Last night I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Darren Kuropatwa, an educator from Winnipeg. After witnessing how Darren incorporates technology into his classes I am giving him the label of ed tech guru. What he is doing within his classroom is exciting, cutting edge, engaging, etc, and that is through the eyes of an administrator. However, after seeing Darren’s presentation I find myself at a crossroads. I would like to incorporate some kind of blog or wiki within my classes but after seeing Darren’s I don’t know where to begin. I realize that Darren has evolved his work over time but from where I am standing I feel that I am looking up a huge mountain that I have to climb. Will my site happen overnight? No. Will I attempt? Yes. One only learns from falling down and getting back up. To quote Shrek, “Change is good Donkey!” and this change will definitely add another dimension to my continued development as an educator and administrator.
Stay tuned to see how the journey goes. Its going to be a fun ride and if you see me on the ground feel free to extend a hand. I will definitely reach up and accept the assistance to get back on my feet.
I also enjoyed Darren’s presentation. I would also like to develop a course/class blog. Darren’s blog was so content rich that I (like you) questioned how to get started. I was also wondering how do you monitor what students place on the blog. You would have to make a daily (or several times a day) visit to the blog to ensure that the content was appropriate. I teach modified English and language ability is an issue and would require constant monitoring. I don’t know what the time commitment would be toward the activity of blogging. I do want to start a class blog, and I will, but for now I guess all we can is to continue playing with programs and learning what we can do with these new tools. Good luck to you and your classes.
Thanks for the input Rosanne. I’m assuming that the blog would send notice for comments to be approved much like this. At least that is what I am hoping for. That would be an easy way to monitor comments and provide opportunity for editing where needed.
Hi Dean,
Thanks for the kind words.
The blogging practices I shared with you last night have evolved over the last 3 or 4 years. My first blog looked quite different. Unfortunately I deleted it at the end of the semester because it was active for only a few weeks. I can’t tell you how I regret this now.
Anyway, the next class blog, which ran for a full semester, was this one: Pre-Cal 40S. It had two main purposes:
(1) For students to reflect on their learning so I could get some insight into their thinking to help them learn.
(2) To act as a central repository for web based resources to which I linked and aggregated on the blog to help students learn.
I started small and modestly. The learning curve is steep but fast! The next semester saw an explosion of growth in the way I used the blog in my classes. I went from only one class to all my classes blogging.
You may be interested in reading my reflections about this on my blog. I have two posts about this:
(1) How Will I Orchestrate It This Time?
(2) The Next Movement
It’s been a while since a wrote that last one; probably time I wrote another.
Cheers,
Darren
Darren, thanks for advice and thanks again for a great presentation. I’ll keep your advice in mind as I’m planning my course direction. I’m looking forward to reading the posts that you provided in your comments.
Dean
I find your comments bang on. I am trying to incorporate a blog/wiki or something into my Law 30 class. However, I look at what others are doing in class, like podcasting, voicethreaad, etc. and feel my little project is pretty minimal. I guess I have to keep it all in perspective though and just do what I am comfortable with and then expand. Sounds like Darren did much the same thing.
Dean – I have incorporated a staff blogsite, it has created interest in about half the staff. I also started a wiki with my construction 10 class, the students seem interested in getting going with it right away.
Corey, I’m going to get the same thing going in my building. What kind of angle are you using to hook your staff?