Educating the Dragon

A little discussion around the bloggers cafe at ULearn09 was the serious drop in the number of blog posts NZEducators are producing. There has been quite a time shift for my blogfeeder to reach 50 posts. A year or two ago it would take about a week. Now, even with me subscribing to more NZers over the last 12 months I could happily say that the magic 50 is taking an additonal 10 to 14 days to be reached. Kinda makes me think. Any ideas?

This afternoon was great. I love introducing new people to blogging. I’m sure they would love you all to comment.

Reflections

Room17 Rocks

Had a blogging session stall in the middle today because attendees could not access their “activate” emails from their Outlook.

If I had thought on I would have assisted them all in establishing gmail or ymail accounts or some other  internet based email. Hind sight is 20/20.

I kinda love my gmail login with my personalised homepage and the pull power of the tools below the time sensitive igoogle.

Just out of interest what you use for your homepage and why?

If you have ever thought that a class blog was a good idea but were unsure of how to discuss it with management or perhaps you’ve never thought of blogging as a valuable teaching tool. Here are my five reasons to blog.

1. A teacher blog can be used in a reflective manner; enabling you to grow and mature in your teaching, whether in the area of ICT teaching or secondary French.
2. A teacher blog can be a place of community – where regular readers can comment and share their own perspective.
3. A class blog can be a portal for parents to access. Providing a more satisfying answer than ‘dunno’ to the; “So Johnny, what did you do today?” question.
4. A class blog can be a great equalizer for student voice. It is a place where all comments hold equal weight and the shy/quiet kid at the back the same opportunity to share and discuss.
5. A class blog can enable students to share their work, thoughts and insights with a larger audience than any refrigerator / class display can compete with.

Yet another call for action. Are the messages, are the call outs, are the pleas from our students getting through are do we, as NZ Educators, merely think that all the fuss is coming from the US. With us all the way over here, our students are not in the same frame of mind even if they are using the same technology.

My gut tells me it’s wrong. I’m looking forward to getting some 11-18 year old perspective on this, from our students, in our country.

I spotted this video from Principal’s blog at Puketapu school . There school is begining a learning journey into effective use of technologies (Hardware, software, Web2.0).