Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, June 3, 2010
More Thoughts on Autonomy in the Classroom
For some great discussion and alternative points of view about autonomy in the classroom, check out this post by Adam Burk on the blog Cooperative Catalyst: Changing Education as We Speak. Thanks, Adam, for bringing this to my attention.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Next Generation of Educational Leadership Named One of 50 Best
The Next Generation of Educational Leadership has been named one of the 50 Best Blogs for Education Leaders by Online Universities. There are many fantastic blogs listed on the 50 Best list so I recommend you check out the list today.
Thanks, Online Universities, for including this blog on your list.
Thanks, Online Universities, for including this blog on your list.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Granting Students the Freedom of Expression: Worth the Risk
A few years ago, a former school of mine took a group of bright kids and created a debate team. Within a matter of only a few years, the debaters earned spots in the national tournament year after year. We had created a team of talented and relentless debaters. We had also created a monster. We soon discovered that teaching kids to think critically and to express themselves articulately came with a price. Our debaters took on all comers, including our teachers. When the teachers complained about how the debaters were carrying on in class discussions, we faced a dilemma. After all, the debaters were doing exactly what they had been trained to do (and they were doing it well). We gave the students a voice then, when the voice got louder than we anticipated, we wanted them to be quiet. Something about that didn’t seem quite right.
Fast forward to 2008…
Today we’re encouraging kids to write and express themselves with class blogs. As we encourage kids to express themselves, we need to consider a few important points. First, we may create blogging monsters who write well but who occasionally write something we don’t want to read. Can we handle this? If not, perhaps we shouldn’t run the risk of giving kids a voice, that is, a digital voice. I believe, however, the risk is well worth the potential reward.
Second, if and when we do encounter students expressing themselves in a way that makes us uncomfortable, we have limited means to control what they say or have said. For some, this news may be very unsettling. For others, though, this may be good news.
Remember, the Supreme Court said in Tinker that students do not "shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." This means that public schools cannot censor what students say on blogs unless the blog entries/comments fall into the category of “material disruption.” Independent schools have a little more power to censor what students say, especially with conduct clauses in contracts and handbooks, acceptable use policies, etc.
Things change a little if the blog in question is a school-hosted or school-sponsored blog. If this is the case, the school, either public or independent, has more authority to censor based on the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood ruling, which initially dealt with a school newspaper. In the case of a school publication, or in our case a school-hosted or school-sponsored blog, a school can censor because what is said in the blog could be perceived by the public as officially supported or endorsed by the school. However, if the blog is one where students rather than the administration control content, the blog may be viewed as a public forum thereby making it more difficult for a school to control what students say.
I would encourage you not to be scared away from class or school blogs by what some students might say or do if given a forum in which to express themselves. Rather, embrace the challenge of teaching students how to make worthwhile and valuable contributions to class discussions, to carry on meaningful conversations in the community at large, and to disagree without being disagreeable.
For more information on student bloggers and their rights, see EFF.
Fast forward to 2008…
Today we’re encouraging kids to write and express themselves with class blogs. As we encourage kids to express themselves, we need to consider a few important points. First, we may create blogging monsters who write well but who occasionally write something we don’t want to read. Can we handle this? If not, perhaps we shouldn’t run the risk of giving kids a voice, that is, a digital voice. I believe, however, the risk is well worth the potential reward.
Second, if and when we do encounter students expressing themselves in a way that makes us uncomfortable, we have limited means to control what they say or have said. For some, this news may be very unsettling. For others, though, this may be good news.
Remember, the Supreme Court said in Tinker that students do not "shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." This means that public schools cannot censor what students say on blogs unless the blog entries/comments fall into the category of “material disruption.” Independent schools have a little more power to censor what students say, especially with conduct clauses in contracts and handbooks, acceptable use policies, etc.
Things change a little if the blog in question is a school-hosted or school-sponsored blog. If this is the case, the school, either public or independent, has more authority to censor based on the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood ruling, which initially dealt with a school newspaper. In the case of a school publication, or in our case a school-hosted or school-sponsored blog, a school can censor because what is said in the blog could be perceived by the public as officially supported or endorsed by the school. However, if the blog is one where students rather than the administration control content, the blog may be viewed as a public forum thereby making it more difficult for a school to control what students say.
I would encourage you not to be scared away from class or school blogs by what some students might say or do if given a forum in which to express themselves. Rather, embrace the challenge of teaching students how to make worthwhile and valuable contributions to class discussions, to carry on meaningful conversations in the community at large, and to disagree without being disagreeable.
For more information on student bloggers and their rights, see EFF.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A Blogger on Blogs Part II
Part II of II
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts. What follows is the second part of the interview.
NB: What has been the general reaction of your students to the blog?
PS: Visitors to this blog can read student comments for themselves in the posts about feedback, but overall I think students liked the blog. Although sometimes they saw it only in terms of homework, if they gave it enough time students were able to learn great deal about history. I found that most of my students really didn’t know what to expect at the beginning of the year, and I suppose remained that way throughout the year since I tried to vary the topics and types of posts I created. It was a bigger hit with juniors and seniors overall, I’d say, but a few of my sophomores thoroughly enjoyed posting their thoughts. My students really enjoyed the clustrmap site traffic monitor I use—it features a world map with red dots indicating from where in the world people visit the blog. It really drove home, visually, the globalized, interconnected world in which we live.
NB: Has the blog been a success? How do you measure the success of your class blog?
PS: I would certainly like to think the blog has been a success—and again the reflexive nature of the kind of communication blogs provide offers a window into this question so I’d direct readers to my student comments to decide for themselves. In terms of what criteria indicate success, on a blog I would examine the content of the posts, the range of topics covered, as well as the kinds of conversations that took place.
NB: What advice or recommendations would you give to teachers or administrators considering blogging for educational purposes?
PS: In no particular order, here they are: first, be willing to take the risks that using and incorporating technology requires. Don’t assume students know the ins and outs of EVERY bit of technology, and at the very least try to incorporate one new technological element each year. Of course you are not going to know anything and everything the first time you use it, but at least give it a TRY.
Second, see what else is out there, listen and learn from what others are doing, and then figure out how to apply it to your own setting and your own classroom. What works in Texas, for example, won’t always work in South Dakota, so you’ll have to get those creative juices flowing to find your niche.
Third, if you decide to have a class blog, post regularly, communicate that the blog is not an exercise in social networking but a serious academic enterprise, set some ground rules in terms of appropriate comments on the blog (which I think I did well), and be as clear as you can in terms of letting students know how they will be assessed for spending their time on these e-assignments (at which I could’ve done a better job).
Fourth, be willing to take risks in another way and ask for student feedback—but have them post their thoughts. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised at their frank observations, but in my experience the feedback typically involved constructive criticism.
Fifth, have fun and be flexible, allowing blogposts and e-conversations to shape and be shaped by what goes on in the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom.
Sixth, feel free to tailor posts on interests of your own choosing—students like to “see” you communicate on their turf as it were, and of course if you are passionate about a particular subject that can have drawing power as well.
Seventh, I consider every day that I use the class blog (or new technology) as something of an experiment, a new exercise in learning—and so keep in mind the reflexive nature of such technology.
Eighth, try to think of catchy, thoughtful, and perhaps humorous titles for you blogposts, as this helps to draw students in. (I regularly use puns in class, and so tried to have puns in the titles of my posts.)
Ninth, on a related note, use pictures or images in your posts—this is a communication device for your visually-oriented learners, but it is also a creative way to communicate ideas, trends, etc. relative to your subject matter.
Tenth, spend some time finding useful and relevant links for your blog (in my case, on-line primary document repositories for example, or news organizations representing multiple perspectives).
Eleventh, this almost goes without saying, but use it regularly, and bring student perspectives into the classroom—for instance I found that the proverbial quiet students were some of the more verbose and articulate in writing and if you engage their writing in class is it a very effective way to get them talking.
Twelfth, most blogging services have “save as draft” functions, so you can take your time writing up thoughtful posts—I did not write a post all in one sitting. Take your time, it is worth it and helps to insure clear communication from the educator’s end and elicit genuine and serious engagement from students.
Thirteenth, remember your audience, and remember that students, parents, colleagues, and administrators (and indeed visitors from the entire globe) read your blog. I’m an ardent supporter and vigorous advocate for academic freedom and scholarly rigor—and I’m convinced that we shortchange students by not investing time to talk through and understand the complexities and contradictions of contemporary affairs and world events—so I’m certainly not saying to tiptoe around controversial subjects (or what some deem to be controversial).
While there is of course always a risk of being misunderstood in terms of the aims of a lesson at communicated through a blogpost, and certainly a blogpost does not capture the content of conversations that take place in the classroom, this last point is simply a reminder that the tone of a blogpost can set the mood for conversations about particular topics even as it can be a powerful way to consider the complexity of opinions and the plurality of ideas. And one more point: while the conversations on my blogs this past academic year has been limited to my students and I, and those scholars and authors I’ve invited to participate—according to the clustrmap site traffic monitor people from the world over visited the blog. So I’m going to create a post inviting those visitors to provide feedback, comments, and criticism—so you may want to check the blogs to see if they offer some feedback and advice as well, hence potentially advice and recommendations as you consider starting (or revising or refining your own blog). This is the beauty (and risk) of what journalist Jeff Howe calls crowdsourcing (and check out his blog, too).
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts. What follows is the second part of the interview.
NB: What has been the general reaction of your students to the blog?
PS: Visitors to this blog can read student comments for themselves in the posts about feedback, but overall I think students liked the blog. Although sometimes they saw it only in terms of homework, if they gave it enough time students were able to learn great deal about history. I found that most of my students really didn’t know what to expect at the beginning of the year, and I suppose remained that way throughout the year since I tried to vary the topics and types of posts I created. It was a bigger hit with juniors and seniors overall, I’d say, but a few of my sophomores thoroughly enjoyed posting their thoughts. My students really enjoyed the clustrmap site traffic monitor I use—it features a world map with red dots indicating from where in the world people visit the blog. It really drove home, visually, the globalized, interconnected world in which we live.
NB: Has the blog been a success? How do you measure the success of your class blog?
PS: I would certainly like to think the blog has been a success—and again the reflexive nature of the kind of communication blogs provide offers a window into this question so I’d direct readers to my student comments to decide for themselves. In terms of what criteria indicate success, on a blog I would examine the content of the posts, the range of topics covered, as well as the kinds of conversations that took place.
NB: What advice or recommendations would you give to teachers or administrators considering blogging for educational purposes?
PS: In no particular order, here they are: first, be willing to take the risks that using and incorporating technology requires. Don’t assume students know the ins and outs of EVERY bit of technology, and at the very least try to incorporate one new technological element each year. Of course you are not going to know anything and everything the first time you use it, but at least give it a TRY.
Second, see what else is out there, listen and learn from what others are doing, and then figure out how to apply it to your own setting and your own classroom. What works in Texas, for example, won’t always work in South Dakota, so you’ll have to get those creative juices flowing to find your niche.
Third, if you decide to have a class blog, post regularly, communicate that the blog is not an exercise in social networking but a serious academic enterprise, set some ground rules in terms of appropriate comments on the blog (which I think I did well), and be as clear as you can in terms of letting students know how they will be assessed for spending their time on these e-assignments (at which I could’ve done a better job).
Fourth, be willing to take risks in another way and ask for student feedback—but have them post their thoughts. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised at their frank observations, but in my experience the feedback typically involved constructive criticism.
Fifth, have fun and be flexible, allowing blogposts and e-conversations to shape and be shaped by what goes on in the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom.
Sixth, feel free to tailor posts on interests of your own choosing—students like to “see” you communicate on their turf as it were, and of course if you are passionate about a particular subject that can have drawing power as well.
Seventh, I consider every day that I use the class blog (or new technology) as something of an experiment, a new exercise in learning—and so keep in mind the reflexive nature of such technology.
Eighth, try to think of catchy, thoughtful, and perhaps humorous titles for you blogposts, as this helps to draw students in. (I regularly use puns in class, and so tried to have puns in the titles of my posts.)
Ninth, on a related note, use pictures or images in your posts—this is a communication device for your visually-oriented learners, but it is also a creative way to communicate ideas, trends, etc. relative to your subject matter.
Tenth, spend some time finding useful and relevant links for your blog (in my case, on-line primary document repositories for example, or news organizations representing multiple perspectives).
Eleventh, this almost goes without saying, but use it regularly, and bring student perspectives into the classroom—for instance I found that the proverbial quiet students were some of the more verbose and articulate in writing and if you engage their writing in class is it a very effective way to get them talking.
Twelfth, most blogging services have “save as draft” functions, so you can take your time writing up thoughtful posts—I did not write a post all in one sitting. Take your time, it is worth it and helps to insure clear communication from the educator’s end and elicit genuine and serious engagement from students.
Thirteenth, remember your audience, and remember that students, parents, colleagues, and administrators (and indeed visitors from the entire globe) read your blog. I’m an ardent supporter and vigorous advocate for academic freedom and scholarly rigor—and I’m convinced that we shortchange students by not investing time to talk through and understand the complexities and contradictions of contemporary affairs and world events—so I’m certainly not saying to tiptoe around controversial subjects (or what some deem to be controversial).
While there is of course always a risk of being misunderstood in terms of the aims of a lesson at communicated through a blogpost, and certainly a blogpost does not capture the content of conversations that take place in the classroom, this last point is simply a reminder that the tone of a blogpost can set the mood for conversations about particular topics even as it can be a powerful way to consider the complexity of opinions and the plurality of ideas. And one more point: while the conversations on my blogs this past academic year has been limited to my students and I, and those scholars and authors I’ve invited to participate—according to the clustrmap site traffic monitor people from the world over visited the blog. So I’m going to create a post inviting those visitors to provide feedback, comments, and criticism—so you may want to check the blogs to see if they offer some feedback and advice as well, hence potentially advice and recommendations as you consider starting (or revising or refining your own blog). This is the beauty (and risk) of what journalist Jeff Howe calls crowdsourcing (and check out his blog, too).
Thursday, July 17, 2008
A Blogger on Blogs
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts.
What follows is Part I of a two-part interview with Phil about his blogging experiences in the classrooms.
NB: Why did you feel a need to create a blog for your class(es)? What did you hope to accomplish by creating a blog for your class(es)?
PS: Before answering this question, it will perhaps be helpful to explain briefly what led to my inspiration for creating a class blog. It came from several areas. First, prior to my decision to have a class blog, I had been following certain blogs for about 4 years, mostly related to research I was doing on postmodern religious groups in the U.S. Many of these folks communicate electronically, and so I began to see how powerfully blogs could communicate ideas. And I had started my own blog in 2005, mostly as a place to post about academic matters. Second, a history professor from Colorado I know, Paul Harvey, created a class blog I followed in the spring of 2007, and I was quite impressed with the consistently thoughtful student responses and the type of dialogue that took place. Here I began to imagine a blog in a classroom, and contemplate ways to use it. Third, for several years I had heard a few educators discuss blogs, and after I saw a presentation at the 2007 World History Association meeting in Milwaukee on blogs and teaching history and discovered the fascinating things one teacher was doing, I decided to create my own class blog (actually two blogs: one for my U.S. history class and one for my Advanced Placement European history class.
My reasoning behind the class blog was to communicate better with today’s wired generation on the one hand, and on the other to make my classroom global in a totally new and different way. Already familiar with the basics of technology in the classroom, I wanted to move beyond PowerPoint presentations, movie clips, and music; I wanted to facilitate conversation and critical analysis in a different setting, and in turn hopefully better address the multiple learning styles in my classroom. When I started I hoped that students would see history differently, enjoy learning about the past, take more ownership of their learning, and discover how to more critically navigate the infinite number of sites and (re)sources available on the Internet.
NB: How much time did you spend creating and designing the blog prior to posting for the first time?
PS: I was already familiar with Blogger, so honestly the morning before my first post (on both my U.S. history blog and AP European history blog) I probably spent about two hours deciding on the template, setting up the links, adjusting the comment settings, and other details. I probably spent more time thinking and pondering what I wanted to do with the blog, and really what subjects and topics I wanted to post about. I didn’t have an agenda of topics, per se, before I started, but wished to remain flexible in terms of posting on things students wanted to know more about as well as incorporating relevant current events that took place throughout the year. My first post on the U.S. history blog had to do with my global approach to teaching American history. The Thomas Bender quote on the blog is also the same quote I have on my syllabus, as is the W.E.B Du Bois prayer about the value of hard work in academics—so I saw these first few posts as a way to introduce the technology, communicate to parents, colleagues, and administrators what I was up to with the blog (I showed parents the blog during open house), and drive home how I structured my course and hopefully offer some historical inspiration for the beginning of the school year.
NB: What are some examples of the topics of your blog posts?
PS: First, another bit of prelim perspective may be helpful here.
I started out last August, posting on current events as well as creating links to primary documents I wanted students to read and analyze. Then, through the course of class discussions and simply asking students what they thought, the ideas began to flow and topics for posts came rushing like a thunderstorm on a hot, gulf coast afternoon. I also began to think more analytically about ways I could assess students (for more on this see the next question).
This led to the creation of an on-line Constitutional scavenger hunt, for instance, and a massive post about Alexis de Tocqueville that allowed students to travel virtually with him on his tour of the U.S. and read relevant diary entries to better understand his thoughts about the new nation.
If I showed a documentary (or parts of it) I would regularly post links to the documentary’s website which not only contained activities to do in class, but also primary documents—text—that usually fit beautifully with the audio and visual of the topic under discussion. (See, for example, the post on Lewis and Clark.) I would also occasionally post review terms and study items on the blog. The weekend before the final exam, I podcasted a 4-minute study skills message that offered tips on how to prepare for my final exam—something new and different yet it complimented the subject matter of the class review sessions.
Above all, though, I really strove to find as many primary documents as I could about the subject and topics we discussed. As you know, there is just tons of material on the Internet, and I was able to find some really interesting items. In addition to the Tocqueville post, during my unit on the progressive era I found a treasure of material related to Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, and W.E.B. Du Bois and was able to incorporate it into class. I should also say that I was able to do a fair amount of art analysis and art criticism through the blog—posting links to artwork, for instance, have students pick a painting or image and study it for homework, and then call them up during class to come interpret and explain. This worked well using a SMARTboard, and gave students a chance to communicate visually, textually, and verbally. (See, for example, the posts on Gilded Age art as well as the artwork of the Great Depression.)
I also tried to give students a place where they could voice feedback on what I do in the classroom—a risk at being transparent for both parents and administrators that I think is necessary in a venture like this. So, for instance, I used a SMARTboard in class for the first time in January 2008, and created a post where students could leave their thoughts, and in May I posted again, asking students about their experiences with the class blog throughout the year. This is where the reflexivity that exists with this kind of technology can bear much fruit.
I would also try to post about unique topics, not necessarily related to the unit we were on in class, but relevant in terms of the aims of my class—to get students to think critically about their place in today’s global world. This led to a post, for instance, where students took a presidential candidate quiz and posted the results on-line—a post that generated wonderful class discussion. Another post on journalist A.J. Jacobs’ experiment about living the bible for a year provided a way to think about and discuss one of the most frequent phrases in my classroom: “to better understand the past we must walk in the shoes of those who preceded us.”
Since I grew up in the 1980s, and since I wanted students to really remember this period beyond the pop culture of this decade, I created another scavenger hunt that was just loads of fun putting together. Then I sent a questionnaire to some of my teaching colleagues who grew up in the 1980s, and asked them to share their memories. This post—in which I included pictures of me from the 1980s (let me tell you, it is quite interesting scanning those old Polaroid pictures into jpg files!)—while clearly the hit post of the year, also served as a lesson in oral history and historical memory. Students loved getting a different perspective on some of their teachers, but they also came away with more knowledge about the types of sources historians use to reconstruct the past.
NB: How do you incorporate the blog into your course(s)? What do you require of your students?
PB: I addressed this to some degree in the previous question in terms of content, but more specifically I use it for homework assignments, classroom discussion, student involvement, project announcements and resources, and general enrichment. Sometimes students would be required to post, other times I made it optional. I make it a habit to talk about the blog often, and so students incorporate it into the daily class rhythm. (For those who read through the U.S. history blog, I also used it for classes/electives I taught on religion and the Civil Rights Movement, Presidential Election 2008—those posts are in March—and a Communication Applications class I taught in June and early July.)
If a blogpost is a homework assignment, for example, students might have to read and answer questions on their own paper or leave comments on the blog. I created an assignment for the Vietnam War, for instance, and a free response exercise for Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Movement. In terms of classroom discussion, I created posts with links to documents, or photographs, or even sometimes links to YouTube segments that illustrated a point in class. Posts on the JFK assassination and the Great Depression allowed for this, as well as a post about shellshock. When I discussed the Jim Crow era in my U.S. history class, I found an on-line map that revealed lynching statistics—and here I’d have students come up to the SMARTboard screen, and find Tennessee or California, for example, and identify the numbers. This changed the dynamics of the classroom by getting students physically involved in class, even as it honed geography skills. In terms of project announcements and resources, I posted about a 1920s project and provided all the links students would need.
By far the neatest part of the class blog this year involved electronic conversations with authors, scholars, and colleagues. During the Age of Exploration unit in my AP European history class, I had students read a chapter from David Northrup’s Africa’s Discovery of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2002). They were required to answer a few question on their own, as well as leave thoughts about the chapter and questions for David on the blog since he agreed to respond to students’ questions. I met David through my involvement with the World History Association and simply emailed an invitation for him to join the conversation my class was having about the subject of his work—and he graciously agreed to respond. The student questions were very smart and engaging, and the conversation between all of us was informative and interesting. My students really enjoyed this. For my U.S. history classes and the unit on the Civil Rights Movement, I had students visit a website on Emmett Till created by historian Devery Anderson, and in conjunction with class discussion they were required to leave questions for Devery on the blog. Like David, Devery agreed to respond to students’ questions and I then turned that into another post. This was a big hit with students.
What follows is Part I of a two-part interview with Phil about his blogging experiences in the classrooms.
NB: Why did you feel a need to create a blog for your class(es)? What did you hope to accomplish by creating a blog for your class(es)?
PS: Before answering this question, it will perhaps be helpful to explain briefly what led to my inspiration for creating a class blog. It came from several areas. First, prior to my decision to have a class blog, I had been following certain blogs for about 4 years, mostly related to research I was doing on postmodern religious groups in the U.S. Many of these folks communicate electronically, and so I began to see how powerfully blogs could communicate ideas. And I had started my own blog in 2005, mostly as a place to post about academic matters. Second, a history professor from Colorado I know, Paul Harvey, created a class blog I followed in the spring of 2007, and I was quite impressed with the consistently thoughtful student responses and the type of dialogue that took place. Here I began to imagine a blog in a classroom, and contemplate ways to use it. Third, for several years I had heard a few educators discuss blogs, and after I saw a presentation at the 2007 World History Association meeting in Milwaukee on blogs and teaching history and discovered the fascinating things one teacher was doing, I decided to create my own class blog (actually two blogs: one for my U.S. history class and one for my Advanced Placement European history class.
My reasoning behind the class blog was to communicate better with today’s wired generation on the one hand, and on the other to make my classroom global in a totally new and different way. Already familiar with the basics of technology in the classroom, I wanted to move beyond PowerPoint presentations, movie clips, and music; I wanted to facilitate conversation and critical analysis in a different setting, and in turn hopefully better address the multiple learning styles in my classroom. When I started I hoped that students would see history differently, enjoy learning about the past, take more ownership of their learning, and discover how to more critically navigate the infinite number of sites and (re)sources available on the Internet.
NB: How much time did you spend creating and designing the blog prior to posting for the first time?
PS: I was already familiar with Blogger, so honestly the morning before my first post (on both my U.S. history blog and AP European history blog) I probably spent about two hours deciding on the template, setting up the links, adjusting the comment settings, and other details. I probably spent more time thinking and pondering what I wanted to do with the blog, and really what subjects and topics I wanted to post about. I didn’t have an agenda of topics, per se, before I started, but wished to remain flexible in terms of posting on things students wanted to know more about as well as incorporating relevant current events that took place throughout the year. My first post on the U.S. history blog had to do with my global approach to teaching American history. The Thomas Bender quote on the blog is also the same quote I have on my syllabus, as is the W.E.B Du Bois prayer about the value of hard work in academics—so I saw these first few posts as a way to introduce the technology, communicate to parents, colleagues, and administrators what I was up to with the blog (I showed parents the blog during open house), and drive home how I structured my course and hopefully offer some historical inspiration for the beginning of the school year.
NB: What are some examples of the topics of your blog posts?
PS: First, another bit of prelim perspective may be helpful here.
I started out last August, posting on current events as well as creating links to primary documents I wanted students to read and analyze. Then, through the course of class discussions and simply asking students what they thought, the ideas began to flow and topics for posts came rushing like a thunderstorm on a hot, gulf coast afternoon. I also began to think more analytically about ways I could assess students (for more on this see the next question).
This led to the creation of an on-line Constitutional scavenger hunt, for instance, and a massive post about Alexis de Tocqueville that allowed students to travel virtually with him on his tour of the U.S. and read relevant diary entries to better understand his thoughts about the new nation.
If I showed a documentary (or parts of it) I would regularly post links to the documentary’s website which not only contained activities to do in class, but also primary documents—text—that usually fit beautifully with the audio and visual of the topic under discussion. (See, for example, the post on Lewis and Clark.) I would also occasionally post review terms and study items on the blog. The weekend before the final exam, I podcasted a 4-minute study skills message that offered tips on how to prepare for my final exam—something new and different yet it complimented the subject matter of the class review sessions.
Above all, though, I really strove to find as many primary documents as I could about the subject and topics we discussed. As you know, there is just tons of material on the Internet, and I was able to find some really interesting items. In addition to the Tocqueville post, during my unit on the progressive era I found a treasure of material related to Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, and W.E.B. Du Bois and was able to incorporate it into class. I should also say that I was able to do a fair amount of art analysis and art criticism through the blog—posting links to artwork, for instance, have students pick a painting or image and study it for homework, and then call them up during class to come interpret and explain. This worked well using a SMARTboard, and gave students a chance to communicate visually, textually, and verbally. (See, for example, the posts on Gilded Age art as well as the artwork of the Great Depression.)
I also tried to give students a place where they could voice feedback on what I do in the classroom—a risk at being transparent for both parents and administrators that I think is necessary in a venture like this. So, for instance, I used a SMARTboard in class for the first time in January 2008, and created a post where students could leave their thoughts, and in May I posted again, asking students about their experiences with the class blog throughout the year. This is where the reflexivity that exists with this kind of technology can bear much fruit.
I would also try to post about unique topics, not necessarily related to the unit we were on in class, but relevant in terms of the aims of my class—to get students to think critically about their place in today’s global world. This led to a post, for instance, where students took a presidential candidate quiz and posted the results on-line—a post that generated wonderful class discussion. Another post on journalist A.J. Jacobs’ experiment about living the bible for a year provided a way to think about and discuss one of the most frequent phrases in my classroom: “to better understand the past we must walk in the shoes of those who preceded us.”
Since I grew up in the 1980s, and since I wanted students to really remember this period beyond the pop culture of this decade, I created another scavenger hunt that was just loads of fun putting together. Then I sent a questionnaire to some of my teaching colleagues who grew up in the 1980s, and asked them to share their memories. This post—in which I included pictures of me from the 1980s (let me tell you, it is quite interesting scanning those old Polaroid pictures into jpg files!)—while clearly the hit post of the year, also served as a lesson in oral history and historical memory. Students loved getting a different perspective on some of their teachers, but they also came away with more knowledge about the types of sources historians use to reconstruct the past.
NB: How do you incorporate the blog into your course(s)? What do you require of your students?
PB: I addressed this to some degree in the previous question in terms of content, but more specifically I use it for homework assignments, classroom discussion, student involvement, project announcements and resources, and general enrichment. Sometimes students would be required to post, other times I made it optional. I make it a habit to talk about the blog often, and so students incorporate it into the daily class rhythm. (For those who read through the U.S. history blog, I also used it for classes/electives I taught on religion and the Civil Rights Movement, Presidential Election 2008—those posts are in March—and a Communication Applications class I taught in June and early July.)
If a blogpost is a homework assignment, for example, students might have to read and answer questions on their own paper or leave comments on the blog. I created an assignment for the Vietnam War, for instance, and a free response exercise for Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Movement. In terms of classroom discussion, I created posts with links to documents, or photographs, or even sometimes links to YouTube segments that illustrated a point in class. Posts on the JFK assassination and the Great Depression allowed for this, as well as a post about shellshock. When I discussed the Jim Crow era in my U.S. history class, I found an on-line map that revealed lynching statistics—and here I’d have students come up to the SMARTboard screen, and find Tennessee or California, for example, and identify the numbers. This changed the dynamics of the classroom by getting students physically involved in class, even as it honed geography skills. In terms of project announcements and resources, I posted about a 1920s project and provided all the links students would need.
By far the neatest part of the class blog this year involved electronic conversations with authors, scholars, and colleagues. During the Age of Exploration unit in my AP European history class, I had students read a chapter from David Northrup’s Africa’s Discovery of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2002). They were required to answer a few question on their own, as well as leave thoughts about the chapter and questions for David on the blog since he agreed to respond to students’ questions. I met David through my involvement with the World History Association and simply emailed an invitation for him to join the conversation my class was having about the subject of his work—and he graciously agreed to respond. The student questions were very smart and engaging, and the conversation between all of us was informative and interesting. My students really enjoyed this. For my U.S. history classes and the unit on the Civil Rights Movement, I had students visit a website on Emmett Till created by historian Devery Anderson, and in conjunction with class discussion they were required to leave questions for Devery on the blog. Like David, Devery agreed to respond to students’ questions and I then turned that into another post. This was a big hit with students.
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