Touring the Blogosphere

EduBlog Insights

Anne Davis is a blogger from Georgia State University and is an elementary educator. She is an advocate for blogging and pioneered the use of blogs with young writers. Her blog gave me more insight to what it means to blog and opened my eyes even more to it. Her blog, “Bypass Expensive Resources: Go Directly to Free” really stood out to me. It discusses how the landscape of online journals has changed. It talks about how everyone now can be a published writer. The term “published writer” really got my attention. Think about how difficult it is to be a published writer and to get your words out there? With blogging, everyone can have a voice and it’s free! She also talks about how blogging is a wonderful outlet for students. Many feel that they don’t have a voice or are afraid to use it. Blogging can serve as a haven to let them explore their feelings and ideas.

The article, “Am I Making Sense Here?” reveals that undergraduate students “can extend learning and facilitate transfer of learned concepts.” Student in a nutrition class used blogging for over seven weeks to make meaning of nutrition science concepts. Students were asked to post 21 times (3x per week) and comment on 35 posts by others (5x per week). Most posted and commented more often than requested. Reading that the students were engaged and did more than was expected shows that they did more that just an assignment, they became educators and advocates for themselves and each other.

The FordLog

Peter Ford is a teacher and educational consultant from the UK. He specializes in the use of Internet technologies to enhance teaching and learning. As I began to read his blog, I noticed that it began it in a slightly negative yet spunky demeanor with statements such as “…the mundane drudgery of spelling tests and multiplication tables or my uncreative SATs revision techniques” and “Parents were offered limited and occasional insight into the exciting and sometimes mundane world of Year Six through homework tasks and diaries”. Enthralled as to where this was going, I continued to read. Peter Ford decided to begin blogging. He realized that a blog could open the window into class life wider for parents and extend his class rules beyond the school day and beyond the classroom walls. He hoped it would be successful and knew the combination of class time and blog time would be good for learning. His first class blog aimed to be dynamic, collaborative, informative and two-way, and he hoped it wouldn’t be a short-lived endeavor. I liked that he wanted parents to be a key target audience for the class blog and I enjoyed reading the progress he made in enhancing his students virtual learning environment.

The Thinking Stick

Jeff Utecht is a technology specialist living and working at an international school in Shanghai, China. I searched through his blog posts, and the one that stood out to me was “Your schools profile: Are you keeping up?” As I read, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He stated, “In a socially connected world where communities trump content, schools need to continue to monitor and adjust where their community is moving to, what tools are they adopting, and what content they are creating, talking about, and using to connect to each other.” He then went on to say that one used to only have to worry about their school website. Then it was the wikipedia entry. Then came videos that kids were uploading to YouTube and Myspace. Next came Facebook. Shortly after that Twitter, and now location services (Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla and Google Latitude ). Then he stated, “Your school does have a presence on all these sites right?” My mind said yes, but I have never heard of Foursquare and the other sites. He talked about being the mayor of his schools foursquare website and then battled it out for the mayorship for a few months with an 11th grader. Then he leaves for winter break to come back and find that Foursquare had taken off at his school. From there he decided to make his schools site official, since there were other venues about his school. He followed the steps on Foursquare to claim the venue, which he states, is a pretty easy process. From there he could add information such as the correct address, link to website, link to twitter account, and even offer specials to students.
He ran a special that if students checked in 5 days in a row he would buy their lunch. He gave away two lunches in January. From there he started thinking about other specials you could run for parents, students and the community. Such as check-ins during sporting event give-aways, attendance check-ins, daily give-aways etc. After reading this, I had no idea what he was referring to, so I decided to investigate. I went on the Foursquare website and signed up for an account. Instantly 3 of my friends popped up informing me of where they were and what they were doing. Crazy!! You can find your friends through facebook and other social networking sites to add to foursquare. There are links for history, badges, stats, friends and me. I still am not clear about the site, but his blog about it definitely sparked my interest!