Student-centred technology-More Blogs!

Due to the insufficient time available for the requirements of this task (I’m on my internship), the following contains a brief synopsis of how I would incorporate blogs into my learning design.

The learning context would be my Year 11 Study of Religion class and the current unit of study is concerned with Morality and Ethics with a focus on popular ethical frameworks. As part of the students’ assessment for this unit, students have to analyse a variety of well-known ethical frameworks and apply them to contemporary ethical issues.
As this unit is largely based on what students think of the ethical frameworks in terms of their practicality in Australian society, I would set them a 10-15 minute reflection at the end of each lesson (which are usually conducted in a computer lab anyway) where they have to answer 2-3 questions in regards to the content covered that lesson. Students will use this time to generate their responses and post it to their blog. For example, in terms of looking at the Utilitarianism framework, students must decide whether or not they agree with the concept of serving the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’.

This activity would prove a suitable alternative to the typical class discussions usually conducted during these lessons, as the discussions can sometimes veer off-track and get become quite heated. By asking students to post their thoughts to a closed-network blog (which only their classmates can view), it is encouraging collaboration in a positive manner and eliminating much of the behaviour management strategies usually associated with trying to manage contentious class discussions. I would closely monitor these blogs and pick out any notable ideas/comments put forward during the start of each lesson to use positive reinforcement.

This learning design fits in with Kearsley & Shneiderman’s Active Engagement Theory (1999), as the task requires a collaborative focus (students reading and commenting on each other’s posts) and is project-based (closely linked with their assessment task-their blogging will not however be assessable).

Reference:
Kearsley, G & Shneiderman, B 1999, Engagement Theory: A Framework for technology-based teaching and learning, viewed 24 July, 2009, http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm.