Hands On Support in Shropshire

The word is spreading about blogging. I introduced the concept to some heads of department today and they were very interested in using blogs in a number of ways. It’s about time that the read/write web came into the popular consciousness, where people can start using it in innovative ways to enhance learning. Topics we discussed today included the use of blogs for pupils to interact with their learning materials in new ways, and the benefits and inherent dangers of allowing a public publishing medium.

From Ann Davis comes a reflection on the posting in District Administration that highlights a number of ways that blogs might be used, not without underlining the need for their careful use in schools with regard to some control over the content of posts. James Farmer summarises his paper on blogging in education which posits blogging firmly in the realm of social networks by its nature of communication being the over-riding mechanism of knowledge transfer, rather than the traditional content-driven learning model. Content still exists but it is placed more into the hands of the learner to construct meaning from. Extract from James’ paper (with my emphases):

Wells (2000) further developed Vygotsky’s work and contributed to the assertion that all learning is socially constructed through language and is in some way collaborative, even when direct human contact is absent. Adapting this theoretical perspective, the new model will emphasise that the key to the collaborative component of learning is a process of inquiry within a social group and the construction of meaning through the exploration within the specific social context.

I consider this communication to be crucial, as it enables the learner to claim ownership of their input to the learning conversation and thus to be part of the learning community. Will this change the face of education so it becomes less “teachers and pupils” and more “guides and directed learners”? Time will tell, although I suspect that this is an ideal and with all the summative assessment constraints that society demands as outcomes there will have to be a compromise.

Back to today’s work - firstly, we discussed the opportunity for pupils to respond to a teacher’s post on their blog - the teacher writes the article on the blog for learners to comment on. As learners leave their comments, and others subsequently comment on these, there is considerable potential for a large base of enquiry and explanation to build up where learners explore concepts in different ways, and clarify their own understanding from that of others. The learning of the group becomes the responsibility of the group which then becomes a learning community.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2005 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Emergent Technology, Assessment for Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.