Week 3 - Reflection 1: Web Spaces (Blogs)

Even though I would consider myself equally a producer and consumer of technology, I have had very little experience with blogging as throughout my Bachelor’s degree I focused more on website creation. I have found that I have thoroughly enjoyed experimenting and discovering the tools available in the free platform, Blogger.  

Online sites, such as a blogging platform can benefit students learning through several aspects. Incorporating ICTs into the classroom allows students to engage, enhance and extend learning in pedagogically sound, flexible, and innovative ways (Moges Alemu, 2015). Furthermore, technology allows for the creation of new tasks (such as formative and summative assessment pieces) that were previously inconceivable while catering to learns through interactive resources, individual and collaborative work.

While familiarising myself with Blogger, I found that the web space reminded me of the program Microsoft Word as it essentially has all the same basic functions such as changing the font, colour of text, text highlight, insert images and embed hyperlinks. Within each blog post, not only can links to other websites and videos be embedded, but so can images and videos themselves. This allows the viewer to access without having to travel to an additional web space. However, PowerPoint presentation and Word documents cannot be embedded into Blogger.

Blogger provides the user with a choice to either work in their user-friendly view for those with minimal technology experience or with the raw html code for more advanced users. In addition, the user can change how the side menu is presented (if visible) regarding layout and text, add ‘gadgets’ which allow the user to add a search function and adjust the presentation of blogs on the home page (brief description of the blog and a thumbnail). Furthermore, a menu can be added to the top with links to various pages (such as contact information, about page, etc).

I have personally found Blogger to have a small learning curve for the level of customisation available. The web space is highly user friendly by having pre-existing themes available. These themes can be easily customised to alter the blogs appearance by adding a background image, changing the font, size and even the hyperlink colour.

Blogger’s privacy settings allow for the user to age restrict their content, alongside marking individual blog posts as drafts, which prevent it from being viewed by others. Blogs are usually created by a single author, unlike wikis which has led to web spaces such as Blogger not allowing for multi-authors on one site. Taking this into consideration, I strongly believe that this web space can be a valuable tool for both teachers and students to use in the classroom.

Layout Interface

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers outlines that teachers are required to use ICT safely, responsibly and ethically (AITSL, 2017). Upon analysing the ICT capability and reflecting on students’ need to have an understanding of digital literacy, it is imperative that students develop an understanding of the following key aspects.

•        Intellectual property
•        Cyber bullying
•        Online security
•        Being creators and users of ICT

As a preservice teacher specialising in film, television and new media and digital technologies, I believe that Blogger can be implemented into the classroom with ease, and demonstrate this through the four stages of the SAMR model.

Substitution: Technology acts as a direct substitution, with no functional change.

Blogger can be utilized to engage students in their learning by being an easy for students to keep their reflections. During my placement, students were required to write weekly reflections in their notebook to demonstrate their ability to analyse and improve their skills. This could have easily been improved through the use of Blogger as it requires minimal effort to set up.

Augmentation: Technology acts as a direct substitution, with functional improvement.

Blogger would directly improve the quality of the students’ presentation and response through the web spaces features. The students would have all the resources and abilities they would have had to create their paper reflections, however by using Blogger this task becomes easier to organise as each piece of written work would be in a central location. Furthermore, this would benefit teachers as each post would display a publication date, ensuring that students are keep up with their weekly tasks.

Modification: Technology allows for significant task redesign.

Although I am a preservice teacher, my major area is film, television and new media. The documents I have seen submitted while on placement are often poorly presented. Blogger would allow tasks to be redesigned, allowing students to evaluate, analyse and apply the new concepts and skills, which would further their digital literacy and digital fluency.

Redefinition: Technology allows for the creation of new tasks previously inconceivable.

Blogger has the unique ability that blog web spaces do that allows others to comment on their posts. In a typical classroom setting, it would be essentially impossible to have students’ share their reflections around and be able to monitor the responses. Utilizing ICT however, students would be able to provide their peers with feedback and improve their reflective practice, whilst being able to effectively monitor the feedback.

References

ACARA. (2022). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability. Retrieved from Australian Curriculum: https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/information-and-communication-technology-ict-capability/

AITSL. (2017). Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments. Retrieved from Australian Professional Standards for Teachers: https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

Moges Alemu, B. (2015). Integrating ICT into Teaching-learning Practices: Promise, Challenges and Future Directions of Higher Educational Institutes. Horizon Research Publishing.