ICT in my Classroom

So many people are in a reflective mood – lots of “reviews of the year” and “best bits” going on. I don’t understand where everyone gets the time! I still have 12 draft posts that I started thinking about since September I have not written!

I suppose the title of this post suggests a mini review and one thing I will get back to later is the targets I set a while back for our progress.

But this is about real change. Real difference. John and Will have been thinking about whether or not blogging is making a real difference. I think there is a long way to go. As I commented on John’s post:

I would have to say that if we are just talking about writing, given that there are many more other aspects involved with blogging, it relies upon “audience” and “purpose”. My Google Reader is full of people who are dedicated to this great world of web 2.0, the read/write web – but it is much harder to actually attribute specific educational achievements and progress to blogging. This is generally because some time in May my class and thousands of other children will sit in a hall with a booklet and a pencil and will be tested.

This year I would like to make the most of the blogging global community to give the children more PURPOSE to their writing, to take advantage of the huge AUDIENCE they have when they blog. How/Will/If this actually happens, well I am unsure…

I am positive about having a class blog, let me explain some of the great things that have happened since having a blog in September.

• Children realise much more readily that when they blog their work may be scrutinised. They are very, very keen to get the spelling and punctuation spot on – that can only be a good thing. More please.
• Through the simple use of GeoVisitors the children know that they not only have commentators but readers from across the globe.
• One of my children said that they really enjoy blogging and told me it gives her a voice. Enough said.
• We have been able to link up with schools and children from around the world really easily.
• Reluctant readers and writers enjoy exploring other schools blogs and commenting; writing posts on our own space.

But what more is there…John says he is starting his 4th year of blogging and still only scratching the surface, not sure then where we are after only 4 months. But I am determined to exploit the power of this and other tools more readily in our work, we need more communications between schools asking for (again focusing on the writing) specific tasks to be done by others – giving us a REAL LIFE PURPOSE to the words we write. And we need the REAL AUDIENCE to be part of the writing process.

One of these great moments happened this year when we saw a post about Flic-Flacs by the 5/6P Allstars in Sydney. We read it with great interest as a class but struggled with the instructions – so we commented and that’s what we asked for, better, clearer instructions. Well they really set to it and the resulting piece of writing was just great and proves my point about REAL PURPOSE and a REAL AUDIENCE. Take a look. We then made our own and closed the loop by commenting further on these improved instructions. Take a look at some of the comments we wrote back to them.

I think this is precisely what we should be using our classroom blogs for, making it real.

Image Citations:
Zesmerelda, “Massive Change” Zesmerelda’s Photostream. October 21 2006 <http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/275391899_50e20a57b6.jpg>

Flic Flac image from the 5/6P Allstars Blog