2008

Andrew SloanBalmacewen Intermediate School2008

Action Research – Andrew Sloan

Can using a Blog site enhance Studentssharing and communication of experienceswith home?

Can Using a Blog site to enhance Students sharing and communication of learning experiences with home?

Name of School/Class Year GroupBalmacewen Intermediate Room 13 Seven, 26 Students (16 boys, 10 girls)Teacher Andrew SloanResearch Focus/QuestionDoes the regular use of a blog site to share and communicate students work, experiences, classroomnotices and events enhance students’ motivation and communication with home?RationaleIn today’s life most students have access to the internet at home, and all have access at school. In thecase of Room 13; 25 of the 26 students have internet access at home.Does communication of students work, experiences and notices via an internet site stimulate studentsto become more involved in sharing experiences with others outside of school?I was interested to see whether students would take a greater pride in sharing things like writtenstories, personal experiences and photos via our blog page. I felt that there was a gap in the way inwhich parents were able to find out about what was happening in the classroom, by establishing a blog page/pages I could get students promoting what they are doing to their parents/caregivers in aclearer way, and basically opening up another line of communication between the students learningexperiences and home.I wanted to set up a page which parents/family members/friends and in fact people from anywherecould go into and see what has been happening in our class – a celebration of our learning. In additionto the student learning experiences and class activities the posting of class notices and reminders wereto be included on the main blog page, as there is a known problem of parents not always gettingnotices and information when needed so the addition of this information would keep those parentswho were using the page informed.Project OutlineA means of communication and informing throughout the year and having students share their work with people outside school via internet blog page/pages.Preparation

Aims- I wanted to:

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Encourage students to promote and share their learning/experiences/work with others.

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Communicate with home and the school community using the internet as an additionalmedium to what we already use.

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Have students motivated to put work onto this site and celebrate their successes.

Action Research – Andrew Sloan

2008

3Expected OutcomesThat throughout the year students will be motivated to put pieces of their work and reports onexperiences onto the class site. The expected outcome for parents was to have them visiting this siteregularly and using it as a way of informing them of class happenings, while hopefully creatingdiscussion at home with their child about school learning experiences and happenings.Preparation

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Prior to the start of the school year I set up the class blog page and all the associated links.The address was/iswww.room13balmacewen.blogspot.comthis blogger address is a free host and is very easy to set up, maintain and edit, free set up atwww.blogger.com

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In an introductory letter home on day one I outlined my intention for this site and how we planned to use it.

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Meet the teacher evening I had some info posted on the site and showed this to all parentswho were present at the information evening how to access and the functions of this site.

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In class the students were introduced to the site and motivated to get some of their own work published onto the page.Ongoing UseOnce up and running this site has been added to and has several parts to it. The students in the classwere initially all very interested in putting some work of their ownon here, making comment on work posted by their peers. There is a site linked to the main class pagecalledwww.balmac13writing.blogspot.comwhere students all put a pieceof narrative writing on and their class peers, and parents/people at home were able to make comments and ideas related to what theyhad written. All of the comments posted were screened by me first, a useful feature of the blogger sites. As students commented they could begin to read what everyone thought of the different piecesof writing, this was initially planned to be a useful tool of editing and reworking of the studentswritten work, however this had its limitations and the students used the commenting function more asa way of commenting on the things they liked about the story and there were very few commentsrelated to the editing of the students work.

Action Research – Andrew Sloan

2008

This is the main class blog page you seewhen you visit the address