Using blogs for educational collaboration

While the introduction of ICTs in the classroom and the educational process may seem to some teachers as an additional demand on an already demanding workload, there are fun and innovative ways for inclined teachers to engage their students with the technology. Now, what do I mean by "inclined towards the technology"?

If you've come to this blog as a result of the recent issue of "Teacher," where the link was published in an article about the Equity and Technology Workshop, then you are inclined towards the technology. You have either heard about "blogging" before, and have come here to see what the fuss is about, or you are a blogger yourself, and wanted to scope out what we're up to.

So the hard part is over :)

People all over the world, in many different industries are using the Internet as a site of learning and collaboration. Blogs are one of the ways they are doing this.

At the time the Equity and Technology survey was administered (2004-2006), 22% of all Nova Scotia students indicated that they had their own blog. Given that the amount of new blogs coming online increases everyday (at last count, there were about 83.5 million blogs), and the increase in popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, that percentage is likely higher today.

Though we didn't ask teachers about their use of blogs, I imagine there are a fair number of you out there who also engage in this new hobby.

The educational use of blogs is an emergent practice, but it is one that has warranted the creation of edublogs, a free blog server created by teachers, for teachers. Many teachers have implemented the use of blogs as a "best practice" for teaching, and here are some links if your interested:

http://www.ecolenet.nl/best/edublogs.htm (Best Practices with edublogs)
http://miketemple123.edublogs.org/ (Edublogs Tutuorial Blog)
http://tama.edublogs.org/ (eLearning Resources)
http://educational.blogs.com/ (Edublog portal)

The best thing about teachers collaborating through blogs is that most of the writing is informal, and entertaining, mixing real-life classroom scenarios with best practices... and let's face it, the best best practices are going to be those that work in a practical sense, not just a theoretical one.

The workshop is now over, and we would like this blog to continue as an online resource for teachers to take advantage of. Please post links in the comments section of this blog for the educational blogs that you use, and perhaps even your own educational blogs.

We will be updating the sidebar links as they come in.

Breakout group - Culture and Race

The issues of culture and race are multifaceted, they often overlap with other issues of rural/urban and socio-economic students.

• The Internet is predominantly "white" and ethnocentric
• In general, most websites follow the same models, what would an afrocentric website look like?
• There have been many ICT resources poured into "at risk" schools, however, not necessarily the training and staff to effectively implement the technology... particularly when there are underlying cultural/racial issues that need to be addressed
• It is important to remember that there are cultural issues.... "sub-cultural" or "counter-cultural" issues that go beyond racial issues

Breakout group - Gender

• Issues of transgendered difficult to approach because many online resources are negative or too sexual in content
• Need to expose females to real-world role models working with IT
• Initiatives like electronic yearbook production, film and video, mulitmedia may draw more female into certain aspects of IT
• Possible multi-media/computer courses for girls only, which build on female strengths and interests around design and communication
• Since boys are more integrated with technology overall... how can we use technology to assist in their learning process.

Equity?

Equity is a big broad concept. What does it mean?

There are two ways to think about equity; the traditional structural issues surrounding equitable access. Does everyone have equal access to information and communication technology? If not, what are barriers to access? What role does the education system play in facilitating access?

The other way that we think about equity is beyond those traditional structural issues of access and considers the way students use technology.