Introduction

It is always in season for old men to learn.

Aeschylus

This blog-essay is the result of my personal experimentation with a class or teacher blog. It is a wonderful tool; one that I continue to develop more uses for as I teach. For example, I was sick the other day – one of those knocks you out without notice illnesses. Instead of worrying what my class was going to do without me (they were too happy I was gone), I simply updated the blog (fuzzy and hurting), had the substitute tell students to open the blog (all my students have computers in class), and off they went to write haiku and sonnets. Other postings on the blog provided links to sites on haiku and sonnets in case they had questions. When a student is out, I simply refer them to the blog and make them responsible for making up the work. I use the blog in class when they complain that something was not covered for a quiz.

The blog is also a conscience balm as it allows me to restate information covered weeks before in class that will appear on an upcoming test. It allows me to promote success for my students. My newest program will have my best students select a text and blog about their reading – a blog literary journal. They will be responsible for finding links and visuals for my use and enjoyment. This will allow me to work closely with other students who are struggling with writing – and not impede the learning of the other students. This experiment is only weeks old and already several colleagues have started their own blogs, and have given me many new ideas. Since we are technology driven magnet school, computers are available to every student. However, even if only the teacher had a computer and a projector, the blog can be a useful tool.

If you’ve wandered to this site, please comment and pass any ideas that you’d think would be helpful to me and anyone else who reads this blog-essay. I will periodically update the blog as I gather more information or learn more from personal experience.

Teacher Blogs

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. James Anthony Froude

Teaching high school is hard, not so much the preparation but the performance. The teacher must present to an audience, sometime reluctant, sometime hostile, five days a week, four to seven times a day. These presentations would be analogous in the corporate world to hostile board meetings or sales calls to reluctant buyers. The audience of students is tired, diverse in skill and interest, surly at times, and understands that if they misbehave the teacher’s choices are limited to taking the time to correct the offense in the middle of the lesson, ignore the slight and go on, or remove the offending party. After removing the student, the teacher must fill out paperwork, stay after school to monitor detention, justify their actions to administration and parents, and take time from their planning or personal time to again teach the material the student missed because the student chose not to cooperate. However, and this is why teachers teach, in every class there are wonderful minds to be shaped, eager to learn, sponges waiting to absorb learning so they can grow to their full potential. The teacher must also reach these students while controlling the small number of reluctant learners.

To manage both ends of the learning spectrum, creative tools that allow a teacher to reach a broad audience in an informative, entertaining manner are critically important and continually need to be developed. It is also helpful if the tool is time and location flexible. Technology is an important, evolving asset that can assist the teacher and the student by expanding time, access, and information for each group. A teaching blog is technology that is easy, effective, and potentially fun for both teachers and students. The blog expands class time by providing a resource for students to use in or outside of class. It reinforces learning, allows students to examine material covered in the class period, to access additional information related to the lesson but not covered in class, and provides a forum to connect with the teacher and other students. It is effective because it accommodates different learning styles and differentiation. A visual learner will be aided by viewing the material rather than hearing it, and a kinesthetic learner can interact with the material by selecting links. Finally, a blog can be fun because of the expansive and creative nature of the medium.

Blog to communicate

A blog, short for web log, is defined as “ a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.” [1] Beyond this simple definition, blogs can be many things, reflecting the purpose and personality of its creator. Blogs can be created to reflect the many needs of teachers. One basic need is the ability to communicate to other professionals, and teachers have used blogs to express displeasure, create connections to outside teacher groups, and to share lesson plans. A teacher must be aware that a blog is essentially a public document and must use common sense in order to avoid trouble. Another potential advantage of a blog is the ability to market oneself to other schools. The blog, still relatively unusual in education and business (a search of Technorati under teacher and education showed a total of 2,972 blogs on 12-16-06), can demonstrate creativity, a teacher’s desire to continue their own learning, and allows the hiring school to see specific lesson plans and examples of student learning. One issue that the teacher needs to be careful of is protecting student privacy. The solutions could range from requiring the use of pseudonyms by students (something from personal experience most students enjoyed) or obtaining parent permission.

1. SearchVB.com. Definitions. 2000-2006, TechTarget

Organization and convenience

A difficulty for many teachers is organization. Keeping track of material covered, when it was covered, homework given, and information stressed in a lesson or added as a result of class discussion can be daunting. Other difficult issues are the time constraint of a class period and the need to move at a pace comfortable for the majority of the class, which results in some material not being covered adequately or excluded completely. There is also the reality of individual students who are not able to keep up with the pace of a specific lesson, or students who are simply having a bad day as a result of sickness, family or social issues. A teacher blog allows an easy, colorful, flexible site for documenting class activity. With minimal effort, a teacher can discuss critical material covered in a daily lesson plan. This can include assorted items - pages of the text covered that day, terms or vocabulary explained during class, links to web documents used in class, or listing assessment dates and expectations for student learning. More important than simply documenting material, the blog allows a teacher to highlight critical material as reinforcement to those on task, or, more important, as a resource for students who struggled with the material or were not attentive or in attendance when the material was covered. This is particularly convenient when a student is out ill, suspended, or out of class for the myriad of reasons that the school day throws at a teacher. It is also a tool in schools where computers are a part of the classroom when the teacher is out of the class. Students can log onto the site, access the lesson plan, link to appropriate sites, and report by responding in the comment section with questions or evidence of learning. The blog becomes a class history, accessible from numerous locations at any time of the day or night, and can be managed at the pace useful to the person interacting with it.

Interaction

A key element of a teacher blog is that the blog is interactive. The student and teacher can communicate with each other, publicly or privately depending upon moderation, about class material. This is especially important for shy students, those who are afraid to admit in class that they do not understand lesson material, or those who do not want to be identified as being academically interested because of social pressure . The article states, "The most important lesson to be learnt from this is about classroom management and school discipline and the expectation that children will work outside school." A blog can be an asset for the student more interested in working outside the social space of school. A blog is also interactive; the student has the opportunity to select links to other sites and make a determination if the sites are relevant to their immediate need. They can focus the direction of their learning by following the link’s thread or return to the blog. This additional forum for communications is an asset in differentiating lessons by expanding communication and information access. Differentiation, “changing the pace, level, or kind of instruction…in response to individual learner’s needs, styles, or interests,”[1] is created since the blog serves as an easily accessible learning tool for all levels. No one tool adequately addresses the challenge of differentiating the class room, but a blog can enhance learning through flexibility, providing an additional learning format to either assist or challenge students, and documenting that curriculum standards and requirements are met. Since blogs are creatures of technology and students tend to be technology oriented, a blog, appropriately structure, provides an attractive, alternate learning environment for the student. This is an environment where students control the time of access, manage the depth and degree of learning, and add an interactive component to the learning environment.
[1] Hecox Ed D., Diane, Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing, 2002 p. 5

Useful design

An ongoing issue in the education system is the usefulness of what is being taught. There is a constant push to offer students real life skills. In my English class, students no longer simply write essays. They demonstrate knowledge and learning in PowerPoint presentations and engage in reciprocal teaching – students teaching each other. They not only learn about the text or literary idea we are studying, but learn how to present to a group and create effective visual presentations. Students have also created web sites to promote the idea of a text. All this is done to engage the text, assess learning, and engage in real life skill building. An extension of this real life skill building is interacting with a blog, linking to multiple information sources, learning at a pace with which they are comfortable, and commenting on the blog. These are skills that are transferable to business and personal needs.

Part of this skill building is modeling a visually attractive site that will engage the student. A Canadian research project states that:

Web users form first impressions of web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second)... In the blink of an eye, web surfers make nearly instantaneous judgments of a web site's "visual appeal." Through the "halo effect" first impressions can color subsequent judgments of perceived credibility, usability, and ultimately influence our purchasing decisions. Creating a fast-loading, visually appealing site can help websites succeed.

Visual appeal is more important to teenagers than to adults. They like “relatively modest, clean design.” Since they are impatient, speed is important, more important than graphics that might slow down a site. Since teenagers don’t like to read, a clean, spare style is important, even in a teacher blog. Providing a visually appealing, concise, easy to use blog will promote student use. It will also serve as a model for development of their own web based information sites. However, it is important to note that students are, to a certain extent, a captive audience. They can be driven to the site by fear of failure or incentives such as bonus questions and assessment information.

Conclusion

A teacher blog is an additional arrow in a teacher’s quiver. It is an easy, creative tool that helps organize information taught daily. It is helpful for the slow learner and the high flyer. The slow learner can use it is a resource to review class lessons and link to information that might prove more useful. The high flyer can access additional information via links and blog copy. It is a convenient resource when a student or teacher is out of school. A student can see exactly what was covered and can then meet with the teacher for more details. The teacher can create a lesson for the day they are out and allow students to respond during class time via the comment section of the blog. With appropriate visual structure, the blog can be a positive learning environment that expands real life skills while teaching a needed topic. A blog is also a fun and creative way to expand one's teaching and to creatively express oneself.