Paper

Professional
Development

Application

Results

Blogging as a Professional Development Tool

Terence Cavanaugh, Curriculum and Instruction, University of North Florida, USA tcavanau@unf.edu

Cathy Cavanaugh, Curriculum and Instruction, University of North Florida, USA ccavanau@unf.edu

Abstract: Weblog (blog) technologies have moved into the public awareness. While these technologies have been around for several years, they have been gathering more attention inside and outside the educational arena. Starting in spring semester of 2005, we began a professional development program for a group of teachers which used the blog technology as part of the program. This paper explains our methods for using blogs in the professional development experience, shares some examples of teacher work, and reports the results from a research project currently being conducted to better understand the students’ experiences with the technologies and the potential impact of these technologies on their professional development.

Introduction

In recent years, weblog (blog) technology has become well-known as a communication tool, and is one of many tools classified as Computer-mediated Communication (CMC), which includes email, discussion forums, blog, chat, and others. According to the New York Times there may now be thousands of teachers using blogs (Selingo, 2004). Currently there are few examples of teacher-generated blogs used as part of the blogger’s professional development. In the project described here, blogs were used to support teacher action research.

In the spring semester of 2005, we began adding blog technologies to a professional development program for in-service teachers who were taking part in an action research project. The 20 teacher/researchers maintained their blogs throughout the program, and they read and shared reflections with their peers. The program coordinators were able to follow the progress of the teachers with the assistance of blog aggregators or RSS feeds. This paper will describe the action research professional development program, the use of blogs to support the program, and the effects of the blogs on the teachers’ development.

The “Teacher Leaders Engaged in Mathematics and Science Action Research” Project

"Action research is any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes" (Mills, 2003, p.4).

Recently, the state departments of education added action research as a viable form of teacher professional development. Studies are beginning to demonstrate the positive effects of action research on school reform. The outcome of this project is significant in the context of current research on professional development programs, as it attempts to connect teacher leader development that emphasizes action research on classroom practice with student achievement.

The goal of the project was to study a model of in-service professional development experiences that supports action research by teacher leaders to improve mathematics and science teaching in grades K-12. Results to date suggest that teacher growth occurs through reflective practice around action research. The context was a large urban school district where inquiry-oriented, standards-based mathematics and science learning is a critical portion of the district Framework for Implementation of Standards-Based Instruction. Higher education faculty and community partners have been collaborators in a number of initiatives supporting these district plans.

To give teachers the tools they need to promote positive changes in mathematics and science learning, professional development experiences were designed. The project studied the sustained effects of action research by a group of these teacher leaders in K-12 mathematics and science classrooms, specifically the impacts on student achievement and teacher collaboration. Action research is a platform which is proving successful in helping teachers identify and solve problems they encounter, promoting improved teaching strategies, support, and retention, and positively affecting school accountability. Teachers participating in this project shared their action research processes and results to the local community through presentations and to the wider community through blogging.
 

Implementing the blog for action research

When planning the action research program, the need was identified for a method of sharing action research project work among 20 teachers and several program and school district coordinators without impacting email accounts or requiring multiple paper copies. Important criteria were that the chosen communication method be free or low cost and easy to learn and use. Blogs were chosen as the method by which teachers shared their action research projects. The specific blog that was used, bblog, was selected because it is an open source blog which could be easily and quickly installed and customized on the project’s web server.

Becoming bloggers enabled the teachers to expand their skills in a new technology, which was a stated professional development goal of many of the teachers. During the course of the program, the blogs served as an immediate method of sharing project progress among participants. Over the longer term, the blogs were sustained records of each teacher’s work and examples to other teachers who sought examples of action research.

An advantage of the blogs was that they addressed the common need for professional development to include a mechanism for follow-up after the completion of formal activities. The blog is a location where the teachers can share the results and reflections even after the program ends. An added benefit of the blogs was that they contributed to community building among the participants and offered a tool for sustaining the momentum for action research in and beyond the local school district.

The 20 teachers participating in this program were dispersed across an 800+ square mile school district in over a dozen different K-12 schools, each working on a unique action research topic. During the six month duration of the program, the teachers met for two hours monthly with the project coordinators who were university faculty members. The primary purpose of the meetings was to answer the teachers’ questions and share information of a general nature. Time was allocated at each meeting to assist and instruct teachers to use the project blogs. The blogs were the method of communicating the full details of each teacher’s work. The blogs replaced what would have been in-person discussions or reading of work with online posting, discussion, and reflection. Throughout the project, the coordinators required that participating teachers post their work, including their action research proposal, their ongoing literature and background survey, and their experimental notes on their personal blog. Participants were encouraged to read each other’s blogs, make comments to the other teacher’s blog, or reflect in their own blog.

A website was set up for the project at http://www.nefstem.org (see Figure 1). The site included the project objectives, schedules, meeting information, and contact information. The website included links to personal blog space for each teacher. The teachers used their blogs to post project proposals, reports, and data. Other teachers can read proposals and offer feedback to individual project blogs. A graduate assistant was assigned to act as a technology specialist and work with teachers on an individual basis if a teacher requested assistance getting started with blogging.

Figure 1: Program web site with links to participant blogs.

The challenges of blogging resulted from the newness of the technology to the users and the teacher’s access to hardware and the Internet. Some of the teachers had difficulty accessing the blog site and this led to some frustration. Also there was some concern among the project coordinators about the open nature of a Blog on the Internet, but this concern was not shared by the teachers, who were excited by the concept of sharing their work. To help the teachers to become bloggers, instruction sheets were developed. The sheets used screen captures and step-by-step instructions to lead teachers through the processes of logging in and posting to the blogs. Few of the teachers succeeded in independently blogging with the instruction sheet. A hands-on instruction and practice session was scheduled into a regular program meeting, in which teachers were helped to log in to their blogs using laptop computers. The practice enabled a majority of the teachers to post to their blogs (see figure 2). The few teachers who needed more help scheduled one-on-one time with the graduate assistant, either during or after a monthly meeting. Project coordinators were encouraged to use an RSS aggregator to stay current with the materials that were published online by the teachers.

Figure 2: Sample participant blog.

Results

Project coordinators have learned the importance of providing readily available support to the teachers. Because each action research project is unique, each teacher has unique questions and needs. The effect of blogging as a tool for supporting professional development was studied. Specifically, we investigated how well the technology

• Helped students critically reflect on their classroom practice
• Helped the teachers to record notes and results of online information collection
• Supported teacher/teacher and teacher/coordinator interactions
• Helped the project coordinators monitor the work of the teachers

The outcomes of this project has similarities to the experiences of the preservice blogging projects carried out at Brigham Young University (West, Wright, & Graham, 2005). The action research project participants generally had a positive experience using blogs, and they felt it was not difficult to use the technologies once they were learned. In addition, the teachers in the action research project felt pride and honor in having their work widely accessible because as master teachers they feel a sense of responsibility as mentors and models for other teachers. The negative aspect of the blogging experience was that the participating teachers experienced some degree of difficulty learning to blog initially, and they felt that they needed more help and instruction to become independent bloggers. While blogging has become a comfortable communication medium for many people, these teachers had not heard of the technology before this experience and needed time overcoming their discomfort.

Looking retrospectively at the blog tool that was used in this project and knowing the needs of the teachers, project coordinators would reconsider the decision to use bblog. Many teachers expressed a desire to display photos and other graphics of their work as part of their blog, and they also wanted to attach files to their blogs, features that are not currently supported by the chosen blog. A wiki may have better suited a project of this nature in which drafts of work are posted, updated, and expanded for two reasons. First the comment feature of the blog was not well used by the teachers, and next the teachers seemed to only want to post finished work, not work in progress.

References:

Mills, G.E. (2003). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Selingo, J. (2004, August 19). In the classroom, web logs are the new discussion boards. The New York Times. Retrieved March 30, 2005, from http://www.nytimes.com.
West, R. E., Wright, G. A., Graham, C. R. (2005). Blogs, Wikis, and Aggregators: A New Vocabulary for Promoting Reflection and Collaboration in a Preservice Technology Integration Course. Paper presented at SITE conference 2005 in Phoenix, AZ.