Blended Learning with ICT Education Students

TfL

"It made me more motivated to do the readings and reflect more deeply on my personal ideas and beliefs."

"I found it really useful and can see how a similar forum would be great to use for children's work diaries."

"I loved using blogger as a medium for recording work from the sessions ... As a user of social networking sites, I felt that it was much nicer having a blog than recording work in an essay or presentation."

"An unhelpful learning experience because a blog only works well when other users interact with it in order to share and expand ideas. This has not occurred here, it has simply been used as a tool for checking that we have done the work - a rather Big Brotherish approach that does not show any trust towards us as future professionals."

Design decisions

• We have control
• That students see and comment on one another's work

• Tagging
• Comments
• Artefacts
• Groups

• informal
• simple for students
• fast for tutors
• notifications
• privacy
• reporting

I feel Blogfolio in fact created a volume of work beyond that expected in other subjects. I’m afraid it felt very much like we were all churning out the blog entries just to ‘tick the box’ and sign off the module

Blogging, like all online written word, is a bit like shouting against the sea on a stormy day: no one can hear you, and - more essentially - no one is listening. It is a nice idea, but there wasn’t enough focus on it to make it enjoyable

Plus, the continual update notifications were a NIGHTMARE.

I feel that it was not made clear about the purpose of BlogFolio initially (that this is our file effectively and this is what we are being assessed on). I do not recall anyone telling me this was the purpose for BlogFolio so I just saw it as something I had to complete as homework. I thought it was a useful was to share work with peers however I think it should have been used more during placement to discuss other subjects rather than always ICT. This way we would be able to suggest lessons plans or things to do with the children and how we felt about placement.

I did find BlogFolio useful to see the comments of other people in my group, to see whether people had a similar opinion. It was also effective to be able to log and record what I

have completed for each of the sessions. I have enjoyed using blogfolio and feel happier creating blogs. I have also asked others on the course to use this to post up their lesson plans so we can share ideas.

I had never blogged before this course. I found the whole experience fascinating. Being encouraged to write reflections made me really focus on my own understanding and learning and, in doing so, this helped my own progression.

E-mail notifications

File types

Themes

Liking & promoting

Mobile devices

Passwords

Activity tagging

Encouraging dialogue

Reflection rather than evidence?

Informal vs Formal

Programme wide?

Beyond education?

Evaluation

A little history...

Our Students

Lessons Learnt

Blending with Blogger

2009-2010

Student Feedback

CC by www.wordle.net

Examples

Personal

Their Blogs

eg http://etippeltsarah.blogspot.com/

Situated

Reflective Practice

Blended learning with

ICT education students

Methodology

7289

615

Practitioner action research

Miles Berry & John Lodge

Department of Education

Roehampton University

Statistics

Design experiment

3548

Mixed methods

Wenger

Learning as doing

Practice

Learning as belonging

Community

Learning

Meaning

Learning as experience

Identity

Learning as becoming

Literature

Blogfolio

Kearawalla, Minocha,

Kirkup & Conole

Hramiak, Boulton & Irwin

Andergassen, Behringer,

Finlay, Gorra and Moore

Clark and Neumann

Bibliography

• Andergassen, M., Behringer, R., Finlay, J., Gorra, A., & Moore, D. (2009). Weblogs in higher education--why do students (not) blog? Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 7(3), 203-215.
• Clark, W. & Neumann, T. (2009). Eportfolios: Models and implementation.
• Hramiak, A., Boulton, H., & Irwin, B. (2009). Trainee teachers’ use of blogs as private reflections for professional development. Learning, Media and Technology, 34(3), 259-269.
• Kerawalla, L., Minocha, S., Kirkup, G., & Conole, G. (2008). An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging in higher education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25(1), 31-42.
• Papert, S. (1991). Situating constructionism. In I. Harel & Papert (Eds.), Constructionism, research reports and essays, 1985-1990 (I. Harel & Papert, Eds.). (pp. 1–11). Norwood NJ.
• Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. In M. Cole (Ed.), Mind in society (M. Cole, Ed.). Cambridge, MA.
• Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge Univ Pr.