Building off of what I learned with Alec Couros in ECI 831, I plan to incorporate blogging and reflections into my course prototype. At this point, my general idea is centred around what Dr. Valerie Irvine discussed in class about having some f2f time, asynchronous work time, and small pods of groups that can create their own asynchronous work periods, which also follows Bates image here:
As Ravi Seethamraju states, “Data suggests that students perform better in an environment where a mixture of classroom and online technologies is employed and there is no decay in the interest on the topic” Source
Because I already use 1:1 technology in my classroom, this prototype could also be applied to working in the classroom with 100% f2f, or, could be deployed to work from home with small f2f meetings at the school, with asynchronous meetings with the students’ pod, or as we saw during the pandemic, this prototype will also be designed to have the possibility of remote implementation.
The foundation of the prototype will be based around MS Teams and OneNote, however, I will also incorporate elements of Fanschool, Flipgrid, and other apps to facilitate a well-rounded experience for students.
From Flipgrid, I wish to have students reflect and record evidence of student work (be it showing a piece of work, doing a demonstration or experiment, etc.) and plan to continue to use Fanschool as a blogging device for students to post and discuss amongst each other.
The above is justification for using discussion boards/blogging as a means of assessment and student development. The participation of students will be key in the success of the communication and ensuring proper lesson planning has been done using these resources to ensure students understand what types of comments are expected.
- How to Write a Quality Comment
- How to be a Good Commenter
- Framing Online Discussions: Getting Quality Posts and Giving Effective Feedback
Doing this framework will have some challenges with grade 7&8s, but it is the work that teachers like Mme Blair Dueck is doing with little 5-7-year-olds that will help their lifelong journey in education, as well as help us middle years teachers continue to scaffold off their hard work! Check her post this week about using discussion techniques with the little ones!
Thank you for reading and please feel free to provide any quality feedback that could improve my prototype plan. If you have ever worked as a student or teacher in this educational framework, please share your experiences!!
Dalton Danaher 
These are exciting plans! You have mentioned a tool with which I am unfamiliar. I look forward to exploring it further with you leading the charge! Do you have thoughts on how you will monitor their interactions?
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Very thorough! Like Patricia, I’m also interested in Fanschool – are there pros/cons to using it versus other blogging tools?
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Thanks for your comments! Fanschool has different levels of moderation… so you can moderate every post, or ease some controls and allow students to post between each other and you can observe those interactions. I have done both, and they work well. I will use self-evaluation as well as monitor interactions via moderation!
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Thanks for the shout out. I think it’s so important for colleagues to work as a team. This is a great opportunity to start teaching the use of some useful apps in the younger grade levels and build on them as the students progress through their elementary years as the use of technology in a meaningful way is only increasing!
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Dalton, looks like you have got a good start going here! I have also been pondering the use blogs in the classroom as well as a way to interact and gauge the students understanding. We are also planning to incorporate blogs in our module, to what extent is still to be determined!
Bret
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That is awesome! I know Alec can get premium subscriptions for Edublogs (which is word press based). It all depends on the level of moderation you want to have vs. student freedom… that has always been a struggle for me when doing blogging in my classroom! Thanks for the comment!
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