ST PETER APOSTLE P.S.

-PROJECT FOCUS and EXPECTED OUTCOMES

To improve communication and collaboration through the use of contemporary tools and promote student responsibility for learning.

Teachers have a greater confidence and competence in using contemporary tools. Teachers are using a greater range of contemporary tools more frequently to communicate and collaborate with their students. Teachers are beginning to understand the need to relinquish control of student learning.

Students have a greater confidence and competence in using contemporary tools. Students make more effective decisions about their learning. Students are more active learners who are prepared to take risks and have an authentic voice.

OUR QUESTION
How will the use of contemporary tools for communication and collaboration support students to take greater ownership and responsibility for their learning?

EVIDENCE COLLECTED SO FAR

What is blogging? Have you ever tried blogging? If so, when? How could blogging help you with others? How could blogging help you with your learning?

Student surveys:

Student Follow up survey

- Have you contributed to the blog this week? How? If no, why not? - How has blogging helped you with your learning this week? - Have you learnt anything new this week? Did you discover this yourself or from a peer? - Did anyone post anything interesting? Why?

Teacher surveys:
Initially:

What is blogging? Have you ever used blogging? If so, when? How could blogging support communication and collaboration? How do you think blogging could contribute to greater ownership and responsibility for learning?

Follow up:

How do you currently provide for communication in your classroom and what does it look like? What tools do you use for this? How do you currently provide for collaboration in your classroom and what does it look like? What tools do you use for this? Do students in your grade take responsibility for their learning? If so, to what extent and how? Examples? Do students have ownership of their learning? If so, how and to what extent? Examples? What contemporary tools are you currently using in your classroom? How do you use these tools for communication? How do you use these tools for collaboration? How do you think you could use these tools to encourage greater student ownership and responsibility for their own learning? How could these tools more effectively be used to encourage communication and collaboration?

Student/Teacher interviews: grade 4 student pre interview

OUR PROJECT BLOG

Project Team Blog This blog has been set up to document the journey of our team. We record our personal journals, project meeting minutes, observations, findings and future direction for our project.

Angela Angela's Project Page- Journal

Evidence collected: Pre-data: students survey (whole class), video interviews with 3 case studies on current understanding of blogging. During process: re-interviewed 3 case studies to see if understandings have changed, blog entries. Findings so far: Results of student survey indicated that students had no idea of what blogging was. As there was a picture of a keyboard on the page, some students thought that it had something to do with typing. Strategies/Actions: Implemented blogging in the area of Literacy, primarily reading groups, in order to personalise learning. Introduced the process of communication by setting up a What I have Learnt Page so that students can communicate with their peers about new learning. As a class, set a new classroom goal concerning blogging and formatted success criteria for posting. Insights/Observations- Children were quick to adjust to the change and enthusiastic about blogging. Over the six week period things progressed very naturally with students blog comments going beyond answering pre-set questions to them collaborating and having conversations with people to gain more information. Hardest part was for me letting go of having total control and letting the students have a voice in their learning.

Grade 2 BLOG

Brian Brian's Project Page- Journal

Evidence collected: Scratch projects- progression of learning Case studies- what is communication, collaboration?- Progression of understanding Childrens question and answer wall Findings so far: Students are eager to learn from each other and are developing the skills to communicate understandings and questions Students are beginning to collaborate through peer support when working on projects Students are self directed in their approach to projects Strategies/Actions: Learning intentions with success criteria developed by students question/answer wall to share journey Share time throughout sessions- children share what they have learnt, any questions they have and answer others queries Insights/Observations Students are investigating and discovering new things in the Scratch program All students are showing responsibility by asking, answering and exploring Students are sharing their learning with others including teachers and parents

Evidence collected: Whole class pre survey data to record childrens understanding of blogging. Video interviews with three children at the initial stage and after three weeks of blogging. Screen shots of some of the early comments to be used for comparison with later comments. Findings so far: Children have really enjoyed blogging. Some of the more mature children have tried hard to embrace my ideas and respond thoughtfully. Some children are responding because they have to and there is little evidence of meaningful comments being posted at this stage. Strategies/Actions: At the beginning I put up lots of fun activities for the children to play with and comment on. We devised success criteria as a class on what made a good comment which we continually referred to. Children were encouraged to respond to comments in order to start a conversation. (Communication). Next I put up poetry and art pages with childrens poems and art typed or scanned onto them and encouraged other children to comment on the pieces with a view to improving each artists/ poets ability. Success criteria once again was devised for this purpose. (Collaboration). Insights/Observations-Perhaps I am being too ambitious with Grade 3. They have required a great deal of modelling and guidance to produce anything like the results I am looking for. I can only hope I am laying the groundwork for more thoughtful responses in coming years.

Stuart Stuart's Project Page- Journal

Grade 3C BLOG

Raquel Raquel's Project Page- Journal

Evidence collected: Student pre-survey (in both paper and video form) Blogging is word splash Case Study Video Reflections Snapshots of comments and responses to blog posts Findings so far: Students had little understandings of what blogging was. After a methodical introduction to blogging students understandings have increased and children are enjoying the communication element of blogging. Both case study children can identify times when the blog has supported their learning, yeah! The process of commenting effectively has been a long one, the creation of success criteria from the start supported this and throughout the project comments have become more purposeful and meaningful. Strategies/Actions: Blogging is wordsplash Watching clip from YouTube Muffy and the Big Bad Blog from the cartoon Arthur. To introduce what a blog is, but also the positive and negative aspects of it. Create a class definition of what blogging is to us. Create success criteria for what makes a good blog comment. Blogging the everyday within the classroom whether it be a recount of events, or links/videos to support our current learning. Introducing guest blogging and creating an application process for children to respond to.

Grade 4 BLOG

Insights/Observations My class were very good at the communication element to our research question; it was then I decided to incorporate the collaboration side through Guest Blogging. This has developed much excitement and enthusiasm from the students and will help children to have a greater ownership and responsibility for their own and others learning. Blogging requires not only time and commitment from the teacher but also requires time to be given in a busy, packed curriculum filled day! This can be tough. Appreciative of my past knowledge and experiences with technology and blogging as this has supported me to be at this stage of blogging with the students in my class. The Global2 page has some fantastic blog links which have supported me to find resources that will enhance my class blog and the ability to achieve our research question.

Sally Sally's Project Page- Journal

Evidence collected: Teacher blog survey [whole staff], teacher project questionnaire [interested non-project teachers], interviews with 3 case studies on current understandings, skills and knowledge [pre-data] Findings so far: Teacher have a sound understanding of communication but little of collaboration. Contemporary tools used to post student work only Teachers eager to use new tools Teachers provide limited opportunities for student ownership and responsibility for learning Strategies/Actions: After school meetings for interested teachers Teacher Blog to explore and support learning- Teacher Blog Case studies support- Setting personal goals-What the student learning could look like at the end of the project. Discuss ways of supporting each other on this journey. Insights/Observations- Teachers need to let go- give students greater control, ownership- they dont need to be the expert Teachers need support in developing a truly collaborative learning environment for students Teachers are enthusiastic about new technologies and learning environments

The following information was obtained from -Understanding Virtual Pedagogies For Contemporary Teaching and Learning- Richard Olsen. This may give you some insight into working towards the project question. Please feel free to comment! Communication is developing a sense of community with other learners. Students publishing their own content, presenting their achievements and reflecting on their ideas and understandings. They expect and welcome comments on their work. Communicating via the internet provides for stronger links between home, school and the wider community. Through blogging, for example, students can keep an online journal of their experiences and learning and invite others to comment on their work. It gives students an opportunity to reflect on their learning..self assessment. It is a focussed conversation with others. It provides the opportunity to communicate the whole learning process not just achievements and findings. Collaboration is students seeing learning as a collaborative activity where they not only take responsibility for their own learning but have an active role in the learning of others. They learn through this process to compare current beliefs with new understandings. A blog is the perfect forum for students to present their ideas and new understandings and receive feedback from others. Collaborating using Blogs allows for learning conversations and discussion with others about understandings to occur online. Collaboration requires that the teacher becomes a guide and community nurturer. Teachers can model by contributing to the online community. I have added the above information so that we can start to think about ways of using the tool of blogging to enhance communication and collaboration in the classroom. Any ideas? What do you think about the possibilities of blogging assisting with these skills? Please leave a reply!

From Teacher Blog

Questions we still have.

Are the children taking true ownership and responsibility for their learning? Could the level of teacher control be reduced further? How? How to encourage further and more effective collaboration with students? Is one of our next steps to utilise outside experts that children can collaborate with?

Next steps.
Continue case study evidence gathering; video responses, questions where children respond to how blogging is helping them. Continue promoting blogging through the school as an effective tool for student/teacher learning.