Amy's Blog

I worked with David and Jay to investigate Edublogs as a Web 2.0 tool that could be used with students. The link to our CEGSA webpage can be found here. We used various sources including Sue Waters from Edublogs to investigate the benefits of blogging with students and how it can be used successfully to enhance teaching and learning. I think this tool could be a valuable tool to use in my teaching practice as it allows students to collaborate and share their ideas not only with their teacher and classmates but with people in the wider community and all over the world.

There are a number of ways in which Edublogs can be used in the classroom. I think I would try to develop it as an online journal or e-portfolio and include not just text but other types of media as well including images, video and sound. There are also a number of widgets that can be added to your blog to enhance their interactivity. Things like maps that show where in the world people are from that have visited your blog make it interactive and exciting for students. I also think it is important to be aware of the challenges that are involved with blogging for students. Comment moderation is an important tool for teachers as it allows them to approve all comments that are posted on their students blogs before they are actually posted on the blog. This helps with issues with cyber safety and bullying. There is a comprehensive list of the challenges and barriers of using blogging on our CEGSA webpage. However, I truly believe, that once you know how to use the tool, the possibilities are endless!

I find working collaboratively is an effective way to work to construct knowledge as part of an inquiry process. It allows you to share and bounce ideas off of each other and you are able to bring in the different group member’s expertise. It is also useful to be able to share the workload and work together to complete the process. I enjoyed working in a group to investigate Edublogs and create our webpage.

I think our workshop went well. We were able to show our webpage and the videos Sue Waters helped us to create. I think we were able to give people an understanding of what Edublogs can do and allowed them to explore and use the tool themselves. I believe that students succeeded in completing out learning outcomes as they wrote a blog about if they think Edublogs is a useful tool and whether they would use it themselves.

I have enjoyed the other workshop presentations so far. I think it is useful to know about the different Web 2.0 tools that are available to us as teachers. I particularly enjoyed the workshop on SmartBoards as these are something that I am most likely going to using in the future. I also think Pixton could be a useful tool to use in creating comics.

I commented on Sara’s blog post about their workshop on Promethean ActivBoards. See it here.