Jonesieblog

Listening to Radio 4 this morning, as I always do, I heard the weather forecast.  The magic words were uttered – “rain in Scotland, wintery over the hills.”

Thus begins the Scottish winter.  From now until April, I’ll be constantly checking weather forecasts and the Winterhighland Web site  to see if and when the Scottish resorts will be open for me to go snowboarding.  Hope springs eternal!  Can’t wait

Stumble it!

If you’ve been wondering what tools are available on-line for educators, look no further than this amazing post from Brian Benzinger. I’ve only read part 1 of 3 so far. Looking forward to seeing what comes next

Stumble it!

In reply to my last post, Robin Strain asked “Can you persuade me the advantages of blogging?” Great question Robin – I think it deserves a fresh post

6 months ago I would have asked exactly the same question. I am involved with an online community of educators and technologists who seek to embrace the opportunities that Open Source software offers education. The official website is Schoolforge but we communicate mainly through google discussion groups. These work well for us, and up until I came across Exc-el, I didn’t really see the point of blogging.

Before I start trying to explain why blogs are fit for purpose here, I should say that you have to blog yourself to really find out why blogging works – it’s a bit like dancing: it looks kind of stupid from the seats at the side, but once you’re on the dance floor it feels great!

I have been involved, over the last few years, in several attempts to establish on-line communities for teachers. None of them have worked, until now. The community that is developing now through blogs is an on-line community established by teachers. That’s why I think it will flourish, and the process of blogging is key to the sense of ownership that the participants have.

Once someone has gone to the effort of setting up a blog, and making it look the way they want (it is vital that bloggers can do this – the blog needs to feel like it is really theirs) they have already put in some effort. Now the world is looking. Once they have made a couple of posts, and people have started to comment on their posts (as will certainly happen to any teacher in East Lothian that starts blogging!), the newbie bloggers starts to feel that they have an audience – “hey – people are actually looking at this!”. Now they have a real incentive to keep their blog alive. If things go quiet, they know that it is because they didn’t write any new posts for while.

Compare this with a bulletin board. On a bulletin board, the contributors haven’t really invested anything. It’s not their bulletin board (unless they made it – that’s why there are often more posts from the administrator of the bulletin board than anyone else!). If things go quiet, as they always have done in the past on educational bulletin boards for Scottish teachers, it doesn’t feel like anyone in particular is responsible.

It’s great if a bulletin board supports a thriving community. I think that creating an educational blogosphere in Scotland stand a better chance of success.

The other great benefits of blogging are that tags are attached to posts, making it easy to find what you are looking for, and that RSS feeds can pull together relevant information from blogs into one place.

I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface here – oh yes – another big benefit is that blogging is great for pupils and we need teachers to blog if they are going to see the benefit of blogs for their pupils.

If anyone can think of more or better reasons for us to be using blogs to develop an on-line community, please let me know!

Stumble it!

North Berwick High School is a medium-sized school, with 6 teachers in the maths department. East Lothian Council is a small authority with 6 high schools, and around 50 maths teachers.

Since beginning my secondment (one day per week) I’ve had the opportunity to visit each of the schools in East Lothian and spend time in the maths departments. As I’ve said elsewhere, these visits have been fascinating for me, and I’ve been struck by the professionalism and committment of the teachers I’ve visited. I’ve learnt from and been inspired by my encounters.

At the end of this year, my secondment will come to an end, and I will no longer have the opportunity to meet with colleagues – most maths teachers never have that opportunity.

It seems to me that by establishing an online community we can all, as maths teachers in East Lothian, benefit from enriching encounters with our colleagues. This will be good for everyone, but in particular it will be great for me! I really don’t want to lose contact with the great people I’ve met over the last few weeks. Face-to-face meetings are simply not feasible on a regular basis, but blogs will allow us to keep the conversations alive.

“But why blogs?” – I hear you say. “Why can’t we just email each other?”. There are many reasons, but for me the main one is that communication via blogs is open – anyone is free to join in, and everyone can see what everyone else is talking about.

The new Exc-el blogs are now up and running, thanks to David, so tomorrow I’m going to register every maths teacher in East Lothian as a contributor to a new blog for all maths teachers. My hope is that soon many maths teachers will set up their own blogs, but in the meantime they’ll be able to dip their toes in the water with this collaborative one.

Stumble it!

I just caught the end of a learning curve on Radio 4 that seemed to be all about technology in education, with Stephen Heppel amongst others.  You can catch it here

Stumble it!