Slide 1: Blog …. A Definition
•A Blog (web log) is a personal website often used like a journal. •A typical blog contains text, images and links to other blogs •Blogs are interactive and readers can leave comments
Slide 2: Blogging With Classes
• Blogs provide a potential world wide online audience for children’s work. • Children have the opportunity to develop effective learning conversations with people around the world. • They provide the opportunity to use many of the free social software tools children are familiar with outside of school.
Slide 3: Catering for learning Styles
• Many activities associated with blogging take place away from the computer. • These can include actions such as learning photography skills, practising interview techniques, or setting homework tasks that involve parents and other family members. • Specific examples of these types of activities are located elsewhere in the menu section of the ‘Blogging With Classes’ section.
Slide 4: Current Research
• In The Paper, 'A Digitally Driven Curriculum' Buckingham and McFarlane (2001) remind us that today's children know much more than the majority of adults and that schools need to engage with, and build upon the new kinds of informal learning that are developing around new media.
• SeftonGreen (2004) states: “… in their leisure, at play and in the home with their friends, young people can find in ICTs powerful, challenging and different ways of learning. In the publication ‘Coming of Age: an introduction to the new world wide web’ (2006), Will Richardson is quoted as saying that: “One of the reasons we fear these technologies is because we as teachers don’t yet understand them or use them. But the reality is that our students already do. It’s imperative that we be able to teach our kids how to use the tools effectively and appropriately because right now they have no models to follow.” •
Slide 5: • Successful Learners – by having access to a worldwide audience who can comment on their work • Effective Contributers by leaving comments on their own classmates’ work, as well as the work of others around the globe • Confident Individuals as they learn that their work and opinions are respected by a worldwide audience • Responsible Citizens as they are trusted to contribute sensible posts and comments to their blogs
A Curriculum For Excellence
