Assessment task part A – Week 3:
Reflection of Blogger
(reflection 1)
On commencing the unit I set up a wiki space, a weebly and
also a blog. After experimenting with my weebly (which I found more aesthetically
appealing) I decided however to concentrate my weekly reflections and development, and
familiarity, with a blog.
The rationale for this was, I found ‘technically’ that the setting
up and the maintenance and growth of the ‘blogger’ functions much more user
friendly, which required limited experience to use it, and was highly intuitive;
such as inserting an image or a video (simply hovering your mouse over the
function buttons informs you wish button enables this); as captured in this
screen dump:
I have found the settings allow me to have a range of
functionality to adequately custom and modify my blogs, whilst easily returning
to past blogs to update or edit, and indeed updating my blog ‘per se’ as I wish
to add more content, or further refine; such as a change of ‘theme’. For
instance, to make the blog more immediately relevant to the Humanities and
Social Sciences area and my interest in politics and current affairs I have
updated my blog to include, an imbedded link to a you tube clip of Paul
Keating, on my welcome page I have embedded a URL link to the HASS curriculum
rationale, that includes an explanatory video. In this way I am aiming to
engage my reader in the content of the blog and in this context I find the
settings of the technology flexible in scope to enable creativity, and
tailoring for the particular purpose a user may wish. Included in this I have embedded
a ‘vocaroo’ recording of myself in my header, so I can verbally welcome
visitors to my blog.
Further by way of being user friendly, to navigate the
blogger page and ensure privacy settings is very straight forward. Simply going to: settings, blog readers,
edit: then immediately you have three choices around privacy, which includes:
1) public, 2) private to only blog authors and 3) private to only nominated
blog authors. Therefore, I feel this is a very important component to ‘blogger’
if and when using in the classroom to manage safety concerns and privacy of
students. For example, each student could set their blog page to private with
only each other student in the classroom for instance. However, there are
further ‘layers’ of privacy, such as controlling who is able ‘comment’ in your
blog (this would be an effective mechanism against ‘trolls’ and unsolicited correspondence
etc), as well as controlling weather a search engine can find your blog; per
below:
Also, Blogger has the ability to multi-Author, and importantly
comments are easily captured and monitored (more on below, how this could be
therefore used in a teaching context):
Critically, there are a range of other technical
considerations that are important, that bring the effectiveness of blogger as
an ICT instrument for classroom learning that integrates and embeds both Blooms
Taxonomy and also the SAMR model.
By way of example, the ‘campaign functionality’ allows the
user to have the capacity to set up and manage a campaign, as well as having
the functionality to review ‘statistics’ and therefore monitor the
effectiveness of the campaign by way of ‘visitor activity’, as well as allowing
commentary from those visiting. As I explore in detail in my reflection 2.2., I
propose as pedagogy the use of blogger to teach a component from the civic and
citizenship curriculum ACHC S073 (http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/humanities-and-social-sciences/civics-and-citizenship/curriculum/7-10?layout=1#cdcode=ACHCS073&level=8)
relating to distributing public material for a specific purpose and context.
For example, students may democratically decide on a
position on an upcoming ‘motion’ in their local council area (such as approving
a council rate increase), and could create a public awareness campaign to raise
the profile of the particular issue prior to the council meeting and decision.
Further, to enhance this learning embedding the SAMR model, the Local Elected Councillors
could engage students on their blogs, relevant to their decision making and
voting pattern on this issue. Taking this further, in understanding the
principles that sit behind a particular councillor’s decision, the students
could then choose another topical issue (perhaps this time a National issue; again,
linking this to curriculum) and ‘apply’ what they have learnt, and argue a
position, and employing ‘synthesis’ and ‘evaluation’ to enable and ensure
higher order thinking.
Lastly, as with all utilisation of ICT and general internet
use, as a (pre-service) teacher we must always have relevant legal, ethical and
safety protocols front and centre. In a South Australian context, there is a
key document “Cyber-Safety, Keeping Children Safe in a Connected World,
Guidelines for Schools and Preschools”.
Importantly these guidelines have a specific focus and
instruction for educators, as well as referencing a number of other policies. In
the specific use of a blog, I believe there are a range of safety mechanisms (as
mentioned above) that are built into blogger, that should be implemented when
utilising blogger in a teaching context. Other considerations relate to the use
of material that students may ‘post’ on their blog, the Smart Copying website
sets out in comprehensive detail the prescriptions related to use within an education
context: http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/.
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