Huann, John, and Yuen (2005) maintains that blogging in the educational arena can be used to connect classmates with each other, classes with other classes, student with their teachers, teachers with experts, teachers with other teachers, and all combinations of all involved with this collaborative process. This rings very true with me actually right now, since i am very rusty with making proper citations. I checked out several of my classmates' blogs before beginning this one specifically to see how they presented and cited their information. Thanks, friends!!
One use for blogs that directly relates to the subject I teach, animation, is showcasing works. This is something that I am currently trying to make happen in my school district. However, "video and music sharing raises some quite complex issues for teachers-particularly those related to unregulated and copyrighted content" (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 105). In my case, the district has one operating system image and policy for all computers in the district. This policy does not allow students or teachers to be able to view most web formats for video to even be seen in a browser window, effectively negating the whole idea or a showcasing tool. This distresses me since I am trying to actually put into practice what I am learning here at Full Sail. So far, my requests for change have been ignored.
The main reason this is important is that blogging of this sort gives the students incentives, with the speedy feedback, the option to use multiple forms of media, be it text, images, and video, and the ability to link posts with each other. When the students know that they will have an audience besides just the teacher, they often produce higher quality work (Holzberg, 2003). To me, this is common sense. So, thus far, I grade while showcasing student work on the projector. However, this only shares work within each class, and the only feedback comes from my own comments and audible student reactions to the work. I've been doing this ever since I began teaching the subject.
It will take more convincing and following up on my part to really fully utilize all the benefits of blogging. However, until myself and the students are allowed to upload and view each other's videos, I can utilize text blogs in the classroom to post assignments and get student feedback as far as what they want and need to be successful in my classroom while having fun, which is really what my class is for.
References:
Holzberg, C. (2003, Aug. 1). Education Web Logs. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://www.techlearning.com: http://www.techlearning.com/article/1234
Huann, T. Y., John, G. E., & Pau Yuen, J. M. (2005, Sep. 26). Weblogs in Education. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2010, from http://edublog.net: http://www.edublog.net/files/papers/weblogs%20in%20education.pdf
Merchant, G., & Davies, J. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools: Learning and Social Participation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
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Same here as far as using blogs in classroom. We are soooo limited as to what we can fully utilize in my school district. We are bombarded with the term "21st Century" but then they block the 21st Century tools we need. Crazy!!!!!
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