Introduction:
For the past couple of months I have been
implementing blogging in my science classroom. Part of this was out of my own
interest in blogging and social media, and as a topic of research for
implementing differentiated instruction in my current classroom setting. The
goal of this post is to share my inquiry based research project. The
dissemination of my research follows a month long implementation of
blogging in the science classroom where students participating in creating
authentic artifacts of learning and were assessed on these artifacts as an
alternative to traditional summative assessments.
What is a Blog?
Defined, blogs are online journals where entries
are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can
also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. A typical
blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other
media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an
interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Because of this,
educators and students are embracing blogs as a means of publishing content,
keeping a running record of content in a digital portfolio. When coupled with educational content,
“Edublogs” serve as a venue for collaborating with others in a way that
encourages reflection on the content, questioning, self-assessment, and higher
order thinking. Students can share their blogs with both the teacher and other
students to compare their knowledge and comprehension level of the material.
Why Should it be Included in Instructional Practice?
Blogging is an excellent tool for the
constructivist classroom as it follows a learner centered approach and provides
reflection for the learner that can direct future progress. As an assessment
tool, blogs can serve as a platform where students can test their understanding
and mastery of a skill or content. Assessment can come from the traditional
teacher to student form, or it can come in peer to peer evaluation. By offering
each other alternative viewpoints, assistance in understanding, or conformation
of ideas, students can gain a deeper, more meaningful connection with each
other and the content. Both teacher and peer feedback can serve as formative
assessment. Blogs can also serve the teacher with a means of self-assessing
instructional methods and tailoring future instruction. Blogging can extend
learning beyond the physical constraints of the classroom and the school day,
allowing students the time to process the information, revisit, and revise
their artifacts of learning.
Blogging can also create sustainable learning communities and can redesign the traditional approach to how coursework is delivered. Blogging can foster a learning environment with infinite collaboration
and sustain learning beyond the school day and even after the course has ended.
Using a common blog makes it possible for learners from different classes and
even a different school to share resources, video, learning tools, articles,
discussion, and lectures. According to Custin and Barakas (2010), using a Socratic approach in an online forum is less
intimidating than when used in a face to face setting. Students are more
comfortable and willing to answer in an online forum (blog) where thoughts can
be meticulously developed without the constriction of time. The development of
a complete answer or thought can be posted after a student has had sufficient
time to reflect on the question, whereas the Socratic approach in a face to
face setting often leads to reluctant, self-conscious, expression of thought. A
kinder, gentler approach often employs the students as co-moderators in the
Socratic Method.
Blogging supports the constructivist learning model. For
example, blogging can be active, manipulative, intentional, and reflective.
Blogging can stimulate prior knowledge, provide learning experiences with
embedded links to resources, and include surveys and self- assessments.
Blogging also can focus on authentic, relevant topics that are task-based or
involve problem solving and will facilitate learning into new situations and
allow students to elaborate on what they have learned. This real-world
understanding may even lead students to create hypothetical questions and
scenarios for other to reflect ad comment on.
When this occurs the learning becomes conversational, collaborative, and
cooperative and ultimately a place where students want to communicate.
Blogging extends instructional time by providing students
with a means for accessing information outside the school day. Teachers can benefit
from the blogs by extending learning beyond the school day by providing links
to instructional text and videos, embedding vodcast and podcast directly into a
classroom blog, and introducing concepts through a Socratic approach.
Additionally, teachers can use blogs to share professional knowledge and
expertise, provide technical and professional support, and training to other
teachers.
For more information, see the following articles:
How is Blogging Differentiated Instruction?
Perhaps a good way to answer this question is
to look at the characteristics of Differentiated Instruction. According to
Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is a renowned author of many books on the topic, there
are several key building blocks that serve as a foundation for differentiated
instruction. These are outlined and summarized here:
Knowing the Learner: Teachers need to know as
much as possible about their students to teach them well, including learning
styles and pace, multiple intelligences, personal qualities such as
personality, temperament and motivation, personal interests, potential
disabilities, health, family circumstances, and language preference. For my
inquiry project and research Blogging provided a simple avenue for
accomplishing this task. Students created an initial blog post earlier in the
semester describing "WHO AM I". I provided students with a prompt for
this assignment as well as an invitation to view my own teacher created post.
See it here:
Quality Teacher: The teacher believes all
students can learn, has the desire and capacity to differentiate curriculum and
instruction, understands diversity and thinks about students developmentally,
is a risk taker, is open to change and well-versed in best practices, is
comfortable challenging the status quo, knows what doesn’t work, is able to
withstand staff dissension that may arise.
Quality Curriculum: Curriculum needs to be
interesting to students and relevant to their lives, appropriately challenging
and complex, thought provoking, focused on concepts and principles and not just
facts; focused on quality, not quantity; stress depth of learning, not just
coverage. Blogging provides the opportunity to enrich curriculum and make it
more relevant. In my research and implementation, I spent a great deal of time
thinking about and creating artifacts that my students would enjoy doing and be
motivated to complete. The activities in the classroom also needed to be
carefully designed to give students the appropriate background knowledge and
scaffolding to complete blogging artifacts. Motivation drives the success of
both classroom learning and blogging. Students who are motivated to write tend
to spend more time and effort on the writing process. Spending more time on the
writing process helps ensure that reflection and analytical thinking skills are
at work. To achieve this through blogging, I attempted to generate inspiring
writing prompts and assignments that are authentic and meaningful. You can see
examples of these here:
Classroom Learning Environment: The ideal learning
environment includes a balanced student population, appropriate grade and
program placement, priority seating based on student needs, has a reasonable
class size, practices positive discipline, arranges furniture to promote group
work, use flexible grouping, and has adequate teaching supplies. While my own
classroom provides several unique challenges to this building block of
differentiation, blogging is something that can be done anytime and anywhere.
Students can blog from home, the library, and at local fast food restaurants.
Emerging technologies such as cell phones, ipads , and Kindles have enabled
students’ experiences at school and at home to converge. I am fortunate to have
technology for each student in my class, however, even in the most
technologically challenged environments, allowing students to use their own
devices can make an inadequate learning environment an ideal environment.
A study done by the Herman Miller Company (2011) on
adaptable spaces and their impact on learning identified four key constructs
that affect student learning; Basic Human Need, Teaching, Learning, and
Engagement.
Herman Miller Link: http://goo.gl/BC2fKJ
Flexible Teaching and
Learning Time Resources: Includes
team teaching, block scheduling, tutoring and remediation within school, before
and after-school programs. Teachers who currently use differentiated approaches
to build units and lessons around essential understandings often lack
sufficient time to properly scaffold and tier instructional content and
assignments. Some students may require additional time to master concepts,
while others may need additional support that parents are unable to provide at
home due to a lack of content knowledge or insufficient mastery of the
language. A certain percentage of students may need to be challenged with
extension activities to enrich their science experience. Blogging can provide a
means for supporting all levels of learners and extend academic instruction and
provide teachers with the necessary time they need to provide reinforcement
strategies introduce new or additional topics, review important class concepts,
review for tests, and enrichment. Blogs provide a means of extending the
instructional impact of teachers in a way that is popular with the young
audience already immersed in social networking.
Instructional Delivery and Best Practices:
Includes flexible grouping, cooperative learning, learning stations and
centers, web quests, tiered assignments, individual choice, and
collaboration. Students may be better
visual, auditory, kinesthetic, social, logical, verbal, or solitary learners.
Classroom blogging can be differentiated to meet the needs of all students.
With a blog, the assignment possibilities are endless. Students can reflect
through a journal (solitary), write about evidence of science in their life
(logical), create a podcast and upload it to the blog (verbal and auditory), or
post graphs or pictures of science in the real world (visual). Blogging can be
be “cooperative, collaborative, and conversational, providing students with
opportunities to interact with each other to clarify and share ideas, and
reflect on understanding and learning by posting comments to each other's blog.
Assessment, Evaluation and Grading: Includes
portfolios, observations, skills checklists, oral and written reports, demonstrations,
performances, work samples, models, graphic organizers and posters, quizzes and
tests, and standardized tests. Blogging can be used in learner self-assessment,
teacher formative and summative assessment, and as a comprehensive assessment
in the form of a digital portfolio. According to Lee and Allen, Blogs as an
Online Assessment Tool, Blogs enable learning from self-reflection, from
others, and provokes complex thinking skills and strategies. Students have the
opportunity to put into writing their own thoughts and beliefs, review other
postings and responses to a subject matter, and are then able to compare their
level or knowledge or approach to their peers.
A rubric for assessing student blogs can be
found here:
Conclusion:
For my inquiry based research project I
propose the question “How can I build a learning community and assess student
achievement through the use of student created blogs?” Through the use of
student created blogs, I created authentic learning activities that exposed and
celebrated the talents of my students, built confidence in the student voice,
encouraged mastery of content knowledge, and helped my students create and
evaluate media content. My research supports the notion that creative
authorship of student blogs can allow students to produce high quality exhibits
of learning that go beyond just answers to questions on a standardized test.
Self-published content by students provided autonomy in their own learning and
provided options and choice for those students who struggle with traditional
assessment. In addition, blogging allowed students to develop electronic
portfolios for storing visual and written content and have their own voice in
the content itself. Blogging helped build a sense of community among the
learners in my class through peer to peer interaction, and shared task
assignment. Students also practiced self-assessment, and had the opportunity to
review each other’s post and responses to posts, compare their knowledge and
comprehension of the subject matter, and share in the use of technology tools
they employed to execute the assigned task.
As a teacher, blogging provides a means of
extending the instruction beyond the school day. The number of student blogs
that showed high achievement and commitment to the task of creating artifacts
of learning demonstrates the potential of blogs to extend learning and is worth
considering their regular use in future units of study.
The following links provide access to
examples of student blogs with permission. Feel free to explore the archives of
student blogs, including the "Who am I" post from September.
