The Lamppost Blog

I am a rookie when it comes to using technology in the classroom, and the unfamiliar makes me wary. I appreciated reading about another educator’s cautions in Mr. B-G’s English Blog: Wiki wannabe

Web 2.o is about control, authorship, and authority. Students aren’t getting the full experience because I still hold the reigns. I suppose I do it out of caution.

I am the only teacher at my high school who is posting student work to a blog for all the world to see. I am meaning to move beyond using my class blog pages as a place for displaying student work. I’d like each of my kids to have their own space where they upload class content and harness the connective powers of the Internet to move the discourse beyond the limitations of our classroom’s four walls.

I get this. I, too, am the only teacher at my high school currently using blogs with my classes. This is unsettling because I miss the usual level of collaboration with my colleagues. My principal and department head are very open to using technology and new forms of expression, as long as students’ privacy is respected and everyone is kept safe. That’s great.

Some have been less enthusiastic about teachers setting up websites and blogs. I can understand their concern on one point — teachers are already incredibly overworked, and once a few teachers start setting up these types of class structures, the pressure on other teachers to create online classroom spaces might be unrealistic.

But … the truth is I’ve found that my class website is beginning to save me almost as much time as it takes. A student loses an assignment? They go to the class site to get it, and I don’t have to send home extras or have them on hand to distribute. Someone misses a class? They can download any presentations that were shared.

Without having had a classroom to claim as “mine” yet, I haven’t been putting up posters, displaying student work, and just creating that physical space that makes a class thrive. My website has provided that for me, and students have loved it. It’s taken some time and energy, but not any more than that given by my colleagues in creating their physical classroom environment.

Like Mr. B-G, I am wondering if a wiki could be a new extension of my virtual classroom, allowing more 2.0 functionality.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS