Blogs and forums
i spent the past week enjoying spring break with my family, but i am now back in the saddle here.
our semester is winding down in the next two weeks, so i am 3 weeks away from starting a new semester in the spring. that means that i’ll need to soon select the blogging software that i will use. my quest took me to edublogs as i’ve heard that they were updated. along the way, i came across a 12 minute screencast by James Farmer who is arguing that personal learning environments (e.g., blogs) are the wave of the future in education. he contends that traditional Learning and Courseware Management Systems (e.g., Blackboard) have failed to meet our expectations. i couldn’t agree more. unfortunately, he goes beyond the criticisms of Blackboard and indicts web-based forums along the way. this is where James and i part ways.
i hate the forums in Blackboard. in fact, i refused to use them shortly after first trying them in 2000; however, i was able to find a replacement that far exceeded the forums in BB. i found phpBB forums. these are open source, free, and very popular web-based bulletin board forums. i have been using them in my classes for nearly 6 years and they’ve continued to meet my expectations quite well. i take a photo of each student on the first day of class and create little avatars for my students, which they tend to enjoy. i also create a forum that is called The Lounge. The Lounge is where everything can be discussed except class. my students have taken ownership of this Lounge and they’ve posted hundreds and hundreds of messages and topics just this semester alone. they discuss spring break, the future, music, movies, jobs, protests, and everything in between. it’s a little community that is protected behind a password protected wall so that i don’t have to worry about violating FERPA, which is a concern for any educator in the USA. and, the phpBB forums allow me to group my students according to future teaching interests and then have small discussion groups of 7 or 8 students. all of the responses appear on 1 page, which is much like a blog where all of the comments are on 1 page. i can respond to individual student comments or i can make more general comments. my students are also encouraged to speak to each other and have thoughtful and meaningful conversations, which i try and model.
i do use blogs; however, i encourage my students to create a blog without using their real names. some use their real names, but that’s their choice; not my requirement. some of the students choose to add photos to their blogs and customize in other ways. while this is neat, this doesn’t tend to make the contribution they provide on their blog any better than the other students. the way i use student blogs is that i physically read each blog entry and make comments individually to each student. this allows me to have one on one conversations, but this is extremely time consuming compared to the discussion forums. my students are surveyed and they always enjoy the discussion forum site over the blogging sites (and, i’ve used blogger.com and wordpress blogs, etc).
i guess what i dislike about Farmer’s presentation is that he is really making a case for blogs as a personal learning environment and he goes out of his way to denigrate forums. my take is that we can do both and i do both . . . and more. i have also used a wiki-tool and i will even use the Assignment Manager in Blackboard, which i find remarkably well thought out for collecting assignments from students with how it integrates into the gradebook (i also use the gradebook, but that’s it). i like all of the tools i use and i think i need to use all of the tools so that my students can better decide which tools might work best for them in their own future classrooms. some may lean towards phpBB forums. some may want a classroom blog. and other may use a classroom-based wiki. it’s up to me to provide those various experiences and i do. that being said, it’s still the classroom forum (phpBB) that i find to be the best tool for building an online learning community.
Tags: blogs, wordpress, phpBB, forums, personal learning environments
May 8th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
[…] i am surprised to learn that my comments on the insiderhighered website received so much attention. i found the site quite by accident. i had no clue that the site was getting such traffic when i started my little debate. well, come to find out, many more people than i expected found my discussion with James Farmer. i even had a librarian here at GVSU comment on my comments just the other day. i guess i need to be more careful about what i say when i think i am somewhere obscure. heh heh. […]
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:53 pm
After using both blackboard and the phpBB forums, I like the phpBB forums better because I like how you are grouped with people that are planning on teaching in the same area. Also, I like how there are more tools when writng your opinions out about discussions like the smiley faces, and being able to preview your work before you submit it to be read by others. On the blackboard site, I just did not like the setup as much. With the pictures by our comments, it makes it more personal and like you are actually talking face to face with other people. I am not sure about the blogs yet, but I like the idea. I think as a teacher, it would be a cool thing to use because its a good way to understand how kids are doing on subjects because you can use it as a journal,and kids might be more willing to vent their struggles or frustrations. It is good for those kids that do not like to speak in discussions and who get their thoughts out better through writing/typing. The forum site just offers more connectiveness betweent the teacher and students. The lounge allows for topics outside of the class which is nice because you get to know each other better. I also prefer the phpBB forums over blackboard.
September 24th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
It seems that if education continues on the technological path, might that one day eliminate tradional schools and even teachers? If classes became standardized and answers were able to be tabulated by a computer, why would there be any need for human interaction, or even real teachers? Even if you wanted to allow some more independent thought through essays, it is feasible that one could create a program that would analyze a paper for content, relevence to the topic, etc. Where does that leave flesh-and-blood teachers then?