Here our New Literacies Group video presentation from the culminating session of the PLP ConnectU program for DEECD teachers in 2011. It features students from Winters Flat PS, Castlemaine PS, Berwick PS, Kalinda PS and Yuille Park Community College. (Minor edits have been made to remove students without parental permission for public viewing.)
The students talk about:
- using blogs
- using Google Docs
- using the Ultranet
- improving their traditional literacy skills
- learning new digital literacies
I found this voicethread on the project’s NING space and thought it was worthy of including in our blog space. It is great to listen to the reflections of others and to share our own journey. I hope you enjoy them and maybe be inspired to join PLP opportunities in the future.
It’s strange to be reflecting on the eve of the PLPConnect U showcase. It’s bizarre to think that this project has been going for nearly 9 months. Stranger still that a year of school has almost passed (including a new baby boy for our family!!) and it makes me think of all the challenges and rewards of this project.
In terms of student benefits the project has been very rewarding. The new literacies group decided to focus on investigating the powerful tool of blogging. One of the great aspects to blogging is that it can be applied to any level of primary or secondary school, is engaging and it deeply embedded in the VELS curriculum.
The real benefit of the project for my Grade 4 students was the sense of ownership they had when given their own blog. Their motivation for writing increased significantly and they had a real sense of pride in seeing their work published for a global audience. I also found that due to the open nature of a blog, their parents and families were much more involced and seemed to really enjoy reading their kids blog posts and comments (see below).
Personally I found the PLP journey, exactly that a journey. There were times when I wanted to give up and I lost motivation but I am proud to say that I am here at the end. I am proud to be a member of the New Literacies group and the remaining participants and I have formed a strong bond throughout the experience.
I think the greatest lesson for me is that teaching is a journey. It is important to keep innovating and asking questions.
I’ve had my class blog up and running with my grade 1/2s since late August have seen some incredible progress. Initially, my main concern was getting all of my kids signed up as I knew they would need a lot of guidance. I used my literacy rotation times to assist my kids with setting up their accounts and found the initial set-up a little bit tricky (just in terms of the amount of steps to run through with 7 and 8 year olds) but I was able to get all of my kids on during our literacy rotation time for the week.
The next step was to introduce the concept of cyber safety and what was acceptable to be posting on the net. I found this step to be so beneficial (especially in these developing years before they are given more independence online in the coming years). We have recently reflected on what we have learnt while blogging, and it has been fantastic to hear all of my kids talking about how to be safe on the net.
I often run my blog by posting up a recount piece (that we write as a class or as a modeled piece) and conclude by posing questions for the students to answer. I have found that this is a great way to engage them in modeled writing but also demonstrates how a blog can beused appropriately. Finally, it is introducing them to blogging in a safe way as they are currently only answering questions, allowing them to explore the environment in a safe way.
The engagement, enthusiasm and work ethic (from both excitement and because their peers can view their work) I have seen from my student’s has been fantastic. Students have had their own individual areas to focus on, whether it be working on their capitals and full stops, spelling, or simply writing that little bit faster through better understanding of the keyboard, it has been great to watch all of my kids develop their writing skills through blogging.
This is an example of one of my students who was focusing on using correct punctuation throughout his writing:
Other’s in my team have since signed their students up and are going through the initial stages of getting their own class blogs up and running and seeing some great results too.
And to conclude, some final reflections from some of my kids
This year I’ve been a technology coach at Winters Flat and Castlemaine Primary Schools and, for part of each week of term 4, a classroom teacher at Winters Flat.
Many children I’ve worked with were new to blogging. Students in year 5 and 6 at both schools had class blogs and some also had individual blogs. Some students produced extensive work portfolios on Ultranet spaces while others showcased their work on their own Global2 or Edublogs sites.
One year 3/4 class at Winters Flat Primary School did not begin blogging until term 4, but once they were given the opportunity, they embraced it with great enthusiasm and achieved very pleasing results. Their introduction to blogging commenced with a discussion of our blogging rubric and a tour of other class and student blogs. As the children became more familiar with blogging their understanding of the rubric increased. The rubric continues to prove a useful tool in helping them understand what they know and what they still need to learn.
The two most striking changes evident to me in children given the opportunity publish online were their level of engagement and the broad range of new digital skills learned. They became more highly motivated writers keen to engage with a real audience and more highly motivated learners keen to develop new digital skills they could use to showcase creations on blogs and Ultranet spaces. Some learned how to produce animations with Pivot or at goanimate.com. Others designed Voki characters at Voki.com or Super Heroes at The Hero Factory. Others took photographs, created digital art, made audio recordings or made videos, while others became busily focused on one activity – often writing. Some did all of the above!
As a teacher, I found the blogging rubric (thanks Mark) and the example of our coaches and fellow PLP Peeps like Kelly Jordan, Kathleen Morris and Mel Cashen especially helpful. Online meetings with Google+ Hangouts and Elluminate were great for sharing project plans and experiences with my fellow New Literacies Group members. An opportunity in fourth term to spend some time as classroom teacher with MAC H in Winters Flat reinforced to me the power of blogging as a means of communication within the school community. Children who received a comment from a parent, sibling, friend or extended family member were uniformly invigorated – keen to write, produce and learn more. This was equally true when they received a comment from someone outside Australia – especially if that person’s name filled pages in a Google search like Susan Carter Morgan.
This project has been a powerful personal and professional experience for me – especially in the way it’s expanded my professional learning network and exposed me to new possibilities. I’ve been involved in Web 1.0 for a many years having built my first commercial website in 1993, but I’m new to Web 2.0. I didn’t create student or class blogs until 2009 and, whilst I’d had a passive Twitter account for some years, I didn’t begin tweeting until this year. I’m now a keen user of Google+ and I’m considering expanding my use of Facebook beyond the real-life friends and family I’m currently connected to. One of the main reasons for my adoption of Web 2.0 technology has been my experience in this PLP ConnectU program together with my participation in the Google Teacher Academy at the beginning of the year. Thanks to these experiences I can see in myself a reflection of what I see in the students of MAC H at Winters Flat – fired-up, learning new skills, and keen to learn more!
Here’s a short sixty second video that tells the story of a blog post by one of those students, Cohen.
Hi everyone, as the end of our project timeline is fast approaching we have put together a video snapshot of what our project is about and our students thoughts, comments and misconeceptions.
Thanks to Ray and Matt for getting their students thoughts.
As our project is beginning to take shape I thought it timely to share a great resource created by a fellow PLP Peep. Kathleen Morris is an amazing teacher, working wonders with her team at Leopold Primary School near Geelong, Vic.
Kathleen has been a ‘go to’ place for me to find information, ideas and resources to support blogging for my junior students. Recently I have been asked to facilitate a PD session for teachers in our region and Kathleen has kindly ‘okayed’ the use of her tips and tricks for student blogging.
As our team is looking toward the use of blogging as our literacy focus I thought it could be worthwhile exploring the plethora of resources available on Kathleen’s blog.
Kathleen and Kelly share their tips for student blogging
In preparation for our meet up I’ve been exploring ‘new literacies’ in junior classrooms to try and get my head around the kinds of things I’d like to explore in my teaching and learning context. I came across a blog by Karen Wohlwend titled ‘Teaching new literacies in PK-2 classrooms’. It was interesting to read some of Karen’s thoughts about facilitating literacy learning in junior classrooms. I wonder if these kinds of questions will help us to frame our project. Are we providing our students with the opportuntity to develop the skills and knowledge required to be literate in the online world?
Karen has another blog – ‘Early Adaptors playing and pretending technologies’ . I found this blog raised some great questions as well and found that I was thinking about my 18month old nephew who confidently unlocks his mum’s iPhone and can make it play audio tracks with ease. Are we prepared for when these kids begin formal education?
