Our major topic for the evening, blogging in the classroom, is well-connected with our discussions of Web 2.0, metacognition and constructivism. I did not feel, however, that I transitioned from the discussions into blogging very effectively. I immediately moved to the "how to" and the assignment for next week without relating this work to the earlier part of the evening. I will work on addressing this mistake next week.
Once again, the student resource presentation was a highlight of our evening. Ashley presented a very complete and thoughtful description of the use of clickers in the classroom, complete with some useful resource references. Now Evrim and I will work to create a lesson that uses the clickers in a discussion format in our class,
Building on Rebecca's presentation from last week, Evrim shared information about possible blogging sites (Blogger, Word Press, Edublogs, Blogmeister and Epals. It will be fun to see which sites are used in the assignment for next week.
After a quick glance, I am impressed with the Logo assignments----mind-sized bites and all!
Blogger does not seem to want me to upload images right now---so images from our evening together will follow. Note: Blogger did let me upload my pictures this afternoon, but I decided to keep this comment in my blog in case any of you have problems loading pictures in Blogger. My experience with this issue is that waiting a few hours seems to solve the problem!
I really enjoyed evaluating blogs and it helps to have a handout that describes some characteristics of good blogs. I also noticed that CELT is having several workshops over clickers and turning point this semester. They have beginning and advanced courses that could be valuable for those of you more interested in clickers.
ReplyDeleteI do not feel that your transition was ineffective. Ashley's presentation was great because one of the classes that I TA for just started using clickers. I have attended one of the CELT presentations that Ashley mentions above and found it valuable, but have unfortunatley not been able to use it. I am excited about using clickers in one of our classes because I have never used one before.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't feel the transition was ineffective. I enjoyed learning about the different blogging resources since I have not (until now) had my own blog. I do think it is a great way to get students involved in classroom work outside of the school and I believe they do feel more comfortable in this type of environment. Blogging is definately something I will be continuing to explore.
ReplyDeleteI thought the connection between our discussion on Web 2.0 technologies and blogging was evident as well. I feel that the activities we are working on such as the Logo assignment and this blog activity, have allowed me to see different ways to integrate "Web 2.0" technologies into classsroom settings as well as utilize them myself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the previous posts, I do not believe that your transition was ineffective. Personally, it was nice to spend a little more time on the assignment. I have never blogged before, so this is a new experience for me, so I enjoyed the bit of extra time to explore. Also, I thought Ashley's talk about clickers was very relevant. One of my professors has used them in one of my classes before, and I definitely did not enjoy them. The problem we had was that our professor didn't know how to accurately run the clicker program; therefore she ended up showing us the answers to our quizzes on accident about 50% of the time. It was nice to see the other ways that clickers can be used and to see that some professors do use them for more than just attendance.
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ReplyDeleteI thought your class arrangement was great. The connection between discussion on Web 2.0 and blogging was evident. "How to" is a key point for us to utilize the technologies. We all know blogger before, but we just used it to express our personal thoughts and moods, in your class, we are instructed to know how to integrate it into classroom settings and training scenarios.
ReplyDeleteps: amazing sailboat!
I agree that our review of the evaluative criteria for a successful blog and the opportunity to view some available blogs was incredibly helpful. I chose to create a blogging assignment that my HDFS 221 (Development and Guidance for Children Ages 3 to 8) will actually complete. I created a classroom blog for the course and posted the blogging assignment with directions on how to sign up for an account, become a "follower" of our class blog, and post a blog.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I only posted the assignment later this weekend, I have 8 students (out of 60) who have signed up to follow the blog. However, none of them have been brave enough yet to attempt the first post to our classroom blog. Thanks to a suggestion from Dr. Thompson, I am currently composing a sample blog for my students as a starting off point. I am really hoping this will take off. This will allow students to share their thoughts and suggestions with one another, rather than just simply me reading all of their written work. The question that I have for others is how one might incorporate blogging into a course that is not primarily focused on written work? For example, in my course the primary written assignments are anecdotal observations of young children's development. Therefore, posting this information on a blog would not be possible as it would violate the confidentiality pledge.
Thoughts on Clickers:
I also really appreciated Ashley's presentation about clickers and their various uses. However, she mentioned the potential for clickers to improve interactions among students. Do you have any examples of how this might work? Most of the methods of utilizing clickers that I have seen have involved polling students and seeing the results, quizzing students on subject matter, or of course, attendance.