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Blogs in the classroom
A few weeks ago I spoke to my father about blogging. Explaining what my conclusions are from my research I told him that blogs could be used for educational settings. As a maths teacher he was interested. The upcoming year will probably be the last one before his retirement, he only has half the hours than usual and therefore time on his hands, so I thought that running a little blogging experiment would be a nice way to end his carreer as a teacher.
The idea is that he will run a classblog, in which he posts maths exercises on a regular basis. The students will have to post their solution in the comments. I think it would be interesting to see what happens when students get clear insight in what their peers come up whith. When I look back at my own highschool period I never discussed the things I learned with my peers. Maybe this easy way of using a blog to share solutions publicly inspires students to discuss things more.
I suggested to my father that he ends this experiment writing a paper that could be published in a specialist journal for (math) teachers. But maybe I'll make it my experiment too, since I'm the social scientist and an expert on interviewing and blogs, and write a paper myself. Would this be a good idea?
I think this is a very interesting idea. I found an entry at eszter.com which you might find interesting:
http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~eszter/weblog/archives/00000410.html.
I also remember that I never or rarely discussed my solutions with my classmates, but I think that the main reason for this was because people either wanted to be keep the solutions for themselves. Another thing is that some might be afraid of being perceived as either unintelligent or geeky.
I suspect that it would depend on the culture of the class, as well as the age group, whether this could work... For instance, I don't think it would have worked in my high school in Italy, not even today.
However, I would expect that in a country like the Netherlands, this could actually work quite well... at least my perception of the Dutch is that they are really egalitarian, and that it's the norm to work collectively on finding a solution instead of just trying to impress the teacher with the right solution.
It's definitely a really interesting idea, and I really hope your dad decides to do it! Also, it would be an excellent opportunity for you to use your skills :)
Posted by: Elizabeth at August 15, 2004 8:00 PMThanks for your comment Elizabeth. I'm not sure either whether it will work out or not, but that's part of the experiment. My dad teaches at the school I attended myself, so I know what I can expect. As I understood the student all use IM regularly, so at least they are up to date with new communication media.
As for being more egalitarian, I don't expect that to be the case. Since most highschool students are in their uncertain phase called puberty they'll probably be reluctant to share their brilliance or ignorance with their peers. Anyway, we'll see how it works out.
Posted by: Elmine at August 15, 2004 9:09 PM
