Blogs are a new medium for communication. Society and educators are just now beginning to understand the ways in which blogs can be used to facilitate communication, especially with regards to reflection and literacy. For this assignment, please review the links provided in the class agenda. After reviewing the information in the links, respond to the following by posting a comment:
After reviewing what others have done with blogs and learning more about blogs, visit my sister-in-law's blog at: http://homeonderange.blogspot.com. Peruse some of her blog musings and respond to one with a reaction / comment. Perhaps specifically relate to your own experience living in Hawaii. Note the different types of blogs she posts (some are the articles she writes for the local tourist magazine). Now, think about how might blogs be adopted within your own locus of control. Respond to THIS blog with a comment about how the use of blogs might facilitate communication in your own professional environment. Be specific and provide a basis for your use of the tool. Answer with at least two cogent, appropriately written (grammar, spelling, etc.) paragraphs.
[Please complete response by 10.12.08 (Sunday)]
Please email me if you have questions.
14 comments:
So, applying to my own focus of control:
1. Use open sources software to collaborate the blog into the disaster relief website(not open to the public yet), invite other educators to contribute for the PBL curriculum when it's ready.
2. Need a detailed evaluating model before publishing the entry.
Make sure there is no mistakes before publishing.
3. Since Google is such a powerful and generous tool box open to the public, we can borrow Google's tools to build our own website and create a collaborative website for educators. It's another very doable project, with the large amount of registered clients already.
4. Burn the blog feed and import the blog to the Facebook, Myspace, or other web 2.0 tools can read RSS feed. It's a great way to get connected.
5. Comments on other people's blog entry to get connected as well.
6. What we should not do in blog:
a. private stuffs we don't want to share,
b. research papers,
c. other confidential info we are responsible for.
Facilitating communication, "within my own locus of control" leads to the engagement of vlogging and/or the use of video relay in conjunction with blogging.
Vlogging would be used for video journals, documentaries, projects, and a focal source in communicating educational ideas and tid bids from a broad or narrow spectrum that incorporates students and teachers alike.
Additionally, video relay can be utilized for real-time communication with peers across the country (or across town) then centrally blogging the outcome and experience.
The above can be utilized in conjuction with different Web 2.0 tools for further collaboration and provide immediate feedback on any educational aspect.
The creation of a blog is not new to me. The maintenance of a blog on the other hand…
I created a blog in March of 2006 at http://listechnews.blogspot.com/. My stated intent was to provide an exemplar for my fellow teachers on what blogs were and how they could be used for educational purposes. Additionally, the blog was to act as a repository for ideas I accumulated about education and technology. The initial entry stands as the only entry to this day.
I believe the organizing idea remains a valid one. Through my work as a tech coordinator and now through my studies in educational technology I have encountered many ideas and technologies that could be useful to my fellow teachers. The blog would provide a “permanent” catalog of those ideas that I could refer people to if the need arises. There are other features inherent in a blog that make it more valuable than another possible source like sending an email out to all of the staff. The fact that a blog can potentially be read by anyone and commented on allows another layer of resources for readers. A reader might leave a post about their experiences with a technology I mentioned or maybe there is another similar technology that the reader considers to be better then the one written about. This interactivity and the permanent nature of a blog are two elements that make them a valuable communication tool. Of course, you do have to actually write in them occasionally to be truly effective.
A problem at both of my work places that I was recently cognizant of is configuration management (CM). CM assures that there is a control in place to maintain software and hardware changes that is consistent among all computer systems. Besides me, there are others that know the administrator password and have adminsitrative accounts themselves, so there are many occassions where one person makes a change (e.g., security policy is modified or software has been updated, installed, or removed) and others are not aware of it.
My initial solution to this was to create a changelog in the format of a text file that either resides in a central location (ie., storage area network) or the root of the drive of each computer. However, I decided that it would be difficult to maintain and find many files and it somehow seemed low-tech. Since I love creating databse-driven websites, I decided to make a web-based changelog with PHP and MySQL, which is like a CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) or a blog (web log), but much simpler.
Like a blog, there is a name and comments field. The user who has performed a configuration change will simply go to the website, enter their name, the task they performed, and identify what computers it is applicable to. The message will then be timestamped and posted in reverse chronological order. With this form of communication among us, we can identify what has been done, what needs to be done, and when the events occurred. In addition, it gives us a leverage in troubleshooting problems that arise by checking the history to see if a past event triggered it. This has been impemented at the college just a few weeks ago and seems to be a good tool so far. After testing it out, I want to implement it at my other work place and integrate a LDAP script, which removes the need for a name field because it automatically knows who the logged in user is.
So, although it's not as exciting and entertaining to read like other normal blogs, I think it's a good way to facilitate communication between us.
While I haven’t used blogs in a professional environment, I can speculate as to how it could be utilized. Blogs provide an electronic outlet where limitations are few and feedback usually takes the form of the responder’s experiences. Web 2.0 tools such as Myspace and Facebook became the home for some of my blogs, networking me with friends and strangers from around the world. What we communicated were things, thoughts, and experiences we had in common.
How blogging can be used with administrators within their own departments would be somewhat interesting, as I have not heard of it being used before. I think blogging would be a good way to get feedback on projects going on in the office, staff training, and various policies and procedures. When I was a graduate assistant, some staff training was taught through modules on webct. Having webct discussions or some form of blogging would have also been useful instead of just having modules and quizzes.
On a separate note, cool way Ryan, how you created that web-based changelog to track software and hardware changes on the computer. I think it’d be a good tool for other departments to use.
Blog is an amazing tool that has a great impact on strengthening communication. I haven't used blog officially since I don't have a professional environment. On the other hand, I have used it as a way of writing personal things by using myspace' blogs. I customized my blog to be secured and only my contacts can see it.
I haven't done any blog in English. All, the blog that I write or that I like to read are Arabic.
As a student who studies abroad, I love the blog tool because it helps me to be connected to my family and friends new updates and to be connected to the major things that the public back home talk about. For example, there is an e-newspaper that has a blog; every one can write there. I visit this blog almost everyday to see what are the most important topics. Also, leaving comments for the main topic back home makes me feel that I'm home and connected to them even If I'm so far.
This technology helps us to be wherever we want although we sit in the same place.
During my study, I understand that blog can be a useful tool for communication in any profession. If I have my own classroom, I would use blog as a way of discussing certain things with my students.
I believe that a powerful blog must has an efficient writing style including, organized ideas, well-chosen words, supported media (audio, video, graphics), and perfect grammar and punctuation.
I have not been so bold as to create a blog yet, but I have many ideas now about how I can apply a blog to my professional situation.
As a school librarian, a blog would be the perfect platform to connect with students and teachers in my school. Such discussions as book talks, book reviews, library news, new arrivals, etc. could take place on a blog. Students and teachers could use the blog as a source for information, or to comment on and participate in library related discussions. As one of the articles we read about blogs suggested, the permission and maintenance aspects would have to worked out prior to creating such a blog.
Another way a blog could be applied to my professional setting is to connect with other school librarians. I searched online for information about blogs and school libraries and found that many librarians are using blogs to network with other library professionals. A blog could be used to communicate with librarians in my immediate geographical area and specific library setting as well as library professionals all over the world in a variety of settings. Simple questions and comments or deep considerations and contributions could be posted on such a blog. I imagine there are endless possibilities.
I work as a grad assistant for the Instructional Support Group for the College of Education at UH Manoa. Currently we use a wiki as a communication tool to post tutorials, handouts, and references for the faculty to get the help they need for different technology tools and applications like Laulima, Elluminate, and more. The wiki is great because it allows a group of us to post information and not have one person be responsible for the whole thing. And it’s editable if ever we need to update or change it. Oops, I think I’m getting off-topic talking about wikis instead of blogs…
Wikis are great to house and collaborate on content information, but I think that blogs could be beneficial for our Instructional Support Group because we can use it to communicate news and information to instructors about new updates, news, or discoveries. Especially now that instructors are getting a basic handle on Laulima and the Instructional Support Group is learning Laulima better and better, we should post information about new discoveries we come across in using the tools in Laulima. We constantly learn new things about Laulima everyday as we use it or help instructors use it for class. Using a blog to share those discoveries would be beneficial to all instructors. And they can comment back on the posts.
Also, instructors ask specific questions in our workshops that sometimes we don’t have the answer to until we look into it. Most likely, if one person has a question, other instructors probably wonder the same thing, so posting it on a blog to share with a group of people would be a great way to communicate.
We could also blog about some cool tools that could enhance instructors’ teaching/instruction/class that they should check out. And as instructors use it, they could post comments about how they use it or how they feel about it.
My current position with the DOE (part-time ELL teacher) can sometimes be difficult because of a lack of communication. Classroom teachers do not always have the time to talk to me during school hours. Blogs would be a great tool for improving communication. It can be used to help faculty communicate with each other as well as help faculty communicate with students and their parents.
Since I'm a part-time employee, I'm only in the classroom for half of the school day. I often find myself lost about what the teachers have or have not taught. A blog would be a great way for teachers to post daily activities and assignments. By checking the blog, I would be able to prepare lessons for my students by creating lessons supporting what they are already learning in class.
A blog listing the activities and assignments done each day would also help improve communication between teachers and students/parents. Parents would be informed of what their child is learning and of the assignments they need to complete. Students could also use the blog if they forgot what assignments were due. This would be very helpful for students who were absent. The most vaulable part of having a blog is that it is interactive. Students and their parents can post comments and teachers can respond to their concerns.
Blogging Response
James Karkheck
Perhaps I ought to begin with the hard part: as demonstrated by the examples and "Home on Derange", the possibilities with blogging are almost endless. In terms of the written content, most blogs strive to entertain, describe, or persuade. As a middle school computer instructor, I've been wanting to introduce blogging into my curriculum for a couple of years now. I did a little work in learning where and how I could set up a blog, and I actually have two (empty!) blogs at this time.
I need a focus. Politics is out. Ranting about NCLB is out. I bet the kids won't be into the deep dark details of coffee. I'll just have to start somewhere. Current best thought is to try a mix:
1. Pick a topic, pose a question, ask students to respond. Might start with cafeteria food or the number and variety of extracurricular activities at my school. Or maybe our healthy snack rule or dress code. The goal here is to get students to advocate a position and express themselves in defending it.
2. Pick a student, let the student pick a topic, give him or her some lead time to write a post, let the others view and respond. Rationale same as #1.
3. One of the bugaboos in our standardized testing is the "constructed response". I'll ask my language arts colleagues for some suitable material, post it, and let the student responses be practice for those questions on their Hawaii State Assessments. Hopefully, since the students will be able to see one another's responses, this can foster some useful learning as well as satisfying THE STANDARDS.
As things go, I was talking with a friend after writing the preceding lines, explaining what I'm doing. She had been looking at the UNICEF site, and suggested the issue of child labor, one I've delved into before. If perhaps you're not aware, more than 150 million children around the world are exploited workers-- we're talking children 14 and under here. This seems like a good starting point for a blog discussion, so it will be on this week's agenda. Hope it works well.... more later!
My experience of using blogs in a professional environment is still new. I started using blogs during ETEC602 in the 2007 fall semester. The COE recently started a wiki site and my work team uses it as tool for documenting workflow, procedure and policy. Like many other tools, blogs can be a powerful and effective tool if used and designed properly.
My job requires our team to continuously search for free tools and test their usability so we can use those tools to develop our products (online courses). One of my coworkers recently suggested that we could post our individual testing results and findings on the COE wiki under our directory. It becomes a place where we organize ideas and compare test results and findings. Whenever a new tool is discovered, the person will create a new directory or catalog for the particular tool. Each of us will do our own research and testing and then post the results and findings there. We organize information and discuss further in our weekly meeting.
The use of COE wikis helps us to see everyone’s finding in a written format and reduces misinterpretation. It also provides us a chance to review other workers’ findings as many times as we need. It resolves the problem of time conflict since we don’t always work in the same shift. The COE wikis also help us to identify who posted the ideas and information. Since the COE wikis are only for internal use, it is set as a private environment and is not open to the public. Authorization for posting is required. Overall, my fellow workers find the COE wikis very useful, practical and efficient in collaborating our research.
"My locus of control" - definitely a nebulous statement if you teach 7th graders.
I would like to think there is a place for blogs within our school community for a number of reasons. We are grouped into core teams of about seven teachers who share the same students, yet there is never enough time to communicate amongst us. Most of our days are spent in our classrooms working with children, with brief breaks for yard duty and lunch if you're lucky. We have more team meeting time this year than ever before, and yet we don't seem to have time to learn together and become a real community of practice. I wonder if a blog would help. I set up a ning for our core group at the beginning of the year for that very purpose yet none of us has made time to actively participate. The fact that we can't access the ning from school has added to the challenge of keeping it going. So I'm not sure what it would take to get fellow teachers involved in a blog. If we did, we could support each other by sharing our practices.Communicating would lead to ideas on how to collaborate and strengthen the team.
My students might be able to model this practice. There are many ways I could use a blog with the students. I especially like the comments in the TechLearning article that suggests starting with a once a week posting and having a rubric to guide the students and make sure they adhere to ethical uses of the internet. Since this is a social studies class, we could invite scholars, experts, and kupuna from our communities to participate in our blogs. This would be particularly exciting as students begin their historical research. In the second semester, students will be learning about Pacific Island Nations, and I hope we can extend our blog beyond the schoolyard gate as a communication tool. As the team (and other colleagues) begin to see the learning outcomes of the student use of blogs, they may be more willing to set aside time to participate themselves.
As of right now, utilizing a blog to facilitate communication in my professional environment is non-existent. However, there is a great need for it. Ryan basically covered everything I was going to say in his blog comment about how blogging can be used from an IT standpoint, so I don't know what there is left for me to say.
Blogs would be used for the purpose of distributing information pertaining to updates or changes that have been made to the system. Keeping an excel spreadsheet in a central location, which is what we're using now, is not the most effective method to communicate because only one person can modify the file at a time.
Another tool that my company needs to implement is a ticket system for helpdesk requests where we can manage, track, and delegate tasks. We need to establish an online portal where the end-users will be able to submit requests electronically, and view the status of the tickets in real time.
As for personal use, I have 3 blogs that I created, but not a single one has been updated for months now. I was a much avid blogger when I was in high school. I even dabbled in vlogging, but that didn't work out too well. I would like to continue blogging again, bu I just can't seem to find the time and motivation to do so. It's a great way to keep distant family and friends informed about current events in your life.
As a digital immigrant, blogging, vlogging, social networking, online collaboration, Web 2.0 tools or even emailing for that matter are fairly new to me. However, after being in Hawaii for a year now and being part of the ETEC program, I have started to learn and adopt these technological concepts and incorporate them into by life. As I use them, I am seeing the potential that they carry. I use Facebook at the moment to keep in touch with family and friends back at home, but have recently been thinking about creating a Blog for myself where I allow family members to stay connected with me by participating in the same blog. As a full time student, I have not been able as yet to use blogging in a professional capacity but if I were to incorporate it into my teaching and professional environment when I return home, I can see how it can prove to be a very useful tool as education technology is just taking off and teachers and administrators alike are seeing the learning opportunities harnessed in these technologies.
Upon my return home, I plan to work at a teacher training university. It is my hope that I can assist pre-service and in-service teachers to use and integrate technology into their teaching. At the administrative level, to facilitate the process of technology integration into the curriculum in public schools across the country and assist with establishing online educational pathways. Blogs can be used in this integration process to disseminate information and stimulate discussion for change and adoption. For instance, I could create a blog centralized around specific topics, such as technology or online education, post information, news, and updates complete with commentary for stakeholders to read and respond to, share opinions, ideas and discuss solutions towards technology integration thus creating a digital bulletin board. This would not only keep teachers abreast of changes or information but allow administrators to subscribe to and keep updated simply and efficiently.
Provided that the technological infrastructure (internet access, computers, electricity..etc..) is in place, we could use blogging so that teachers and students alike can share information with people across the globe and not be as isolated as we are at the moment. Teachers can use it in and out of the classroom as a powerful communication tools as well. Students can search and follow countless other blogs from students in other countries and learn so much. In doing so, students can learn how to communicate effectively through their writing, feedback, and interaction with each other and other. Therefore allowing users to be active creators of content on the Internet and open an avenue to everyone for sharing knowledge, experiences, and thoughts.
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