Well my last master’s class is coming to an end. It is bitter sweet as I am not sure where I will find something else to fill the energy that has been created. I worry that there will be a void left, or that I will not find the time to continue on my lifelong journey of learning. I know that I will always be a lifelong learner but will I challenge myself to such high standards as have been required throughout the last year and a half?
In any case for EC&I 831 we had to create a major digital project of our choosing. What I decided to do was to create a blog for my school. In my PLC we have been talking about how to increase student success in online learning and one of the items that we talked about was how to generate community with the online teachers throughout the division. It was our hope that the blog would support our online teachers and empower them to incorporate best practices in their courses that will create a learning community and help to engage students ultimately leading to excellence in learning.
Ok, creating a blog is not the issue, which is about a 10 minute job. How do we get online teachers to buy in? I wanted to create a blog for our school as it would fit the needs of this major project and also the needs of my PLC but this wasn't something that I wanted to be mine. I wanted this blog to take on a life of it's own where each cyber school teacher felt ownership of and wanted to contribute. The first step in making that happen was to have our principle talk about the blog at our video conference staff meeting. She let the staff know about the blog and that we would be discussion some of the posts at our meetings. The first meeting we had generated some interest but we ran into issues such as schools not being able to access blogs.
The content of the blog to date has ranged from teaching practices such as creating meaningful online discussions and how to get participation in online classes, to providing useful resources such as how to site Creative Commons pictures and how to do a proper bibliography. Many of the articles that were presented on our school blog I took further and elaborated on them in this blog such as using the CREST model to write Effective Discussion Board Questions.
I did create a place on the blog for commen assessment items but I it has not been added to and at this point I am not sure if there is interest. I will leave up the tab but it may have to be another initiative to get people to post resources to the blog. Right now the focus is on generating traffic to the site and getting people participating in the discussion. There is also a site for plagiarism resources with a few items there. I added a document on how to use compfight and imagecodr (information from one of our ECI class sessions) as well as a good website that explains what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Again, I am not sure at this point that people see the blog as a place to get resources but as long as we are generating discussion then I think that we are on the right track.
There were initially two of us committed to posting to the blog and trying to generate interest. I tweeted the blog each time a new post came up and my principle would send out an e-mail to all of the Cyber School
The first blog entry on the book was done by our school math lead teacher and she did such a good job (and I think she enjoyed writing it) that we volunteered her to write each of the blog entries for the book. I e-mailed out to our entire division the blog telling them about our chapter summaries, since it is a book that our entire division is suppose to be reading. Our technology teacher sent an e-mail out to the publisher of the book to see if the author wanted to post to our blog, and the rest is history. We had our last staff meeting and there was excellent discussion around our division math initiatives and the blog supported that conversation and learning.
Where as I still post to the blog on average of once a week, reply to each person’s postings, and try to generate traffic through twitter and e-mail, the blog is not mine. It truly has taken a life of its own where other people have taken ownership and are looking forward to creating that professional community.
Our school blog can be found at http://chinookcyberschool.wordpress.com/
2 comments:
Wow, congrats on winding up your final class of your Master's! That is a fabulous accomplishment! I can relate to your feelings though of it coming to an end. I am shocked by how quickly the time is flying by. It is such a special experience and I know it won't be replicated elsewhere. But the learning and enthusiasm will carry forward and lead you to places unforeseen. Good for you of taking on the challenge of creating a blog that has multiple voices, is collaborative and shared ownership. Not an easy task but your approach and commitment has clearly made a difference. Thank you for sharing the journey in your post.
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