The use of blogs is a new concept for me. I use a great amount of technology within my classroom such as Mobi View, Edmodo, my personal webpage and host of others, but never a blog. I have been tirelessly brainstorming ideas of using blogs in the classroom, but an administrator could surely use this technology.
Campus leaders are busy people. Between district meetings, ARD's, and PLC's they have little time to dialogue with the teachers they lead. A blog could seriously solve this problem. Leaders can set up a weekly time to write in their blog and reflect upon the week. In a large campus, many teachers may not see or know what is happening among extra-curricular activities and core classes. A leader could use this technology to highlight the amazing things going on around the campus and give teachers a spotlight they may not get otherwise. For example, if a math teacher receives a grant from a nationally accredited source most of the staff would never know this (except the other math teachers) But if a leader creates a "Spotlight on Success" corner on their blog this teacher gets the recognition they deserve. Other teachers can respond to and congratulate these successes on the blog.The ability to make the campus feel more close knit is limitless with the use of blogging.
References
Dana, N.F., (2009). Leading
with Passion and Knowledge. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Corwin Press.
I understand your hesitation/reluctance/thoughtfulness with regard to blogs in the classroom. Certainly we as leaders can use them for all the reasons you listed. I love the idea of recognizing teachers on your blog. What a great distinction that would be - I mean, you could have all the teachers in a lab for an hour or so during a campus inservice and instruct everyone to go to the blog and follow it. That way, everyone is on the same page (literally, sort of) and will get some notification when there is an update. Everyone can share in the congratulations and aspire to work hard enough to be next. An excellent idea.
ReplyDeleteBut with regard to classroom use, I'm still stumped. The one big obstacle I keep running into (and our Instructional Technologist concurred - the same issue plagues him) is that our middle schoolers do not all have email addresses and many Web 2.0 applications require them just to sign up.
So you get into the hairy area of whether to take one the responsibility of giving that power to a child whose parents have not yet provided either the permission, the technology, or the motivation to have the child enter that world. Once a child has an email address, many things become open to him or her that are closed without that particular credential. It's dicey. I'm not willing, at this point, to naysay my students' parents in this way. And secure email for kids costs a bundle.
Therefore, unless the district steps up and provides secure, watchdogged email, it's hard to think of a classroom use for Google docs or Blogger or any of a number of other Web 2.0 tools (despite the fact that the district has trained us, ostensibly for classroom use (???)).
Oh...and if I could just break one of the rules for a moment, AWESOME Title for your blog. I believe its awesomeness is self-evident and requires no further comment.
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you! I totally agree with you about the email address thing. The district I graduated high school from gave each student an email address. That is seriously something to look in to!
DeleteI really like this idea of using blogs within a school to let everyone know what is going on around campus. My concern is how do you get everyone to participate without issuing a directive that is going to be resented? You hate to make it a requirement, but knowing most of the faculty I work with, it could very easily become cliquish and/or leave out the teachers who still refuse to use technology.
ReplyDelete