Much of my Week 7 was devoted to further work on blogs (the technology enhanced change) with my Stylistics group.
This week I created the rubrics for students’ blogs activity and introduced the rubrics to the students.If you are curious, the rubrics are here - http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2160407&
I also asked my students if they were satisfied about the criteria and the points division, and if they wanted to add something else to the rubrics. Nobody said anything, may be because the rubrics are also new to the students and they are not used to being asked about the assessment criteria.
I am much satisfied with the blog activity, because of many reasons: 1) The discussion a) GOES ON b) OUTSIDE the class;
2) Students are not told exactly want to do, they have to think what to write about in their blogs (a kind of learners autonomy);
3) Students from Group A and Group B read each others’ posts and even leave comments, though they have different topics to discuss during the week (thus they teach other!).
All the above mentioned I have never had in my previous experience.
You can see what students are discussing here - http://gafiatulina.yvision.kz/community/ (it is the general link for the two classes I have).
There are some technical problems, though. On of the most frustrating ones are as follows: One of the students said she could not find the group on the site, and then she exhausted her Internet limit for February and she said she did not know what to do. And then half of the group are not blogging yet. They cannot explain the reason why. Now I think I have to do something to enroll them in the process as well. My way out is to invite them one at a time to the Chair desktop and help them with creating the blog.
This blogging also brought to light some other aspect of students not being used to work individually – many of them forget the theme of the discussion. That’s why I decided to use my own blog not for posts, but as a kind of ‘blackboard’ – to remind about the deadline, topics for discussion, and place the link to the rubrics.
There were other things concerning Webskills I was busy with apart from this technology change in my class.
To begin with, we had to choose a partner for peer reading, the experience I found very frustrating, because some people wanted to be my peer reader, but I had to regretfully refuse, being already engaged. Having been once a student of this USSR education system, I find it difficult to choose myself. And then I was in a predicament whether to choose someone who would see almost no faults with my work, or someone who might be rather critical (keeping in mind that, on the one hand, I might lose my points, on the other – I might get the necessary improvement of my project). At last I decided to be peer readers with Hind Sinada, because she always leave constructive critical comments for my tasks.
One more thing was the NiceNet discussion thread I liked a lot, because of the guest instructor Sean who would ask provoking further thinking questions. I think I have quite fully expressed myself on the NiceNet and not repeat my ideas here. I just want to say that I got some new ideas on how to utilize the one-computer classroom I have the access to, though they are not about cellular phones, I am sorry Sean! ;)