David Mitchell, a teacher
from the United Kingdom, founded QuadBlogging
back in 2011. Within 8 weeks Claire’s class was one of 40 to get involved and
she has participated in 4 out of 5 rounds. Since the official launch in
September 2011, QuadBlogging has grown exponentially and is now being used
across the globe in 40 countries. It turns out that after the UK and USA, New Zealand is
the third most signed up nation!
The concept of Quad Blogging is very simple. Four teachers agree to
have their students comment on each other's blogs by signing up to a google
form along with other teachers from around the world. The form is embedded on
David’s site ( http://quadblogging.net )
. Each week, one of the four classrooms gets a turn as the spotlight class. The
other three classes visit and leave comments. Over the course of a month, every
student's work gets read and commented upon. Along the way, students learn
about respectful online communication. They may decide to revise their thinking
if a commenter shares a perspective they haven't considered. They also get to
read writing, blog posts and descriptions of children’s learning from around
the world.
Blogging has had a huge impact on writing in Claire’s classroom.
Children are motivated to write because of their global audience and the
authenticity that the blog provides. There has been a huge shift in motivation
to write and actual achievement in writing.
However, it has not always been easy to engage families to comment
regularly on the blog. They sincerely enjoy the “window” to their child’s
learning that it provides but are not active contributors. Without an active
audience and regular feedback, children in Claire’s class began to lose
interest and the momentum in which they produced text.
Signing up to the Quad Blogging project gave the class blog a
different focus. When the children in Claire’s classroom began to see hits on
their cluster map from England, Canada, the USA and other places the reality of
an audience hit home. No longer were they just writing for their teacher or
sharing with their families. Suddenly they were getting feedback from peers of
similar age from around the world about things such as spelling, ideas and how
clear their text was. Children and teachers were asking for clarification. They
wanted to know more about New Zealand, Dunedin and their school. The comments and
conversations provided by the students showed Claire the widespread impact that
this has had on their writing. By providing a real purpose for the students,
the volume of their writing increased dramatically. Students had a real desire
to complete tasks and to publish to the best of their ability. Texts included
written, video and audio formats.
It turned out that this kind of feedback had an even greater impact on
the children than their families being able to comment on learning experiences.
They wanted to develop the content on the blog further so that it included
video and audio files that allowed a real snapshot of learning in the
Neinsteins’ classroom.
David continues to lead collaboration and via Twitter he shared his
“Pass the Blog” concept. The truth is, this type of collaboration would be easy
to set up within a school but in an essence: one blog passed to classrooms on a
rostered basis. Claire and Room 9 found that this project lead to new
collaborations including valuable comments and feedback. Another project, Feb29th.net was a 24-hour phenomenon on Leap Day, 2012. The
site received 12,000 posts, 5,000 comments, and 400,000 hits during its
one-day-only publishing lifecycle.
Online communities and
collaboration continue to be of huge value to Claire and the Room 9 Einsteins.
They value the conversations and the global community that is rapidly evolving.
Claire finds herself bumping into teachers on Twitter that she has met via Quad
Blogging and other online projects. The ubiquity of online discussions is
significant for Claire and she appreciates the discussions it presents her
along with the professional dialogue.
If teachers are looking for ways to develop an audience for their
blogs, Claire strongly recommends that they sign up for a round of Quad
Blogging. Benefits
of such collaboration include motivating students to write more, produce
writing of higher quality, gain new perspectives, and possibly even develop “global empathy”. To maximize the experience teachers
should communicate with each of the Quad teachers to best meet the needs of the
children and to learn from each other. Skype or real time communication may not
always be possible but to truly maximize this experience, teachers need to
talk, share their class needs and direction and collaborate. It can be very
powerful.
