Blogging to Learn(And learning to webinar)

YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3JJbYAgYY

Sandra Sinfield and friends, 20/06/14

Would you:

• Actively listen

• Illustrate points

• Photograph

• Send me pix in an email:

• s.sinfield@londonmet.ac.uk

Agenda

• Contexts

• ‘Becoming’

• Writing to Learn

• Why blogging?

• Extracts

• What worked

• What next

Context

• Our students NT (Blagburn & Cloutterbuck 2011) - struggle for authorship:

• Jostling voices• Write and reference properly• Be more academic (Carter et 2009)

• ‘Drive by degrees’… not enough time in the University…

• How to engage, empower, develop voice?

Context – past practice

• Travel & Tourism module – WebCT comms• Transmissive – not dialogic• Educational Responses to Refugees: their

choice – their action• Chose FB: multimodal, a/synchronous• Presence (Garrison et al 2000, Swan 2002)• Academic & social, dialogic, peer support• BUT: PG, small groups, ‘savvy’ academically

and digitally

‘Becoming’

• Cohort larger (60-90), younger, not savvy…• We wanted something ‘owned’ and portable• FB? Computer say Yes – students said No!• MOOC experiences = multi-platform & blogging• So – staff & student blogs:• #becomingeducational – to students about the

course – weekly – modelling the informality: http://becomingeducational.wordpress.com/

• Flagged in class and in the VLE…

Becoming - The module

Extends concepts of academic & digital literacies:• Peer mentors• Role play, simulations• IMD/TMD• Textmapping• Free writing, reflective writing• Music, dance, presentations• IBL, PBL, student conference• Real research• Visual practices, drawing, collages, video-production

#ds106, blogging

Facilitate confidence & success

• Active• Creative• Heuristic• Emancipatory• Discursive• Generative/constructivist• About LTA practice and tool/lens to

critique practice

Students supported to become…

• Members of Community of Practice• Members of Community of Inquiry• Part of the School• Part of LondonMet …

• Educationalists• Academic!

Write to Learn

• Not ‘learn to write’

• Empowered to develop writing because

• This writing owned

• Not assumed deficit…

• This matters – you have something to say – that others want to hear

Blogs v Essays

• Essay – ‘your opinion’ – excluding you

• Passionate, humorous, playful

• Metonym for academic/academia: reified, implacable, exclusionary, classed

• BUT need play (Winnicott 1971) to tackle threat in transitional spaces

• With play we are truly alive and fiercely ourselves!

Blogs

• Quasi-academic, multimodal, semi-public space

• Allow lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 2005) – to:

• Perform the self as it becomes academic

• Narrate a more powerful self

McBell‘Week 9 was all about my nightmare….drawing! My drawings always mock me:

‘’Ha! I have defeated you! You may have many words, but give you a pencil, and watch the intelligence disappear! That’s not how you wanted it to look, is it? Is that a person or a tree? Dumbo!’’

In a class of five year old children, I am quite happy to display my ridiculous sketches. I explain to the children that drawing is not my strong point, and they assure me that I have done a very good job of representing the characters, props and scenery in the storyboard. However, if someone were to come in, they would be quite convinced that the children had drawn the pictures – and not the most artistically gifted children, either!’

‘At the moment, I feel afraid of failure, but I have to remember that I have been here before. In 2011, I graduated with merit at the Barbican, from a Foundation Degree in Education: Primary Pathway. So I need to keep three things in mind:

• Keep taking risks!• It will be worth all the hard work!• There are people to help me on my journey!’

Mo• ‘In this week’s lecture, we were subjected to a 10 minute free writing

exercise. If we stopped writing, then we were to write the reason why we did so on a separate piece of paper. Seemed easy enough, but the question given was very ambiguous to us:

• “Winnicott (1971) argued that play is necessary to counteract the implicit threat that occurs when we are in transitional spaces – between worlds, between classes, in alien educational settings. Discuss in relation either to becoming a successful student or becoming a successful teacher.”

• “What?” I asked myself. “Who is Winnicott? What does he mean by play? Implicit threat?”

• I started writing, even though I had no idea what the question was asking. It took three attempts to get my writing flowing.’

What worked?

• Joy, voice, energy, engagement• Multimodal: text and images• ‘Their’ space – less judgement – more freedom• Reaching out to engage others• Harnessed in self, essays, research• BUT • Not all blogged – or shared• Not ‘digital natives’ (Premsky).

Next time

• Still carrot not stick• 4th hour – ICT suite, peer mentors• Two tasks:• Supportive, creative and engaging

blogging

• #DS106 projects – also blogged (see Nerdy Teacher http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/ )