I also use this form to collect more information about the child’s strengths, weaknesses, interests etc.
There are always a couple of parents without email addresses (I’m finding this is becoming less frequent). I print paper copies for these families.
I put email addresses in the BCC field of my emails to preserve parents’ privacy.
Kelly Jordan and I have surveyed our parents a couple of times and found they really enjoy this method of communication.
I invite parents to contact me via email if it is easier for them. Many embrace this option.
Our class blog provides information and a window into our classroom.
The 4KM and 4KJ blog is updated 2-4 times a week. Parents are encourage to subscribe and comment.
The blog houses a lot of information about what is happening in our classroom, including a regularly updated Google Calendar on the left sidebar. This calendar also helps the students to get organised.
I’ve found the class blog combined with parent emails means there is always a channel of information available for parents.
Of course some face-to-face contact always needs to be prioritised. For example, last week we held a successful Family Blogging Afternoon where students could teach a special person in their life about blogging and global collaboration. This is part of our Family Blogging Month celebrations.
As the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development points out “Family participation in learning is one of the most accurate predictors of a child’s success in school and beyond.” While this message has remained constant over the years, the way participation is taking is place continues to evolve.
I’d love to find new ways to continue to make parent communication easy and effective for all parties. What ideas do you have?
How do you communicate with parents?
How have your approaches to communicating with parents changed over the years?
For those who haven’t heard, ISTE is the International Society of Technology in Education‘s Annual Conference. The conference is one of the world’s biggest for educational technology and this year it will be held in San Diego. There will be over 700 sessions held over four days, and a plethora of networking and sharing amongst thousands of educators.
It was Linda Yollis’ idea for us to present together at ISTE. We applied last year and when our application was successful we began making plans for our trip to San Diego.
My students have been working with Linda Yollis and her class since early 2009. They were our first real blogging buddies and we have worked on many collaborative projects together. We feel like we know each other well but have never met in person!
Student centred learning is an theory that seems to have gained popularity in education communities over the years.
Wikipedia defines this type of learning as “putting students first … focused on the student’s needs, abilities, interests, and learning styles with the teacher as a facilitator of learning. Teacher-centred learning has the teacher at its centre in an active role and students in a passive, receptive role. Student-centred learning requires students to be active, responsible participants in their own learning.”
I would describe the blogging program that occurs in my classroom as largely student centred. Many students are very active on the 4KM and 4KJ blog both at home and school. Their enthusiasm for learning and connecting through the class blog is high.
I’ve had many teachers comment on the way that the students in my class respond to blogging. I’ve also seen many teachers set up class blogs assuming that the blog will motivate students to become active participants in their own learning. Some teachers believe that they can set up a blog and the students will drive it to success. This is not the case.
I believe the success I have with student centred blogging occurs because our program begins as teacher centred.
Kelly Jordan and I team teach. From Day One we are blogging cheerleaders. A day doesn’t go by when we’re not exploring blogs and celebrating the wonderful connections and learning that can occur through blogging. We present ourselves as role models in the blogging community; demonstrating quality commenting and safe internet use. We acknowledge and promote students as they too generate excitement for blogging by commenting and getting to know their blogging buddies.
When we were teaching Grade Two, Kelly and I exhausted ourselves by replying to all the comments on the class blog for the first few weeks of the school year. It didn’t take long, however, until we were no longer needed. Students began replying to comments without being asked and from then on, we could let them take charge of that aspect of our class blog.
I see my role as a teacher to get the wheel spinning. Slowly the students can jump on the wheel and, as they generate momentum, I can begin to decrease my central role. I’ll always be a cheerleader but I can steer the blog from more of a distance while making way for students.
Many of the successful blogs that I follow also adopt this approach. I’m yet to find a regularly maintained blog with a large community of followers and high quality posts and comments that doesn’t have an enthusiastic teacher behind it. That teacher may now be in the back seat somewhat, but they were certainly in the driver’s seat to get the blog going.
Over the holidays, while attempting to be less “connected”, I’ve been thinking about how much technology seems to be increasingly infused into our day-to-day lives. With laptops, smart phones, iPads, iPods and other portable devices becoming so common place, gadgets are no longer something we go to, they come with us.
This clearly brings about many pros and cons. Technology lets us connect and access information more easily, however, being hyperconnected can compromise our health and wellbeing. Like many things in life, striking a balance is key.
Sometimes it’s fun to think back and remember how you did things pre internet/mobile/computer. These are experiences our students will never know.
Meeting someone for lunch/a movie/a walk/any event outside the house and not being able to let them know if you’re running late, lost or if your plans have changed.
Researching a holiday destination by reading a book. Booking accommodation by reading and trusting a small advertisement in a travel guide. Possibly going by recommendations of a small number of friends or family rather than millions of anonymous world travellers. Putting holiday planning in the hands of a travel agent.
Keeping up to date with news or weather by purchasing an outdated newspaper or waiting for the television or radio to tell you.
Learning almost anything from a valued encyclopedia set. If it wasn’t in there or in a book from the library then sometimes you just didn’t learn it! Maybe you would change the topic of a school project in line with what information you had access to.
Keeping in touch with friends or family who lived far away by writing letters and waiting patiently for replies.
Taking photos and then waiting perhaps a week or more until you had them processed at a shop. If your photo didn’t turn out well, you wouldn’t know. It was always a blind gamble.
While these tasks seem inefficient now, I don’t remember questioning them. Perhaps we had more time on our hands or didn’t desire a faster paced way of living. Perhaps we didn’t consider what would be possible.
This article reminds us that “there are some major downsides to relying on the Internet as our ‘external brain,’ including the desire for instant gratification, and the increased chances of making ‘quick, shallow choices.’ But researchers also say we networked young people are nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who will do good in the world.”
If the pace of the world is fast, connected and dynamic, then surely the networked, nimble, multitaskers will be those who will succeed now and in the future? Or will they?
Will successful teachers need to be networked, nimble and multitasking too? How do we ensure that we have balance in our fast paced lives and how to do we help students with this?
Many children don’t seem overly interested in hearing about days-gone-by, just as we were sometimes bored by stories of our grandparents as children.
The interesting question will be what stories from the year 2012 will our students take with them when they remind their children and grandchildren about the “ways we used to do things”? What will seem primitive about the way we live our lives now?
I seem to be continually uncovering more and more benefits to educational blogging. Aside from the advantages that I’ve shared here and here, having your class involved in the educational blogging community allows students to learn from and with their peers from all around the world.
In my class we often use our blogging buddies’ posts as inspiration for classroom activities, and as role models for high standards of work.
One such example was the readers’ theatre activities that we were doing last week as part of our CAFE reading program.
We published one of our own performances on our class blog here which hopefully continues the cycle of sharing.
There have been many other instances when my students have learnt from their blogging buddies. Just a few that spring to mind are:
Last year, when my students were conducting interviews for their “Dinosaur Conference”, we used the interviews on Mr Avery’s class blog to help us work out what makes a good interview.
When we were learning about arrays in maths, we used the ideas on Mr Salsich’s blog for our own classroom activity. His class had been finding arrays in everyday life and we carried the idea on into our own blog post.
When using ideas from other people’s blogs, we like to acknowledge where our idea came from. I believe this is good blogging etiquette to model to the students.
Being part of the blogging community not only enriches my students’ education but assists me to create authentic and interesting classroom activities. Everyone wins!
How have blog posts inspired your class activities?
There are so many free online tools out there that are fabulous to use in the classroom. These tools can potentially allow your students to create, collaborate, communicate and express themselves in a multitude of ways.
To find recommendations of tried and tested online tools to use in the classroom with step-by-step instructions, visit my other website Tech Tools for Teachers.
While the legal stuff can seem boring, it’s important to be aware that children cannot sign up for many online tools, even many of those that seem designed for education.
Websites based in the US are required to comply with Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This act restricts the collecting information from children under the age of thirteen.
If you look in the terms and conditions of many tools, you will find that children under 13 are not allowed to create an account.
Some tools, such as PhotoPeach, state that “Persons under 13 years of age are required to have a parent or guardian review and complete the registration process.”
According to this article, there is currently a proposal in place to broaden the limitations in the COPPA act.
Australia has similar rules to COPPA and if you are working in a Victorian DEECD school, the same rules about signing up for 13+ websites apply. Find out more about DEECD’s social media policies here.
Ways I have gotten around these limitations with under 13s
Create a teacher account and work with the children.
Have students sign up at home with their parents when the tools allows this (eg. PhotoPeach).
Use tools that don’t require a sign up (eg. Tagxedo).
Use tools that allow teachers to create student accounts (eg. Storybird).
What this means for you
Be mindful that if an online tool requires users to sign up then there is probably a 13+ rule in place.
Check out the “terms and conditions” on the website to be sure. These can usually be found right down the bottom or up the top of a website.
I am certainly no expert on this topic. Please leave a comment if you have any further knowledge or advice.
What other tools have you used that don’t require sign up or allow the creation of student accounts?
When you start blogging it is important to start small and try to not be overwhelmed by what other people are doing. With time, support, perseverance and inspiration, your blog will continue to grow and improve.
When I first started blogging with my students in 2008, we wrote very simple posts containing text and images. From there we began to learn about different web 2.0 tools that can enhance posts by showcasing student work and creating a more interesting and interactive space.
Why slideshows?
When you are comfortable with using images in your posts, you might see the need to progress to a photo slideshow. A slideshow allows you to show more photos without creating a l-o-n-g post. It can also bring events alive by the use of captions, transitions and music.
The disadvantage of most slideshows is that they involve Flash so can’t be viewed on iDevices (I have found one solution to this if you read on).
Choosing a slideshow
I often get asked about the best and easiest tool to use for photo slideshows in blog posts. There are a number of options I use depending on what type of slideshow I’m looking for.
As most online tools are 13+, I generally just have a teacher account. This means I either have children help me make the slideshow, or have the students take the photos and I put the slideshow together.
Tip: if you want to use these sorts of tools for your personal photos, it’s best to have two separate accounts – a professional one and a personal one.
There are many options out there but here are just five free and effective slideshow tools:
This tool is very intuitive to use. You simply upload photos, add music and write some captions to create an effective looking video style slideshow. Find more detailed instructions on how to use PhotoPeach here.
This is a PhotoPeach that we made for our class blog last week after a visit from the Geelong Cats football players.
If you want photos that readers can click through at their own pace, one option is to insert photos into a PowerPoint and upload it to a PowerPoint sharing website. You can find the instructions on how to add a photo album to a PowerPoint presentation on the Microsoft Office website here.
I like authorSTREAM because of its clean, uncluttered design but there are many hosting options. This is a photo slideshow we put on our class blog to show our classroom transformation over the Christmas holidays.
Flickr is a very popular photo storage and sharing site. The downside of Flickr is that you can only upload two videos and 300MB worth of photos per month, and only your 200 most recent photos are shown. Photos are also stored as lower resolution. Like many web 2.0 tools, there is a paid pro account available without these limitations.
I found out about Flickr slideshows from Shawn Avery, who often uses them on his class blog. Flickr slideshows are clean looking and easy to use. Sometimes you want a simple photo slideshow without music and transitions; this is a good option. Find the instructions on how to embed a Flickr slideshow here.
I made this sample Flickr slideshow to demonstrate what it looks like.
SlideMyPics uses HTML5 which allows you to create a photo slideshow that people can view on their iDevice. With a large number of people now using iPhones, iPods and iPads to access blogs, this is something to consider when putting slideshows in your posts.
To use this tool, you have to first upload photos to either Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa or SmugMug. You can add transitions and music from YouTube if you like.
I just made this sample slideshow to show what an embedded SlideMyPics slideshow looks like.
Animoto allows you to easily turn photos (and video clips) into videos complete with effective music and transitions. Animoto for Education gives teachers free access to premium features. Find an Animoto tutorial on Shawn Avery’s blog.
Animoto isn’t a tool I use overly often but my student bloggers love it. Here is an Animoto I made for our Ugandan Global Project in 2010.
***
Other options
Some slideshow options don’t allow you to view full screen photos within the blog. They direct you to the source website. Two of these are Smilebox and Picasa Slideshows.
If you are interested in a step-by-step description of how to use Picasa Slideshows, check out this post by Janet Moeller-Abercrombie on The Edublogger website. Her idea on how to integrate this tool in the classroom blog for parent access is excellent.
There are many more photo slideshow options out there. What would you recommend?
I’ve been thinking about how important quality over quantity often is when it comes to effective teaching and learning with blogging, global collaboration and technology.
Here are some thoughts…
It’s not about how many blogging buddies your class has but about having deep and ongoing connections with classes that you can learn with and from.
It’s not about how many Twitter followers you have but about forming connections with educators who inspire you, challenge you, share ideas and are interested in getting to know you.
It’s not about how many different web 2.0 tools you use but about using tools well that meet your students learning needs and your learning intentions.
It’s not about how many student blogs you have but about developing student bloggers who are responsible, supported by families and progressively creating high quality content.
It’s not about how many computers and devices you have in your classroom but about how well you’re using them to amplify your teaching and increase student learning.
It’s not about how many blog comments students write but about how they use comments to reflect, question, offer feedback, make a connection or develop a relationship.
It’s not about keeping up with the plethora of information flying around the internet but about finding the important, reliable and useful information that you need.
Some of these things I have definitely realised over time. Enthusiasm and quantity can sometimes go hand in hand and mask the need for high quality teaching and learning. I have sometimes found that when I take time to reflect I realise the power of quality.
Image: ‘There goes the neighborhood’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/27109792@N00/2475530616
Where else do you think quality over quantity is important in education?
Sometimes quantity has a place too. Can you think of any examples?
So many rewards can come out of connections made through blogging and global collaboration.
I love watching my students learn about literacy, maths, geography, technology, history and all sorts of things about life around the world with their blogging buddies. It is such an authentic and memorable way to learn.
This video below, courtesy of Linda Yollis and her students, explains the game.
Bamboo became an instant hit. As Mrs Yollis’ class describe in this November post, our blogging friends around the world quickly started enjoying this unique game.
Three months on, Bamboo is still extremely popular at our school. Students from my 2011 class have introduced the game to the other students, and every lunchtime and recess the parallel bars are swamped by children of all ages.
I remember being at school and learning new games from students who had come from other schools, or from friends and neighbours who went to other schools. Now children from all over the world can so easily connect for fun and learning!
My name is Kathleen Morris. I teach Grade Four at Leopold Primary School near Geelong in Victoria, Australia.
You might like to check out my class blog.
All views are my own.
