In an effort to encourage writing and teach digital citizenship, we have recently set up blogs for students in our Milepost 3 section (9 to 11 years).

Blogs evolved from online diaries in the mid-1990s and are now commonplace all over the Internet as a way of connecting writers to relevant audiences.  Blogs display information in reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing at the top of the page.

I have been writing this blog, Technology for Learners, for almost a decade now.  As well as giving me the opportunity to reflect on pedagogy and educational technology, it has enabled me to connect with thousands of other educators all over the world.

Many businesses and organisations in fact have blogs because they serve as effective lead generation tools, enabling their services to be more discoverable and keeping them connected to their clients.  Creating high quality posts helps businesses and organisations look more credible, and this is particularly important when the brand is still young and not well known.

As a “diary-style” website, a blog can be a very useful learning platform in education, as it can serve as a brilliant way to get students to practise their writing and showcase their learning.

Each class teacher in Milepost 3 now has their own Class blog website, which includes a dropdown menu with links to each of their students’ blog pages.  In preparation, the children have been receiving lessons related to e-safety and netiquette to help them understand the importance of appropriate and responsible behaviour online.  Moreover, by using Google Sites to create these blogs, the platform can be closely monitored whilst being shared with specific audiences within our school community.

In this video tutorial below, I explain to children how to edit their blog page:

The blogs have provided each child with an opportunity to put together a purposeful collection of their best written work as well as helping to record their learning journey.  The value of this type of activity, in which students create a portfolio to showcase their learning, has been well documented in education.  By demonstrating the development of knowledge, skills and understanding over time, we are expecting the students’ blogs to make valuable assessment and learning tools.

We know though, based on educational research, to ensure deep learning, it is not enough for students to simply showcase their work.  It is also important that students reflect on the work they have produced, and this can be done by getting them to write and respond to peer feedback.

Teachers have therefore been delivering a series of lessons to help students provide valuable feedback to one another in which each student writes a positive written comment and an ‘even better if’ statement on at least one other child’s piece of work.  Such feedback takes the form of ‘blog comments’, as each student writes in green text underneath the work of one or more of their peers.

Some examples of comment starters and ‘even better if’ statements can be found below.

Comment Starters:

Reading your ……………….. , I learned that ……………
I enjoyed reading your ….
You have helped me to change my thinking about….. because….
I like the way you ……..……………..
Now I understand more about….
It was interesting to discover that…
It was really interesting when…
Something you have done particularly well is to…
I was surprised to learn that…
I was most interested in….
The most useful part of this for me was
This learning reminded me of….

Even Better If:
I am wondering…
I would like to know…
This piece of writing is interesting and would be even better if it included … For example, you could say something like  …
That being said, can you think of a way of using ….
Remember though, be careful with your use of tense.  I noticed you used two different tenses in the same piece of writing.  For example, you said …
I just noticed, watch out that you use singular and plural words accurately.  For example, I saw that you wrote, ….
Try to use some commas to help structure your writing.
You could use a thesaurus to add more interesting words into your text.

Specifically, we want to avoid children writing bland and unimaginative comments on other children’s work like “nice writing” or “very interesting”.  Instead, with the help of a comment bank, we encourage children to write thoughtful comments on other children’s written work, which are both motivational and moves learning forward.

As part of this effort, each member of our site leadership team has been assigned to a different Milepost 3 Class blog in which to provide weekly written comments and feedback.  Drawing on the Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) programme of the International Baccalaureate, we have also enlisted the help of a group of senior students to write comments on our students’ blogs.

Concluding thoughts…

As well as providing an excellent opportunity to explore digital literacy, helping students to understand the important concepts of e-safety and netiquette, we are expecting this initiative to be a further catalyst in promoting children’s levels of English.  By having a wide audience for their blog entries, we notice that students are now spending more time refining their written work and helping, through peer feedback comments, others to do the same.  This not only improves literacy but serves as a valuable tool for reflection.  As a team, we are keen to build on this blogging initiative to continue sharing new and wonderful examples of children’s written work across our school community.

The global news landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. News readership has increasingly shifted to the Internet because of inexpensive technology, ubiquitous access and free content. This has led to a trend of information democratisation in which information control has shifted from a few powerful entities toward smaller outlets and individual citizens. User-generated news sources like blogs, wiki pages and YouTube videos are now commonplace. As a result, according to the Pew Research Center (2012), the audience for news on the Internet has grown from nothing in 1993 to second behind only television.

Although the Internet brings users more news, there is consequently more uncertainty about whether news sources – both traditional and otherwise – are providing relevant or even credible information. Powers (2010, pp. 5), for example, states that young people in particular, report being overwhelmed by the amount of news sources and content available online. This makes it increasingly important for news consumers to develop digital literacy skills that allow them to weigh the value of what they read, see, and hear.

News literacy, a fundamental yet too often unrecognised area of digital literacy, helps students to foster a more intellectually rigorous relationship with news media. News literacy is neatly defined by Schwarz (2011, pp. 1) as ‘the reader’s ability to critically evaluate, interpret and process as well as participate in news media’. As we live in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world, I would argue that the word “global” should also be used when discussing news literacy; much of the news content viewed online is from international journalism networks, which create what Reese (2012) refers to as a “global news arena”. Reese explains that bringing a global perspective to news literacy requires a basic awareness of how national contexts differ; it means taking concrete local circumstances into account while being aware of how they differ from other areas and how global forces bring “influence from a distance”.

Global news is a highly complex, albeit important subject. In my context of working as teacher in a bi-lingual British school in El Salvador, I have seen the importance of this subject manifest in the overall objectives of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and International Baccalaureate (IB). These programmes correctly consider themselves to be leading proponents of international education and are designed to promote international mindedness (Stagg, 2013). Students on the IB for example, are required to keep up-to-date with current national and international news events relevant to their areas of study. Moreover, one of the traits and values of the school is “international mindedness”, encouraging students to develop a cosmopolitan attitude and willingness to learn about life in other parts of the world. All of this forms part of the Council of International Schools (CIS) accreditation process, which asks schools to ‘demonstrate a commitment to internationalism in education’ (CIS, 2013).

Unfortunately, despite the buzz words in the curriculum and the rhetoric of schools, little is actually done to facilitate learning about the world in which we live. Specifically, the most relevant sources for informing students (and their teachers) about social, economic and political events happening around the world – global news media – are widely absent from the classroom. This seems to be the case in educational institutions around the world (Stagg, 2013; Schwarz, 2012; Buckingham, 2003).

In July, 2013 I therefore began putting together designs for the user interface of what would become News on Atlas, a web application with the purpose of addressing this issue. I have been working closely with a programmer, Daniel Rivas, to develop the functionality of this application, while ensuring that it is easy to use and runs smoothly. Since its inception, the objective driving this application’s development has remained unchanged – to improve users’ global news literacy. This is an important area of international mindedness and, in my opinion, should be taught in schools alongside digital literacy.

References:

Buckingham, D. 2003. Media Education. Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Polity Press, USA

Pew Research Center. 2012. http://www.journalism.org/2012/10/25/social-media-doubles-remains-limited/

Powers, E. 2010. Teaching News Literacy in the Age Of New Media: Why Secondary School Students Should Be Taught to Judge the Credibility of the News They Consume. Washington University in St. Louis. http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1454&context=etd

Reese, S. 2012. Global News literacy: The Educator. Global News literacy: The Educator (Chapter prepared for News literacy: Global perspectives for the newsroom and the classroom). University of Texas at Austin. http://journalism.utexas.edu/sites/journalism.utexas.edu/files/attachments/reese/educator-chapter-final.pdf

Schwarz, F. 2011. Media Literacy and the News. Windesheim School of Media in Zwolle, the Netherlands. http://www.windesheim.nl/~/media/files/windesheim/research%20publications/120319_media_literacy_and_the_news.pdf

Stagg, L. 2013. International Mindedness: Global Perspectives for Learners and Educators. Urban Publications Ltd.

Education and technology have always been strongly related. This    is demonstrated by the many technologies, old and new, that are     used in classrooms everyday by teachers and students alike. In her   book, Teaching as a Design Science, Dana Laurillard makes the   interesting observation that education does not drive  technological  invention. Instead, education tends to be beholden to the inventiveness of other fields such as business and leisure. There are now a wide array of different “educational” technologies available (laptops, iPads, projectors, etc.), yet very few have their origins specifically within the classroom context.

Appropriate technology in an educational setting should therefore be assessed for its potential to meet educational aims.  The full potential of educational technology is only realised when it supports creativity and critical thinking.  In order to better understand how to evaluate the appropriateness of educational technology, it is important to identify what educational aims are, what educational technology is and how appropriate educational technology should be defined.

The current definition of educational technology from the Association for Education Communications & Technology (AECT) is as follows: Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.  The sheer breadth of what form technology can take and how it interacts with the learning environment has important implications for its potential to ‘facilitate learning and improve performance.’  For instance, both a pencil and a laptop can be seen as different types of technologies for use in the classroom.  However, this does not mean that either tool is necessarily appropriate for all classrooms or lessons all of the time.  What facilitates learning for one context or situation does not necessarily do so for all.

Traditionally, the concept of appropriate technology has been discussed with respect to economic development.  The British economist, Shumacher was the first to formerly posit the notion.  The criteria for appropriate technology is encapsulated in his book, Small Is Beautiful (1973), in which he states that it should be: (a) simple, (b) small scale, (c) low cost, and (d) non-violent.  Although the definition has subsequently been adapted by others, from the educational perspective, it suffices to stick with the original criteria.  The rationale underpinning the criteria is that ‘new possibilities are created for people, singly or collectively, to help themselves’ (1980, pp. 57).  This certainly ties into what most educators are trying to do, which is to develop independent learners.  Irrespective of context or situation, classroom or lesson, the core idea presented by Shumacher is that when it comes to the aim of empowering people by use of appropriate technology, less is more.  From a pedagogical standpoint, appropriate technology would imply itself to be easily and non-invasively assimilated into the learning environment of the classroom.

The appropriateness of technology according to Shumacher’s criteria is positively related to the degree of what Mishra & Koelher (2006) have referred to as “transparency”, i.e. the extent to which the technology blends into the environment such that it is not even considered a technology anymore. These technologies, which have become so commonplace such as pens and exercise books, are now rendered as “transparent”.  Arguably, this is in contrast to digital technologies for example, which are not as deeply assimilated into the educational system and therefore not as “transparent”.  Diana Laurillard (2012, pp. 210) supports such an assertion: ‘the story of digital learning technologies has hardly begun, and there will be no end until they have become so fully embedded in education that we will not even ask the question….(Paper) is now so completely embedded, and it is so diverse in its benefits, that no-one begins to ask how “effective” it is.’  A “transparent” technology then can certainly be seen to meet Shumacher’s criteria.  Pedagogically speaking, the greater the transparency (and therefore appropriateness) of educational technology, the greater its effectiveness insofar as facilitating teaching and learning.

Transparency alone, although for the most part a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition in determining the appropriateness of technology in the classroom setting.  Luckin (2006) discusses teaching and learning as taking place within an ‘ecology’ – a dynamic and constantly-evolving interaction between a wide range of resources.  She refers to this dynamic as ‘The Learner Centric Ecology of Resources Model’ and argues that such a model helps us to design educational experiences that are relevant to the learner’s needs.  Ultimately, this model sets the context in which technologies are used and in part, determines the appropriateness of their use.  Most importantly, it shows us that a technology appropriate for one classroom is not necessarily appropriate for another.  This is because the model is made up of resources, which include knowledge on the part of the teacher and learner.  In the case of interactive whiteboards for example, some teachers are very knowledgeable in how to effectively use this technology, whereas others are not.  To this extent, it can be seen that the appropriateness of technology is defined by the user.  Mishra and Koelher (2006) refer to a very specific type of knowledge that the teacher needs: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK), arguing that this complex type of knowledge is required for thoughtful pedagogical uses of technology.  As the technology is used more regularly and becomes embedded in the classroom, its “transparency” not only increases to better facilitate the pedagogy, but the technology itself is also used more effectively by the class teacher as the teacher’s TPCK improves.

The relatively recent arrival of digital technologies is still filtering its way down into the educational system.  Education will have to adapt in order to be able to fully embrace digital technology.  Indeed, most schools are now only just starting to fully integrate digital applications into their ICT curriculums, much less the curriculum as a whole and are therefore not adequately preparing students for ICTs in real world contexts.  Prior to the overhaul in the English ICT curriculum (now called ‘Computing’), the former UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove had branded the ICT curriculum in England’s schools as a ‘mess’.  Until recently, a lot of ICT education had been inappropriate for today’s needs.  Much more emphasis in particular is now needed on teaching students to use open source software from an earlier age, as the core principles of open source are being recognised by the wider community.

What sets open source software apart from other technologies is that it is much more people centred than closed source software.  As Pearce (2012) points out, ‘Where Microsoft might utilise a few thousand programmers and software engineers to debug their code, the Linux community has access to hundreds of thousands of programmers debugging, rewriting, and submitting code.’  It is this type of mass-scale collaboration that is driving the success of other Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites and wikis.  In education, moves have been made in this direction with the high-profile case of Nicholas Negroponte’s “One Laptop Per Child” project, which fully embraces open source software.  By bringing about greater connectivity by means of collaboration such projects serve as a vehicle to empower teachers and students, particularly in the developing world where lack of access to key information can be a critical issue.  This can also help to bridge the so-called digital divide in which there is a gap between different groups of people in terms of their effective access to digital and information technology.

Pearce uses Appropedia as an example of an ‘Open source appropriate technology’ website, where a large number of participants are allowed to create and modify the content directly from their web browsers.  Education has slowly followed suit with similar open source resources such as ‘Curriki‘ and ‘Connexions‘, which facilitate collaboration and access to free instructional materials for educators.  The appropriateness of such sites are measured insofar as they ‘simplify the administration of collaboratively organising information, project examples, best practices, and ‘‘how tos’’’ (Pearce et al. 2010).  In so doing, open source software can be the solution to the problem of access to critical information for sustainable development.

Clearly, any medium that enhances peer communication is a step in the right direction towards achieving greater levels of appropriateness.  In my own practice for example, I have organised the setting up of a blog for every student from Year 3 to Year 6.  The purpose of these blogs has been to digitalise paper-based book reviews that the children have had to do in the past.  It represents a cheaper and simpler alternative to photocopying and distributing copious paper book review templates.  By encouraging greater collaboration and increasing the accountability of both the student and class teacher, these blogs help to improve the quality of students’ written work, as they are effectively publishing it for the whole school community to see.  In the process, the children learn important digital literacies, such as netiquette and how best to search for information online.  It also serves for a smoother transition into secondary school, where secondary students are having to setup and manage their own wiki spaces.  In these ways, the use of blogs represent an appropriate use of digital technology for educational purposes.

Appropriate technology can take the form of many different tools.  As technology becomes more “transparent” to the extent that it is embedded in the classroom, it more closely aligns itself with Shumacher’s criterion.  In addition, the extent to which a technology empowers students to become more independent learners and teachers to deliver more engaging lessons should be seen to be at the heart of determining the appropriateness of educational technologies because this is what education is all about.  However, the extent that educational technologies achieves these aims is largely contingent upon TPCK, as teachers need specific pedagogical and content knowledge to use technology thoughtfully.  Moreover, the emergence of web 2.0 applications and specifically open source software models, identify the need for appropriate technology to be people-centred.  This is because the more people developing the software, the more the software is going to benefit from being of better quality and greater reliability.  Independent of the technology though, as educators we need to make sure that it is of greatest benefit to teaching and learning.  This can only be achieved by embedding the technology into our daily pedagogy such that it is not out of place and can be used very naturally by teachers and learners alike.

References:

Januszewski and M. Molenda (Eds.). 2008. Association for Educational Communications and Technology.  Educational Technology: A definition with commentary. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kershaw. 11th January 2012. “Michael Gove brands ICT curriculum ‘a mess'”.  The Independent.

Laurillard, D.  Teaching as a Design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology.  2012.  Routledge.

Luckin. 2006. The learner centric ecology of resources: A framework for using technology to scaffold learning

Mishra and J. Koelher. 2006. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge.

M. Pearce. 2012. The case for open source appropriate technology.

F. Shumacher. 1973. Small is Beautiful.