MY FINAL AND FINAL THOUGHTS FOR CLASS

In writing this entry, I am both reflecting on the class and considering its implications for my practice. Contained within as well are what I consider ongoing projects which will continue long after posting for this class has ended.

When I signed up for Digital Media in the Classroom, I was struggling to get a class blog off the ground in the school where I teach. I felt it important to find out more about how blogging works, to understand better its influence in the lives of young people, and the potential obstacles/challenges for implementing a class blog in a public school setting. What follows are a few of my observations.

First, I came to understand there is more to blogging than simply writing out your thoughts and responding to those of others. There is a rich amount of information and support online for those who choose to seek it out, and it is (I feel) part of the blogger's responsibility to make these connections visible to others. Robin's site is a great example of this, as are some of those I have bookmarked on my own blog.

Second, I see how easy it is to set up and work with a blog. They seemed rather intimidating when just viewing them - I had little idea the templates were already in place and I had merely to "upload".

Third (and this is very important to my goal of creating a "Band Blog"), keeping up a blog is work. One has to keep it relevant, up-to-date, and in the public eye. One has to draw others to it. At the moment, I am one of the few at work to consider the use of a blog for my students. In that sense, the novelty is a draw. Students will come to me because there is no competition. What will happen when several of their teachers are keeping up blogs for their classes? How will I keep my blog relevant, so that it attracts the kind of traffic that makes it useful to the class? The challenge is devoting enough time to its upkeep without impacting other responsibilities. It may well be I will need to enlist the help of students. After all, it is their band, therefore their blog. Also, they are the true digital natives and what may take me some time or thought, they may take care of in much less time, freeing me to concentrate on my strengths.

Forth, there is continued skepticism as to the use and value of blogging in my school. We have invested in software to make class blogging possible. I was strongly in favor of this technology. Now that we have it (bundled within our new district website) there seems no rush to encourage its use or even acknowledge its existence. Our filtering system operates with a lack of trust in both students and teachers by blocking access to all blogs outside the school website. The degree to which this isolates our classrooms is a continued challenge we must overcome.

Each of these points have been informed by my work on this blog, readings for class, my own outside experiences such as the YouTube Symphony, and reading and responding to others' blogs. My experience as a blogger is just beginning. To consider my blog a final project is to consider a journey that is just beginning, and will long be in the process of becoming.

As my target audience is ultimately my students, I will now focus my energy on my students' Band Blog and Class Page. Consider this my ongoing project if you will. It is very much in its formative stage, as students are only now receiving their log in passwords and I only just have my head around blogging, rss feeds, podcasting, vlogging, and the like. I do hope to have it running, with their input and ideas, by the end of this year and ready to go from day one in September.

For me, web 2.0 is a gateway to a community of ideas, online interaction and conversation, and community-built knowledge bases. I imagine it is at least that to the digital natives I teach. How to properly bring that vast resource into the classroom as a tool to enhance learning, to open up spaces for dialogue, to increase the capacity for a community like band define itself, is a goal I will continue to pursue. Hopefully, I can aid those in my academic community to see it not as a threat to their way of teaching, or an impediment to student attention and learning, but as I have described it: a means to support community-based learning, and of sharing and building knowledge together. That would be a great way to define "Band".