My Blogging…
Real Collaboration…
Christina was in the process of researching her weblog-based project on the Rainforests when she received a message via her weblog’s built-in discussion board from someone who was trekking through forests in Costa Rica. He gave her a firsthand account to work with. Students in my class also posted advice and comments about the project. I could also guide her thoughts and direction using the discussion feature. The weblog software did not magically make the project perfect. It was still written by a ten-year old. It was a ten year-old though, who had genuinely collaborated with her peers as well as others across the globe.
What is a weblog? Put simply, a weblog or blog is a fully functional website that is created and regularly updated directly in any Internet browser. This means that all the writing and editing, as well as the whole look and feel of the weblog is simply managed from any computer with an internet connection, anywhere in the world.
I was first introduced to weblogs in 2000 as a Year Six Class Teacher who was struggling to publish some of my students’ work to the Worldwide Web. After weeks of frustration and copious amounts of trial and error, my rather flat looking website finally made its appearance on the web but I vowed never to waste so much time and energy again. The father of one of my pupils at the time recommended that I take a look at weblogs as a possible alternative to mastering File Transfer Protocols. I surfed to one of the free weblog server sites and in less than 5 minutes, I had created a website and was writing to the web. The simplicity of the process was a stunning contrast to the previous weeks of FTP hell.
This weblog became my class website and I posted information and began to model writing to my students. They began posting their own work and comments to the weblog using the inbuilt discussion function. Within a few weeks they had all created their own weblogs. I assumed a mass of educators around the globe would already be taking advantage of this exciting technology but only a handful was. My students became weblogging pioneers, an exciting situation for 11 year-olds to find themselves in.
That is how our adventure with weblogs started. Two years down the line, my students had been featured in the Sydney Morning Herald and their writing viewed by many thousands of readers. They had collaborated with students and teachers across the globe. Life was not dull after discovering weblogs. However, the simple, intuitive nature of the weblog remains its principal strength.
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