Reflection/Review of 3 Blogs Related to 21st Century Teaching and Learning

NOTE: As this is a school assignment as well as a post I have written this post in more of a formal essay format in order to keep my thoughts clear and concise.

Introduction: 

21^st Century teachers are extremely fortunate to have access to amazing educational tools through modern technology.

Internet access has completely changed the world. Human beings have access to more information than every before. One of the greatest resources we have as educators is each other. Education blogs, created by teachers, for teachers allow us to creatively connect with one another and share relevent information. Teachers may blog to share their thoughts, ideas and opinions as well as lessons, tools, information and resources.

This week I spent some time searching and reading education blogs and found that there were two distinct types of blogs that classroom teachers were using. There are Bloggers who use their blogs as professional learning tools, (as I am doing right now) and there are classroom blogs used as blended learning tools. Professional learning blogs are modes of communicating opinions, facts or resources with other teachers; classroom blogs seem to be used more to communicate with students, parents and other members of public interest.

I have chosen three Education Blogs to review as an assignment for my AQ course #9f61brockTech. Of the three blogs, one is a professional learning blog, one is a classroom blog, and the last one seems to bridge the gap between both.

Classroom blogging as a means of communication with students, parents and the school community

Review of Mr. Salsich’sClass: Fifth Grade Explorations in Learning (<-click to visit)

Summery/what I liked:
One of the critical questions I have had about blogging is how to incorporate it in a primary/junior classroom and what would that look like? This blog helps answer that question.

Mr. Salich is a fifth grade teacher from Conneticut USA. This blog belongs to Mr. Salich and his fifth grade class of “24 smart and creative students”.

My first impression is… I love this blog! I think creating a classroom blog is a fantastic method to introduce fifth grade students to technology and communicating on the computer. There were so many cool things incorporated in this blog.

In the sidebar under the Global Projects page I explored the links to find out that

Mr. Salsich’s class is participating in World Educational Projects with teachers all around the world. For example when I click “London” on the interactive map,  a word bubble pops up to say “We did a "Mystery Skype" call with Mrs. Monaghan's students in Middleham. It was our first Skype call outside of the United States!” how exciting is it that these students are getting to connect with students in different countries?

The first post as you enter the blog is from Decemebr 4^th and it’s titled “Marshmallow Poppers”. It walks you through the trials and errors of the class’ attempt to do this science experiment. The lesson itself shows evidence of backwards design and effective questioning; I appreciated that he highlighted the student’s questions and problem solving strategies. What made the post exceptional was that he incorporated pictures and even a video of the children, filmed and narrated by the children which started off with one child saying “What attitudes for success did you use while doing this project?” to which another students responds, “I think the attitude I used the most was perserverence…” WOW!

My favourite thing about this blog is that student learning and participation is the primary focus. I feel like through reading this blog I get a good sense of the class interests, learning goals and personality. It is clear that Mr. Salisich has a passion for teaching, which has certainly sparked a passion in his students.

Overall look:

The layout is very user-friendly. When you visit the page you are greeted with a banner of all of the students posing in silly moustaches; this instantly made me laugh. I could tell that this was going to be a blog that was not only educational but also fun to explore. Mr. Salsich shares videos of the students’ pictures and other forms of media that make this blog look fantastic. The layout of the blog is great, there are links provided to other blogs that the students follow as well as widgets, archives, tags etc. all of the elements I would like to see in any classroom blog.

Red flags/safety:

I could go on for a very long time describing how I think this teacher is doing a fantastic job in protecting his students, communicating with parents and establishing a very safe environment for his students in their online presence. The most important thing about this blog is that there is a guidelines page that seems to explain exactly how this blog is being monitored and it is explicit about the safety of the children. “The following guidelines have been established to ensure the safety of our students when blogging. The guidelines are also reminders of how to use the blog to improve writing and keyboarding skills.” I have not seen any “Red Flags”, to speak of.

Final thoughts:

Great job Mr. Salisich’s grade five class. I really enjoyed exploring this blog and would love to have a blog just like it for me own class one day. I commend this teacher for being able to demonstrate exactly how a classroom blog can be an excellent educational tool and means of communication for students, parents, staff and the worldwide educational community.

Blogging as a professional learning tool and as a means of communicating with the school community:

Review of Tim Lauer's blog (<-click to visit)

Summery/what I liked:

Tim Lauer, Principal of Meriwater Lewis Elementary School in Portland, OR, writes this blog not only as a professional learning tool, but it seems to also function as a tool for communicating with parents and students as well. What I enjoy about this blog is that I feel like it is a light, easy, user-friendly blog, which I could visit weekly and not feel overwhelmed trying to catch up on posts. The posts are relatively short, well written and to the point. The author exhibits his personality, engages in dialogue and shares his opinions without having posts become too long or convoluted. I found some of the blogs I had visited simply contained too much information and as much as I really enjoy reading posts about opinions (I know that my own blog right now is already overloaded with long opinion based posts), what I enjoy about this blog, and what I aspire to have on my own blog is that there is a lot of information to be gained, mixed in with personality and opinion.

I appreciated the blog posts that were anecdotal; I find they helped me to feel connected to the blogger. For instance the latest blog post from March 25^th titled, “The Town Theatre” is a picture of an abandoned cinema in Tim’s home town, which he remembers going to as a child. The picture is creative and I love that it helps the reader feel nostalgia with the author.

Overall look:

In terms of how this blog is laid out I think it is my favourite of the three blogs I have reviewed. The tabs at the top, use of widgets and layout make it very easy to navigate. The colour scheme is bright and not too busy, which is a good strategy as a bright, busy background would likely take away from all of the pictures and media which are embedded into the blog, (a strategy I might incorporate into my own blog as I introduce more media). The teacher integrated pictures and various forms of audio and digital media, which gives the reader lots of diversity in what they are viewing. He has embedded the schools “Audio Postcard” as well as their Digital magazine, which are both fantastic and great ideas for any school to do.

Red flags/safety:

This blog does a very good job of making posts personal while keeping them professional. A parent, fellow teacher or student would be able to read this blog and feel as if no boundaries were crossed and there has been no over-sharing of unnecessary personal information.
My only critique would be that there was a post made on March 22^nd which is about the authors experiences at a teaching related conference and although the post is excellent, there is one picture where the teachers are gathered and sharing a pint of beer. Though that is completely appropriate for adults to be doing, if this was a blog meant to be shared with students and parents it would be a better choice to crop the beverages out. Also, there are other teachers in the picture that may not approve of having their photo posted with alcoholic beverages. I recall reading about a young teacher, Ashley Payne, who was let go for displaying a Facebook profile picture in which she was enjoying a beer during a trip to Europe. One may never be too careful.
This is a clip from CNN detailing the information regarding this story:

Another comment to make about this blog is that there are many pictures of the students from the author’s school, it would be imperative that the author has permission from the students parents to post pictures of their children before they were published.

Final thoughts:

Overall I think that the students and parents are very lucky to have such a tech savvy principal at their school. There is much to be learned from reading this blog and I think it has been excellently executed. I plan to continue to follow Tim and I feel like I have learned a lot from viewing his blog.

Using blogs as professional learning tools

Review of Beth’s Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom  (<-click to visit)

Summary/what I liked:

This blog has been done by Beth a former Classroom teacher who has become a K-12 Technology Integration Specialist in Massachusetts. The first thing to note about her blog is that its primary interest is on sharing her opinion about topics in Education Technology. I found that there were some blogs that were used to review technology, some that were used mainly to share resources, Beth’s blog was primary focused on opinion based pieces with some supporting evidence and a lot of anecdotes about strategies and methods she practices with her students. It is teacher to teacher directed and she seems to be speaking to her fellow educators rather than the general public. Although her blog speaks a lot about using technology and her thoughts on different advancements she also has motivation posts, which reveal that she also seeks to inspire her fellow educators. In a post titled, “Be Different, You Are Different” she encourages her peers to celebrate the diversities of their students;

 “I am tired of talking about standards, assessments, averages and classifying students. I don’t want to read about combating bulling and tolerating differences.  I want to celebrate the individual and all their “quirkiness”.  It is the people who did not fit the mold, who are not average or, more importantly, those who did not see themselves as one of the crowd who have made the biggest impact in art, science, business and literature.”

Beth’s Posts seem to have a train-of-thought pattern, she writes, what she is thinking as she thinks it, (I often do this too). She tends to use flowery language, often speaking from the heart

Overall look:

The look of the blog at first glance is quite plain. There are no pictures of Beth to greet you. In fact I scoured the blog and was not met with any faces at all. She does incorporate links into some of her posts but not many pictures at all and I’m not sure of the relevance of any of the interchanging pictures that are on the homepage of her blog because there are no captions for them. The font is nice and professional. The overall layout is fairly easy to navigate. It is clear from looking at older posts that she has quite a few people following her. Her list of blogging accomplishments and awards also assure me that her blog is widely followed. Her latest post on March 31^st is titled t”ime for an update”. She is a fantastic writer and I enjoyed reading her posts but it would be nice to have more to explore visually as well.

Red flags/safety:

I think that Beth has done a great job in keeping her blog professional. I have not found anything that compromises the safety of her or her students. I thought it was a good idea that on her “About Me” page she includes a Disclosure Statement “The opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of my employers or the organizations to which I belong”.

Final thoughts:

I enjoyed Beth’s optimism and some of her opinion based posts, although, I don’t think this is a site I would visit daily or weekly. It is worth having a look at and I will check back to see how Beth updates her account.I wonder if she added more media if it would be more engaging? Overall it is a pretty good blog.