We have reached critical mass for the live web to become an integral part of education. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been encouraging maths teachers to blog and to set up class blogs, and discovered that I’m pushing at an open door. Craig, Tim, Mags, Jenny, and Paul have all made a start already. I know that we still have a majority of staff for whom the whole thing is a bit of a mystery, but more and more teachers are realising that blogging is a simple, easy thing to do with classes that enriches the learning and teaching experience. My guess is that within a year or two class blogging will have become a routine activity – just another part of good practice that most people do. In the words of Darren Kuropatwa:

All my classes are hybrid classes. They have both a face-to-face component and an online component. Each class is supported by a blog.

In this context, it’s important that LTS’s actions nurture and support the growing blogosphere that already exists in scottish education. I think East Lothian’s work on Exc-el points the way. The key feature of East Lothian’s approach has been the freedom that bloggers have been given. Want a blog? – go ahead and set one up for yourself, no questions asked. No heavy corporate disclaimers and acceptable use policies to sign. No paperwork to fill in. No formal support mechanisms even! Just go for it! We trust you.

This has been a brave experiment, and the results are plain to see – usage of Exc-el is rocketing. It’s being used by everyone from lowly heads of education right up to the students themselves!

So, the future’s looking rosy, right? Well, not necessarily. The nightmare scenario goes something like this: every class in Scotland is given a bland, “Education Scotland” branded blog over which they have no control in terms of look-and-feel. A restrictive, risk averse blogging policy is created that forbids class blogging outwith this environment. A heavy-handed filtering system is implemented to censor access to blogs and who can post comments on them.

We’ve seen exactly this kind of approach taken to Web1.0 in education. Neil points this out in “Computer Say No” and goes on to examine the causes and possible solutions. Unless we actively engage with decision makers in educational IT at an authority level and try to persuade them to be less risk averse, we are bound to see these policies repeated. What is the person who believes Flickr, Blogspot and Youtube should be blocked going to think when they realise that a blog is a place where anyone in the world can write a comment? No chance. Wikis? You must be joking! We are still under the radar now. The struggle to keep the door open to Web2.0 in education has not yet begun.

I’m delighted to read that LTS are aware of the problems highlighted by Neil. All the people I know working at LTS in this field are definitely good-guys, far more forward thinking and knowledgeable than I, so I’m optimistic. My only concern is that the good guys may not be the ones that get to make the decisions.

I wonder how it will feel when we have 200-400 staff blogging?  I’m very excited by the prospect, but am also aware that we will need to think about how we, as a community, manage that expansion if we are going maintain a sense of community. I would like the 401st blogger to have as positive an experience as I have had.
What do you all reckon?

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!

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.