On Blogging in Middle School

 

Aisha Ertugrul: email   aisha.ertugrul@tedistanbul.k12.tr

 

EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION: 21st Century Skills for Our Students

 

All over the world, interactive web technologies are transforming education

  

The Student of Today

Information communication technology has forever changed us and continues to at a startling pace. In today’s world it is most evident in our children’s lives by the games they play and the ‘toys’ they buy. As teachers, out of respect for our students, we must evolve by dramatically transforming the way we instruct; otherwise, we are in danger of teaching as we were taught. What was fine even in the 1980s is outdated today.  Ask yourself, if you would want to drive a car, seek medical advice, or even watch most films from the 1980’s?

 

Teaching to Student Needs: An Anecdote

I’ve dabbled with a personal blog since 2006, but my real journey of transformation started with a conversation that was related to me by the father of one of my students. Gizem was having trouble on the computer and was asking for Aytaç’s advice through SKYPE. It wasn’t working. Finally Aytaç said, “Gizem, turn the camera in front of the computer so I can see the screen while you are working on it.” And so, he proceeded to give her instructions and the problem wassolved. What grade do you think these children were in? Seventh?  Eight? Tenth? They were in fourth grade. I was a bit numb at first, then later asked myself how I expected to be their teacher if there was such a technological cultural gap between our worlds. I made a decision then to get off my slow train and get on this rocket of new web technology so I could transform the way I teach in order to match the needs of my students. This brings us to blogging and the wealth of its resources.

 

 

 

Blogs as Educational Change Agents

 If you don’t already know, a “BLOG”, is an interactive type of chronologically updated website.

In the classroom, students learn face to face with the teacher. With combining face to face learning with blogging, students can communicate in English faster and more often. Here is how; in the classroom a topic is given and since students can’t all talk at the same time, they respond the only way they can, by giving their opinions one by one. This is not a very efficient use of time.

With blogging, a topic is given and all students respond at the same time, they can finish at different rates according to their own needs, then go on and start to respond to what their friends just wrote, learning, building and extending upon each others’ work, learning from web search engines when they need to, and all the while getting better at using computer technology with its infinite array of cool and useful tools.

They aren’t limited to the school day either. They can access learning in and out of school. It is a 21^st century, paperless environment, where the teacher’s role is transformed to a designer and facilitator of relevant, authentic communication between students and the larger world, where students are no longer limited by what the teacher knows and are also able to take the role of “teacher” by learning independently through web resources that involve them in critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration. When students say they are “free” in the lab, what they mean is, that they are free from the limitations of the classroom. They are free to teach themselves what they need and how, free to learn at their own pace.

 

Blog Power

So does communicating in English faster and more often mean better language learners? You bet it does. And does blogging allow for different learning styles and needs? Yes, that too. Does it motivate and fulfill them? Definitely. Are these skills of critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration needed for the future? Absolutely. And, can it keep students up to date on advances in technologies that double every year? Well, it certainly helps.

 

A World Class Program

 Of course, the quality of the program as a whole is what makes the difference between a meaningful or not for students. That is why we are in the process of training teachers and students in 5^th 6^th and 7^th grade this year during a pilot program called, ‘Take the Blogging Challenge’.

 

Dedicated Teachers

How do our teachers keep up with the time consuming task of learning, creating, and processing all blog material? It is not easy. They work long and hard. They are dedicated teachers. Many have learned how to blog for the first time. We are a “School of Learners.” We also have the full support of our English and computer department.

 

A Teacher’s reflection:

“On first thought, the idea of bringing a blog into the classroom was daunting.  I have always considered myself computer literate, but definitely not technologically savvy.  Knowing that all of my students have been brought up using computers, I was scared that I would be unable to keep myself one step ahead of them in the lab.  However, it is now running successfully.  The students are engaged and excited about the blog and it feels as though we are not only learning together, but building something together.” Ms. A. Malm/ Teacher,7 A&B

 

 

 

Student Reflections on Blogging                                December 21, 2010

                                                                  

 

Going to computer lab is 100 times more enjoyable and teachful way to learn English. Firstly, writing with pencil is hard, it can break, but writing on the computer is very easy. When we work on computer we work faster. Baran  7C

 

 

Blogging is a fun and interactive way to learn. I like doing something in a computer so I like the blog system. In the blog, you can see what your friends think about something. You can post comments to present your thoughts. You can get ideas from your friends. The blog gives you opportunity to learn with fun. Gediz 7C

 

Blogging gives me the freedom that I need. When I’m on the blog, I can create anything that I want or study for my exams with wonderful games. I can come up with new things and share them on the blog so everybody can see it. We all see each others writings. There are lots and lots of fun stuff there in our blog. I’ve had two blogs before but this is the best of all. I’d like to thank my blog teacher Aisha Ertugrul for letting us use a technology like this fun site that she prepared specially for her students. Deniz  7/D

 

 

Hi I’m Yasemin. My class is 7 /D. First of all it makes me feel happy. It’s not like all the other classes. I think it is very helpful for our English. It makes the English more fun and easy. My favorite lesson is when we go to the computer lab to log in the blog. We learn how to comment and write our feelings about something. It’s also cool. Other schools don’t have a blog so they can’t have fun like us. It makes our lessons more fun than other schools. We are very lucky to have a teacher and a blog like this.

 

I think blogging is super. But at school it’s more fun. When I’m at school I want to log on to blog every English lesson. I feel good. Our favorite music is on the blog and there are lots of parodies. Parodies are so funny. Writing comments makes my English better. I enjoy when I read my friend’s comments to. Videos are fun too. I love the blog so much because it’s like Facebook so I can have fun on the blog too. Blog is super!! Denis  7/D

 

Blogging in school is so cool. It is fun and interesting. There is an IPhone on the blog. When we click on it we can listen to music. There are beautiful activities too, like Glogster. There are many visitors from Turkey, China, Germany, and England.

Berk  7/D

 

 

 Our blog is fun. We can log in when we want to. Blogging is a good thing about conversation. You can write a message from your blog and the other person who was chatting with you can see your comment in your blog and he or she can write a comment to you too about something. You can chat with friends in other countries too. While you are chatting some of your other friends can join the conversation. Can  7D

 

I think our blog is very fun. We are learning English with fun. I love it because we are doing exercises we like. Also it is so useful and the articles are very interesting and fun. We are improving our English too. We learn how to write and how to think. We can read and leave comments too. Sometimes we are chatting with our friend in the blog. That’s why I like our English blog. Can  7D

 

Blogging gives me happiness, fun. We learn lots of things with blogging. I’m happy in the blog because I watch videos and I can read comments. Aleyna  7/D

 

 

It’s important to have a blog in school because it is cool and social, but only if you have a very good blog with lots of good activities. My favorite application is the Iphone that plays music; it’s very cool. The monkey application is too; you give him some banans and he eats it. Our blog is current too. My advice to our teacher is to put some Annoying Orange videos. Ata  7D

 

How do I feel about blogging? Blogging gives me freedom and satisfaction. When I am blogging no one can tell me what to do. I feel happy and free like a bird; maybe :)) You can learn anything with blogging. I always obey the punctuation rules. I can contact my teacher and friends. I can share my ideas. When a subject is giving to me I am thinking lots of things. The subjects are really fun and I’m enthusiastic. Blogging means “Have fun, girl” to me!  Zeynep Eler 7/D

 

 

Blogging in school is fun. I like it, but sometimes it can be like homework. Of course it is fun and educational. It is a good thing to have. A blog can teach everything; not only English it can teach Science. It doesn’t matter what you teach. In a blog it’s always fun. Görkem A Uysal7/D

 

 

I think this blog is very interesting, because I and all my friends learn different things. This blog builds up to our knowledge brain. We learn English very well. Also, I and other people share our things together. We do different things. We learn to build up our sentences. We use technology in all classrooms. But I like using computer for English lessons Ekin Su Vardar 7C

 

 

In my school, every class has different ways to teach. But in English, we have a blog too. Having a blog is really fun and creative. I think these classes need to be more and we should go to the lab once a week, because writing something on computer at school is better than class. But, in class we can talk to each other and we play lots of English games, we make films too. They are both useful for us. In blog, we write our feelings on computer, but in class we talk about our feelings and write in our notebook. Once a week is adequate. I love speaking and I think speaking is better than writing to learn English.

Deniz Bahar Aydin 7 /E

 

In the blog are very good games and links. Can Aydin 7/C

 

Hi my name is Ayşe Alıcı. I’m in 7D. First of all I’m really happy for having a blog and I really love our Blog. When I heard we are going to the computer lab and log on, I became really happy. In our blog you can learn people’s feelings about the subject and have fun. Our teacher wants to learn our feelings. You can do everything there. It is cool.

 

Our blog gives me inspiration to study English. I like trying the English games in it. Mrs. Ertugrul updates it all the time so there is always new stuff. Plus, it usually asks us or tells us abut things we are interested in like music, video games, etc. Best of all, it's not so strict like class. Koral Uludağ 7/E

 

Hello,

I am Lara from 7 E. I think we are lucky because we learn English from the blog and have fun. Everyone likes to use computers. Now we need to spend more time. I think next year we should have a blog too! It is better than being in the classroom. Thanks to our teachers that they did a blog for us.

 

Hi,

I'm Dilay and I'm a 7th grader. We have lots of work to do so I think going to the computer lab is so fun. In our website we have music, games, activities and we can also comment our friend’s writings and stuff. Working on the computer is way better than working in the class. It's different and more creative. We all know that making a blog is hard for our teacher but she is just so generous and kind so we are all happy to have Mrs. Ertuğrul and our blog... Dilay  7/E

 

Hi,

My name is Melis. I am from 7/E I love our blog so much. When we do something about our blog we go to the computer lab. And I think it is more useful than class because we write faster than class. We are teaching ourselves. We comment about so many topics. We learn better. We have fun because when we finish our work we listen music, watch videos and learn about topics. Thank you to our teacher.

Melis 7/E

 

Hello,

My name is Kerem. I think the computer lab is so much better than being in the classroom. It is like Facebook. But it is better than it. The BEST part is we are "free" in there. We teach our self on the blog so that makes me happier.

 

 

Awesome Blog

Our blog is the best blog and it gives inspirations to everyone. We chat, write comments, learn comments the others too. There are good games to play and music to listen. It is better than learning English in class because we are free from teachers and it is very fun. Everyone should have a blog because it is the best way to learn English. It is awesome. Levent