I have just read Sam's blog post "To Blog Or Not To Blog"
Sam is an 11 year old kid
"who’s really tall and loves to sing, act, have fun, play sports and video games, and read the Warriors series but now more the Twilight saga. Blogging is important to me because I love to write and I like to have a place to vent my feelings about things and let others know what is happening to people in other places. I read alot so I will probably have lots of book reviews" Wow! His post has almost reduced me to tears. http://bit.ly/bTzFFY
Here are my thoughts -
Wow Sam! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts as you have. You see, I work with teachers. Many of them do not value the role of blogs as a learning tool. They will use books without question but blogs – Heck No!! The problem for most I dare to say is that they are not bloggers themselves. They have not experienced the power of being connected, actively involved, confident collaborators who use online tools to connect to a real audience, who write for a real purpose and gain feedback from the global network they are connected to. So how do we get them to see this? How do we shift then into the 21st C?
At the moment one school principal has prescribed that classes have to have a blog or wiki. His reasoning for this is that parents need to connect with the classrooms. Most parents work and so don’t get in during school hours. While this is an admirable reason it does not go far enough. It says nothing about the power of the blog as a tool to advance the students learning and connectedness. It says nothing about the value of a blog over a book, the later being an increasingly outdated tool in which students are pushed and pulled into, expected to write in and which no-one else sees, and which at the end of the day goes into a dark cubbyhole, alone, unopened, unread and where there is no-one to respond.
It was great to have the opportunity to vent - to respond. In doing so, at the very least I feel that someone may hear my concerns and understand what I am saying – especially as they don’t seem to have heard in the immediate world I live in and work in.
If the rate of change outside your organization
is greater than the rate of change inside your organization,
the end is in sight.
- Jack Welch
2 comments:
My 9 year old grandaughter is a blogger and I often visit her classblog. I like what I see her class sharing and today I used something on that blog to help my kids learning. We are beginning an inquiry on water and I shared the virtual fish dissection.Boy what great language we got out of that. I still love my personal blog as it helps clarify my own ideas. I love it when I get global and get a comment from some one in Nelson or Bangkok.I have gone on to J's classwiki to find some info from her kids via their voice (and later in the day I interacted with those kids kanohi to kanohi.I also use my blog to vent!!!I enjoy visiting other blogs that are listed on blogs. I use Bruce Hammonds leading_learning blog for planning and motivations about things like science and art. Blogging is great. On thursday I am going to learn some more bells and whistles for my classblog (its a bit sad right now and I want to make it more interesting so my kids want to add more)
Thanks Tricia. Isn''t it great being connected to so many other learners. I can't wait for all our students (And their teachers :-) to experience the power they have at their finger tips.
Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. :-)
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