Adopting Blogging in the Classroom Curriculum Regional District 16 Joy Winterhalder Walden University

Why let our students Blog? By byrachelboyd

WHY WOULD WE WANT TO ADOPT BLOGGING INTO A CURRICULUM? Blogging is a powerful and effective tool for both teachers and students Students can ask meaningful questions Students can encourage new questions Students can share information about a subject and encourage alternative ideas Interaction can be promoted between the teacher, the student, and the parent Other community members can also be involved in the classroom discussions

WHO IS THE BLOGGING AUDIENCE? The blogging audience would include:  Students in the classroom.  Students in other classrooms.  The teacher.  Parents and local community members.

LEARNING OUTCOME Would include:  Objectives of the lesson given  The standards being addressed  The vitals to be enhanced

INFORMATION Information shared would include:  Opinions  Facts  Links to other resources including audios and videos

Reflection  Blogs can be used as a technological tool to help individuals think about their learning and reflections of their learning, respectively.

Interaction  Blogging allows for communication between the individual posting an entry and the individuals who are commenting on the entry posted. The posts would include:  Critiques  Expanded information  Questions to expand thoughts

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BLOGGING TIMELINE KNOWLEDGE STAGE 1992 – Version 1.1 was released allowing direct access to “gopher” (text files) – Netscape –Justin Hall forms a Home page (links from the underground – News for Nerds is established.

BLOGGING TIMELINE PERSUASION STAGE 1998 – Camworld (a list of blog sites) was developed by Cameron Barrett – AdSense is Launched by Google and Weblogs, Inc., Jason Calcanis – “Blog” is declared word of the year by Merriam-Webster and

BLOGGING TIMELINE DECISION STAGE 1999 – “wee-blog”, Peter Merholz tool to build your own blog and Pyra publishes Blogger (popular web based blogging) – Boing Boing was re-launched as a weblog Heather Armstrong was fired for blogging about, gawker and the gossip blog boom – More than a million blog ads were sold.

IMPLEMENTATION/CONFERMATION STAGE Microblogging tool Twitter launched : Vox Released by Six Apart 2007: Tumblr microblogging tool launches

CURRENT RESEARCH Berson, H, & Berson, M. (2006). Priveleges, privacy, and protection of youth bloggers in the social studies classroom. Source of Social Education, 70(n3), Burke, S, & Oomen-Early, J. (2008). That's blog worthy: ten ways to integrate blogging into the health education classroom. American Journal of Health Education, 39(n6), Kerstetter, K. (2010). Instructional blogging in the general music room. General Music Today, 24(1), Ramaswami, R. (2008). The prose (and a few cons, too) of blogging. T.H.E. Journal, 35(11), 1-6. Sawmiller, A. (2010). Classroom blogging: what is the role in science learning. The Clearing House, 83, Zawilinski, Lisa. (2009). Hot blogging: a framework for blogging to promote higher order thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(8), Sun, Y. (2010). Extensive writing in foreign-language classrooms: a blogging approach. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 47(3),

Tim O’Relly proposed a “Bloggers Code of Conduct in 2004 as a result of threats being made on a blog. 1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog. 2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments. 3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments. 4. Ignore the trolls. 5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so. 6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so. 7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person. Reference: O’Reilly, T. (2007). Call for a bloggers code of conduct. O’Reilly Radar. BLOGGING TIMELINE AND A CODE OF CONDUCT FOR BLOGGING.

Percentage of Use over Years S-Curve for Blogging Usage  This S-curve was done by years and percentages of information that I could possibly find on blog usage. Besides trying to research percent usage of blogging over the years.  The chart currently here reflects the explosive growth of blogging from the first blog by a Swarthmore student (Justin Hill), in  References:  Cheng, J. (2008). Report: Like it or not, number of bloggers growing rapidly. Retrieved from:  number-of-bloggers-growing-rapidly.ars  Shafer, J. (2006). Who are all these bloggers? And what they want? Retrieved from. 

S-CURVE: PERCENTAGE OVER TIME

OUR REGION The availability of the innovators exists and there are a handful of teachers in our building who have adopted blogging as an educational source for enhancing reading and writing comprehension scores. The challenge today is to have students learn more effectively with advanced technology. One way of increasing teachers’ adoption of innovators would be to offer more in-services on the effective use of technology in the classroom.

WHO ARE OUR INNOVATORS AND EARLY ADOPTERS? The innovators in our district are those individuals who characterized by Rogers (2003), are youngest in age, are very social and are willing to take risks. The early adopters, characteristically, are individuals with a high degree of leadership, have advanced education, and are more socially advanced (Rogers, 2003). With this in mind, I believe the individuals who would most likely adopt the innovation of blogging as part of their curriculum, would be those in our district who follow Rogers’ characteristics of both the innovator and the early adopter. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.

WHO ARE OUR LAGGARDS? The opposite of the innovators and early adopters are the laggards. The laggards are individuals who are last to consider adopting an innovation (Rogers, 2003). These individuals are characterized by Rogers as showing little to no leadership, have an aversion to change, are likely to be older, and are traditionally set in their ways. In my district, there are many laggards I could identify. As technology ascended, identifying both the innovators and the early adopters from the laggards is rather noticeable. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.

STRATEGIES FOR ADOPTION The strategies best useful to move the laggards along would be to have a professional development day that revolves around the innovation to be adopted. The district could also offer follow-up interventions to promote the adoption of the innovation. The innovators and early adopters could be targeted for training at these professional days.

For an example of current blog usage see:   Louis Sachar, the author of Holes.

References  Berson, H, & Berson, M. (2006). Priveleges, privacy, and protection of youth bloggers in the social studies classroom. Source of Social Education, 70(n3),  Boyd, R. (Producer). (2010). Why let our students blog? [Web]. Available from  Burke, S, & Oomen-Early, J. (2008). That's blog worthy: ten ways to integrate blogging into the health education classroom. American Journal of Health Education, 39(n6),  Kerstetter, K. (2010). Instructional blogging in the general music room. General Music Today, 24(1),  O’Reilly, T. (2007). Call for a bloggers code of conduct. O’Reilly Radar.  Ramaswami, R. (2008). The prose (and a few cons, too) of blogging. T.H.E. Journal, 35(11), 1-6.  Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.  Sawmiller, A. (2010). Classroom blogging: what is the role in science learning. The Clearing House, 83,  Zawilinski, Lisa. (2009). Hot blogging: a framework for blogging to promote higher order thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(8),  Sun, Y. (2010). Extensive writing in foreign-language classrooms: a blogging approach. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 47(3),