Inter-twitterality

I have been enjoying using Twitter, but am anxious that it is taking time away from blogging. Just as I was thinking this, Joanne posted on her blog on this very topic! So I am not alone... I have decided to try and follow Guy's lead and link my blog to Twitter more directly now and again. Twitter can either then act as a lead-in to a longer blog post, or enable a quick reflection on a post. There are so many ways in which Twitter and blogging can interact, as this article on '10 ways Twitter will change blog design in 2009' suggests. These intertextual practices can only lead to more daft 'twittery' names, so how about 'Twogging', or 'Blittering'? (Sorry, it must be this playground rhymes project I am involved in...)

Education versus fun?

It may be no surprise to many, but it seems that computer games focused on educational objectives may not be the most effective way to learn. A game entitled 'Arden, the World of Shakespeare' was developed with a $250,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation and now its creator claims that 'It's no fun'! Of course it is not possible to draw any conclusions from one instance, but it is an interesting reminder that simply adopting a popular genre/media for educational means is not always successful. I don't think it is impossible, however, to combine education and digital pleasures, we only have to look at the work on blogging going on in many schools as examples of that. One of my favourites is 'Interactive chatting teddies', a development of the common activity in many primary schools of teddies accompanying children on trips and sending postcards back to the classroom - here, the children blog the teddies' adventures!

School blogs

I am speaking at the BFI 'Reading on Screen' conference for teachers tomorrow and although my main aim is to report on the evaluation of the very successful BFI 'Lead Practioners Project', I do want to highlight the potential that blogs have for disseminating children's film productions and facilitating their peers' critical comments on the films. I was contacted a few weeks ago by
Margaret Vass, who is a Primary 7 class teacher at Carronshore Primary School, Falkirk. She told me about the excellent blog she has set up for the children in her class - I really like the children's 'WeeMees' and love the Voki posting developed by Bethany...blog on, Carronshore Primary 7!

Dinoblog

I have not had chance to blog recently as I was at the UKLA conference, where I talked about the work of Peter Winter, a brilliant teacher who has been working on blogs with primary children for a few years now. Here is the first blog the children developed, related to a project on dinosaurs. The blog uses the tools offered by a number of sites such as Evoca (for podcasting) and Bubbleshare (for constructing slideshows with caption bubbles). Luckily, these sites have not been blocked by the local education authority's firewall, which is the case with YouTube. Rather ironic, then, that YouTube posts videos giving advice about getting past school blocks of YouTube.

Parents as scaffolders

A couple of years ago now, I contacted this blogger, Beth, as I was very interested in what she had to say about scaffolding her child's understanding about blogs and wanted her permission to include her practice as an example in a chapter I was writing about young children and digital literacy. It seemed to me that Beth was supporting her child's understanding about blogging as a social practice in a similar manner to the way in which many other parents support their children's understanding of print-based literacy practices. Since then I have kept in touch with Beth's blog and noted that she has recorded other instances of family digital literacy practices. I do recommend a visit to Beth's blog for those of you interested in early childhood and technologies (click on the category 'Ed tech and early childhood' in the LH column). I am very interested in the phenomenon of 'tech-savvy' parents blogging about their technological practices with their children, as this, I think, gives us an insight into what other parents might be doing more generally with their children in five or six year's time, but I have not come across any other blogs like Beth's - let me know if you do!