Melanie Gray’s Blog

The three R’s, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, have long been the foundation of our educational system. Parents, teachers, administrators, and even politicians have focused on improving student scores in these areas for many years. District, state and national tests have been created to show student achievement in these key areas. In my school district, our math and reading MEAP scores are outstanding with more than 90% of the students scoring in the proficient range for Mathematics and for Reading. However, in the area of Writing only 78% of the students are considered proficient (Plymouth Canton Community Schools, 2009). My schools, as well as many others in my district, have been working hard to find ways to increase student performance in writing. We have looked at a variety of resources including notables in the writing field Lucy Calkins and Barry Lane. Unfortunately, those alone have not increased test scores to the same level as reading and math scores across the district. While many elementary teachers in my district use technology to enhance their lessons, few go beyond the fancy projector and teacher created power points and allow students to access technology in writing.

According to the 2006 publication of The Sate of Writing Instruction in America’s Schools: What Existing Data Tells Us, students who used technology to research, plan, write, and edit their papers had higher levels of writing achievement (Applebee, 2006).

Is it possible to increase student motivation and therefore increase student achievement in writing with blogs?

Blog is the shortened term for “weblog” coined by Jorn Barger in December of 1997 is best described as an online journal (Wikepedia, 2009). A Google search for blogs will bring up a plethora of hits. In fact, over 60 million blogs were created by May 2005 (Haunn, 2005). There are a variety of different types of blogs. One can blog about family events, new technology gadgets, or even current events. The choices that one has when it comes to writing and reading blogs are unbelievable. Blogs are easily assessable as well; one doesn’t need to be a html programmer to have a blog. Many blog services are free and very easy to use. Which also makes them a great opportunity for schools. According to eSchoolNews, “Kids are getting excited and engaged in literacy through blogging, commenting and sharing ideas (Pierce, 2006).” Today’s students are tech-savvy and it is important to take advantage of this.

Beverley Crane, Education Consultant writes about the benefits of blogging and how it can be used to motive students to write and research in “Blogging in the Language Arts.” Blogging creates a different learning environment than the traditional classroom and expands the walls of the classroom. With blogging students have an authentic audience, rather than just the teacher. Students now have friends and family members able to read and comment on their writing. The constructive feedback from comments helped students to organize their thoughts, refine the details, and take pride in their work (Dexler, 2007).

With blogging students don’t have to compete for the teachers attention. Blogging actually levels the playing field for students. Rather than hearing from only the most vocal students, blogging gives the verbally reserved students a forum for their thoughts (Crane, 2007).

Blogging isn’t just limited to language arts curriculum; it can very easily be multidisciplinary. Social Studies teachers might have their students read and respond to a current event, or a Science teacher might have students reflect on the outcome of an experiment. Blogging as a writing genre has many benefits in terms of developing critical thinking skills, writing skills and offers students a chance to reflect on what they are writing (Downes, 2004).

While, Web 2.0 technologies add additional tools to the teachers’ bag of tricks that stimulate discussion, research, writing and critical thinking not everything that glitters is not good. Even though there are many benefits of blogging some few the risks are too great to chance the benefits of it. School districts often filter and keep students way from the dangers of society (Ackerman, 2006). Thus, preventing students from accessing many blogging sites.

In a blogging study of undergraduate upper-level students some participants felt that blogging was less formal and therefore took the blog entries less seriously (Ellison, 2008). Students in this same study also expressed frustration in regards to feedback on the blogs. While some feedback was rich and beneficial, other feedback was negative and lacking in substance since students did not know how to respond to other people’s ideas (Ellison, 2008).

While there are definite pros and cons to classroom blogging there is still not a lot of research pertaining strictly to the elementary classroom. Nine and ten year olds will respond differently to blogging than twenty year olds. I feel it is incredibly important to understand and realize the possible downfalls of student blogging. However, the possible benefits and increased student motivation and achievement outweigh the cons to classroom blogging.

Works Cited

(2009, April 1). Retrieved June 14, 2009, from Plymouth Canton Community Schools: http://www.pccs.k12.mi.us/district/meap/meap%202008/grade%205.htm

Ackerman, J. D. (2006, August). Motivation for Writing Through Blogs. Ohio, USA.

Applebee, A. N. (2006). The State of Writing Instruction in America’s Schools: What Existing Data Tells Us. New York State Univeristy, Albany, Center on English Learnging & Achievement. Albany: New York State University, Albany.

Crane, B. (2007). Blogging in the Language Arts. Information Searcher , 17 (2).

Dexler, W. D. (2007). Collaborative Blogging as a Means to Develop Elementary Expository Writing Skills. Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education , 6.

Downes, S. (2004, Sept/Oct). Educational Blogging. Retrieved June 2, 2009, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp

Ellison, N. B. (2008). Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehension. Journal of Eucational Multimedia and Hypermedia , 17 (1), 99-122.

Haunn, T. J. (2005). Weblogs in Education. Retrieved from IT Literature Review: http://edublog.net/astinus/mt/archives/2005/09/weblogs_in_educ.html

Pierce, D. (2006, March 24). Palenists: Blogs are changing education. Retrieved June 3, 2009, from eSchoolNews: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=36898&CFID=8231325&CFTOKEN=34009692

Wikepedia. (2009, June 14). Blog. Retrieved June 14, 2009, from Wikipedia, the free encylopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Below are a few of the resources that I have found for my research proposal.

Drexler, Wendy, Kara Dawson, & Richard E. Ferdig. Collaborative Blogging as a Means to Develop Elementary Expository Writing Skills, Volume 6, 2007. Retrieved June 4, 2009, from Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education.

Study examined blogging collaboration between third grade students and pre-student teachers. This project not only improved student attitudes toward writing, it also inspired a transfer of knowledge to other academic and social areas. Study also showed that the immediate feedback in the form of comments increased student motivation to write more.

Ellison, N., & Wu, Y. (2008). Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. 17(1), 99-122.

A quantitative study were the authors explore how blogging impacts college student attitudes and increase comprehension in courses. Study looks at the possibility of students being more careful about their writing when they have a larger audience.

Manzo, Kathleen Kennedy. (2008, April). More Students Master ‘Basics’ on Writing NAEP :Only a small proportion of 8th and 12th graders are ‘proficient’. Education Week, 27(32), 1, 16. Retrieved June 4, 2009, from Research Library Core database. (Document ID: 1466691021).

In the article, the authors discuss that more middle and high school students are at the basic level on national tests. While there were increases, The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows only a small amount are in the proficient range.

Zawilinski, Lisa (05/01/2009). “HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking”. The Reading teacher (0034-0561), 62 (8), p. 650.

Article discussing the four different type of blogs commonly found in the elementary classroom as well as gives a step by step set up to blogging. The author also explores how blogging increases higher order thinking skills with books that the students read during the year.

Zimet, E. (1993, November). Grant writing techniques for K-12 funding. T H E Journal, 21(4), 109. Retrieved June 4, 2009, from Business Source Complete database.

The author, Ellen Zimet, shares techniques for grant writing. Throughout the article the author explains the ins and outs of grant writing. Steps that are discussed include: developing the needs assessment, developing the goal/vision, as well as developing reasons why funding is important. Resources for grants are also listed.

For my masters class CEP 822 Approaches to Ed Research I am in the process of developing a research proposal based on the question above.  Please leave me a comment with your thoughts!

Introduction & Background:

The elementary school I currently teach at is the oldest and only elementary school in the city of Plymouth, Michigan.   Smith Elementary has approximately 510 students in grades kindergarten through 5th with 18 highly qualified talented classroom teachers.   Our school also has teachers specialized in the areas of art, music, gym, early intervention, media, speech pathology, and resource room.

While we are an old school we do have an updated media center.  Our school media center has approximately 30 Dell computers, a printer, and an Epson media projector attached to the teacher computer.  The computers have a variety of software installed on them including:  Miscorsoft Office (word, power point, excel), Kidspiration, Timeliner, and a variety of other kid friendly programs.  The teacher computer also has Vision installed on it, which allows teachers to not only demonstrate what students will be doing it also allows the teacher to monitor student computers from one location.

Each classroom at Smith Elementary has one dell hard drive with two monitors.  First grade through fifth grade classrooms also have an Epson media projector and access to a printer in their prospective hallways.

One hundred percent of my twenty-six fifth graders have computer and Internet access at home whenever they need it.  However, due to school scheduling my students are lucky to access the computer lab for a 45-minute period every other week.  Teachers are able to sign up for “extra” lab time, however it is done on a first come first serve basis.  Scheduling these times around the other 18 classrooms vying for lab time can be down right difficult to nearly impossible.

Even though I have two classroom computers I rarely use them for student projects.   Time is the biggest constraint for me not using the computers in my room.  It is very difficult to carve out the time I need students to work on technology-enhanced projects and still be able to give direct instruction in other subject areas.  Having access to more classroom computers rather than just two would greatly enhance the use of technology in my fifth grade classroom.  There is so much out there in the area of technology that I am unable to bring to my students (note taking, podcasting, voice threads, blogging, etc) due to the limiting factor of only having two computers in my classroom and limited access to the computer lab.

According to the article, “When each one has one: The influences on teaching strategies and student achievement of using laptops in the classroom,” students in grades five through seven who had 24 hour access to laptops greatly increased their writing achievement, computer literacy skills, and increased their interest in learning (Deborah L Lowther, 2003).  Students using laptops used them for word processing, research, note taking, as well as project bases assignments.

Computers in the classroom do not just increase student interest and involvement in projects they also can help them become teachers themselves.  Computers  in the classroom can also help students who have advanced computer skills develop advanced academic and social skills by sharing their knowledge with their peers and teachers (Brogan, 2000).

My desire is to find an education technology grant that will allow me to introduce more computers into my elementary classroom.  With the additional access to computers my students would be able to collaborate on project-based learning, digital story telling, create podcasts and blog on a consistent basis.  Adding these computers to my classroom would also increase student interest in learning through access to new technologies.

Sources:

Brogan, P. (2000, October). A parent’s perspective: educating the digital generation. Educational Leadership , 57-9.
Deborah L Lowther, S. M. (2003). When each one has one: The influene on teachign strategies and student achievement of using laptops in the classroom. Educational Technology, Reaseach adn Development , 51 (3), 23-44.