The Power of Peer Review; My first Podcast interview; Women of Web 2.0
Filed Under (Blogging, Education, online collaborative learning, social computing, web 2.0) by Administrator on 02-10-2006
Once again it has been an incredibly busy week filled with new experiences of the read, write, speak, listen web (that is my name for it).
My students responded to a blog post I made in personallearningspace , which is a sheltered blog community of students and teachers from different classes around the world. I created a community just for our students and made a post in the community blog about the latest issue in our school – the benefit of a co-ed environment. A research study in Canada has just released the results – the largest of its kind in the world – about co-ed and single sex education. Once again, our students responded to the head master’s address (the topic of my blog post) at an assembly earlier in the week. Their responses to the blog post were thoughtful and articulate. Our head went in at the end of the week to read the comments and post a comment himself. My goal was also to have the students learn to comment appropriately and we went through Vicki Davis’ (CoolCatTeacher) blog entry about how to comment like a king or queen. It was very helpful!
On Friday, I audio recorded my first interview-soon-to-be-podcast with a student who had read the book, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. The podcast will be attached to my review of the book for the upcoming edition of Coming of Age: The New World Wide Web. The first edition of the book – definitely a must read for educators interested in web 2.0, can be found here. This sixteen year old student was articulate, poised, thoughtful and his points about our current education are informative. He did a great job!
Last week I also completed my very first grant proposal and it is for a prototype of promoting blended learning in the classroom with the use of a moodle. Yes, I am already doing this, but this way I can promote its use even further!
Imagine my surprise early Saturday morning when I discovered that the Cool Cat Teacher had written a wonderful description of her students’ reactions to my students’ reviews of their wikis way back last Tuesday. I had entirely missed out on that even though I have her blog feed! Several weeks ago I had asked my students to go through the Westwood students’ wiki information about Online Safety and critique their work. I collected their responses and posted it back on the class blog of those students at Westwood. Yes, the power of peer review over the Internet is amazing! Students use the Internet all the time to help each other with homework and keep in touch. Having the feedback with students you have not met face-to-face in some ways is more powerful because the students can be honest and worry less about offending someone (as long as they show good citizenship and use constructive criticism – which I insisted upon).
I can’t wait to show my students that they really helped out another class of students and helped to improve the writing and presentation skills of those students! I hope they will be as encouraged as I was!
I should give a mention too, to the upcoming K-12 Online Conference. It sounds like a very exciting event – or set of events – and I even made a proposal, although am wondering if I have half a chance given some of the others that I know of who also submitted a proposal! Last night, Wes Fryer even made a cameo appearance at EdTechTalk to describe it and give some hype. He has a great blog and is one of my favourite reads.
In a few minutes, I am meeting in a skype conference with some truly terrific women who use Internet tools in amazing and inspiring ways. We are planning to collaboratively create a proposal for the upcoming NECC 2007 for a panel discussion. As a spinoff about some of our ideas, Jen Wagner (technospud extraordinaire) has come up with the idea of extending our collaboration by creating a website – Women of Web 2.0. Right now it is a work in progress and frankly I am astounded at Jen’s ability to put so much together in a mere 24 hours! More is to come, I am sure! Please check it out and let us know what you think!
technorati tags: Women of web 2.0, blogging
Thanks for this informative blog, I’ve added another to my Flock blog collector!
Cheryl
I am amazed at how you’ve included your head of school in the process. This is an incredible way to elicit administrative support and I am impressed that your head would come in and comment on your student blogs! Great job!
It was one of my ambitious ideas at the beginning of the year. I am privileged to work with an administrator with a vision for how technology can be used and who supports me in this endeavour. He had heard Will Richardson speak at a conference a couple of years ago and was inspired by the power of blogs in the classroom. A little seed planted….
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