Learning about assessing online learning

     This is not my first time blogging (for which I am grateful – learning the new technology can take a couple of frustrating days). 

     I am pleased with how much of the nuts-and-bolts came back to me, considering that I haven’t set up a blog for awhile.  I chose edublogs because I’m familiar with, and enjoy working with, the platform.  Also, when I’ve had problems in the past, even though this is a free website, people have stepped forward to help me. 

     Some tools, like wikis, seem easier to learn, so I’m more willing to play around with multiple platforms.  Plus, the first wiki I worked with wasn’t very accomodating, so I kept looking until I found one I liked better (PB Works, as it happens, since it supports using actual documents, not just pages). 

     I’ve used a blog at work, though probably not in the way many people do.  Many of our staff think email is cutting edge technology, so going beyond that is going beyond their comfort zone; few would subscribe to my blog, even if they understood what it was.  So, as part of my ”hat” as teacher technology trainer,  I send out periodic emails with tips they can use, and then post the content on my blog (franblo.edublogs.org).  In previous years, I posted the tips on my website after the email, but the teacher tips were crowding out the materials for students, so I switched to the blog.  I put the link to the blog at the bottom of each email, so teachers can easily find the blog if they want to search for specific topics.

     I’ve also used a blog with my students.  While I would love to have them all write their own blogs, I work for a conservative school, and I would have to monitor every single word they write (realistic when working with middle school students).  I wanted my first obvious venture into Web 2.0 to be controlled and of what my conservative peers and administrators would see as high quality.  So I created a blog where students posted comments – I was trying for a threaded discussion with moderated comments, and this was the only way I could find to moderate comments (since middle school kids can be both wildly inappropriate and mean). 

     The student work blog, mrslo.edublogs.org, succeeded.  Students were posting in response to posts about To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that generates a lot of discussion; in the past, classroom discussions of the book always seemed to exclude quiet students, and students didn’t always grapple with the issues as deeply as I thought they could.   The students enjoyed having an audience beyond just the teacher, and bantered both online and in person.  My shy students, and those who like to think before they communicate, blossomed.  Their thinking was enriched.  Here’s an interesting point: they had very little sense that they were assessed, only referring to the rubric to see how many words they had to write (and they have persuaded me to modify that requirement in future).  In most cases, the quality came from their engagement with the material (where there wasn’t quality, the students hadn’t actually read the book we were discussing, and other students noticed that right away).  

     This one experience, which went on for a month, was very valuable – for my students, and for me.  We all learned, which is the way assessment is supposed to work.  “Edublogs are of a venue and a format that encourage reflection, questinoing by self and others, and collaboration and provoke higher order thinking skills,” as Lee and Allen stated. (”Edublogs as an assessment tool” Lee, J., Allen, K. (2006). Edublogs as an online assessment tool. Current Trends in Technology-Assisted Education. Pp. 391 -397.) Some of the things I learned are at my teacher blog, franblo.edublogs.org.

     I think blogs are an extremely versatile tool which would be easy to implement with high school, college, and adult student populations.  The logistics when working with younger students are a stumbling block (especially since many students don’t have email addresses, and my school doesn’t want to provide student email), so I’m still looking for just the right tool for the future.  But after this experience, I’m more motivated than ever to make this online component a part of my face-to-face classes.

PS:  Had a useful reminder:  click on all your links to make sure they work!  I had to go back and edit one of the links because it didn’t go where I expected it to.