‘Blogging – is it worth the effort??’

An Action Research Project From Maori Hill School’s Senior Classes.

Blogs can be defined as chronologically arranged online journals through whichstudents can share their reflective writing. The tone of the blog reflects theindividually of our classrooms and the positive culture of the school. Research wouldindicate that classroom blogs are a very effective way to enhance home and school partnerships. Thomas McHale, an English teacher at Hunterdon Central RegionalHigh School (USA) believes that classroom blogs are a powerful tool to use in theclassroom.

“ they engage students in the processes of reading and reflecting.”

Three teachers at Maori Hill School set out to see if this statement was true.At the beginning of 2008 our classes set up classroom blogs. These blogs weresimple in that entries were posted at school and able to be viewed from home. Therewas not opportunity for parents to comment on-line. The blogs were promotedthrough our class newsletters, school newsletters, homework sheets, individual flyersand student and teacher contact with parents. Students posted regular entries whichreflected aspects of their school based learning. They also included photographs andwere managed by the students themselves.After two terms of ‘blogging activity’ parents were surveyed on their familiarity anduse of the blog. The teachers also interviewed a cross section of students from their classes.The results were as follows -\

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24% of our parents responded to the blog

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Of these the majority had learnt about the blog through the school newsletter

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Student promotion was the second most effective source of promotion

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Followed by homework sheets and notices equally

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Direct teacher contact was the least used point of contact.Some parents indicated that they had difficulty in viewing the blog. This may be dueto entering the incorrect address. The majority however had found the blog easy touse. Parents enjoyed viewing the photos of school events and felt it kept them up-to-date on the happenings around the school. Comments such as -‘

Really enjoyed seeing the children participating in a wide range of activities both inthe classroom and outside.’ ‘Thought it was good that the children wrote about the photographs.’

When asked what they would like to see more of our parents suggested that more photos and more regular updates would be useful. One parent suggested that the aimsof the classroom be included. It was obvious from the responses that parents enjoyed

the photographs most and saw this as an update, especially as many were unable toattend many of the activities and outings.When asked if they would like to see the weekly homework sheet included in the blog, the responses were equally divided. Parents of older students tended to see bringing homework sheets home as the child’s responsibility while the parents of younger students felt a homework sheet section would be useful.Parents were asked to include any additional comments which would help to improveour blogsite. One parent commented on the use of children’s names and photographson the blog site and expressed a concern about cyber-safety, another suggested weconsider the most effective colours for the layout of the blog while the otherscommented positively on the site.Our initial aim was to explore Thomas McHale’s thoughts that classroom blogs are a powerful tool to use in the classroom which

engage students in the processes of reading and reflecting.”

From surveying our students,

our findings would supportthis idea.

All students knew about and had viewed the classroom blog. A great manyof them had accessed it from both school and home. They commented on the wayit showed the things we have been doing and reminds us what has happened over theyear. They enjoyed the fact that it was updated but the old ‘news’ was still kept.Children who have had the opportunity to write their reflections were proud of their work and 96% of students agreed that the blog accurately reported their thoughts andfeelings. Interestingly, the students thought putting our homework sheet on the blogwould be useful while our parents did not.From the information gathered in this survey and the teacher’s own thoughts andfeelings, we have agreed to work on following ‘next’ steps’ –

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We will update the sites more regularly, encouraging the students to takeresponsibility for entering information on the site, recording reflections ontheir learning and inserting photographs of current happenings.

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Teachers will check the layout of the sites to see that the fonts used bystudents are able to be read clearly.

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Care will be taken NOT to include the names of students and ensure thatstudents are not easily identifiable through any photographs that may appear.Teachers considered the blogsite to be safer than some, in that while it didappear on the web for public viewing, individuals were not able to postcomments.

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Including the classroom aims or focus is easy to do and would be valuable inenhancing the home-school partnership.

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Including current happenings has always been one of the aims of the project.As students learn to navigate the site and take more independent responsibilityfor it’s creation we felt that this become another part of the classroom programme.