4. Reflection - What Have I Learned

Upon reflection of my learning activity, I have learnt far more than I thought possible. When I came up with the idea of having each and every child in the class designing their own blog, I thought the scope would be rather limited.

However, as I played with Blogger more and more, I realised that any piece of media in any format could be uploaded to their blogs. This in turn allows the teacher to set tasks and learning activities that reach far beyond what was possible years ago. Multimodal forms of lesson delivery become available and, with a dedicated focus on Web 2.0 technology integration, teachers are able to incorporate many other technologies into their lessons, with the blog as the centerpiece.

These include Wikis, for more detailed discussion content conversation than might be possible on the blog. Twitter can offer the ‘microblogging’ equivalent and is easily accessible for students with Smartphones, iPhones, iPads or Tablets. Google Earth and Google Maps also add a brilliant depth and contextual geographical viewpoint to the content that might be being studied in English. For example, a contextual study of Lord of the Flies can be accompanied by a brief study of the war in the Pacific – where did it occur? What possible islands could the young boys have been on?

Although previously discussed, the benefits and possibilities are endless.

It must also be noted that activities of this nature are well suited to group activities, as seen in the Learning Activity. As “studies have shown that in collaboration between peers, all learners benefit” (John & Wheeler, 2008, p.40), we must be careful about the ways in which we plan our lessons to incorporate technology into a group situation. For example, if two boys are designing their blogs, the other two boys in their group can be researching the information needed to complete their activity.

Certainly “we can be optimistic that once the potential of the Read/Write Web [blogs] finds its way into schools, students and teachers will be launched on a path of discovery and learning like they have never experienced before” (Richardson, 2009, p.7).

…