Last spring I blogged about a research project that Etty Rosen, a researcher from Israel, was doing about my classroom blog. She sent questionnaires to each of the parents in my class, asking them to rate a wide range of items including Internet access, visits to our blog and involvement with their child. She recently finished compiling the data, and was kind enough to send me a copy of her spreadsheet. Some of the results are below. It is interesting to note that three years ago, less than one third of the children in my classroom had Internet access at home. That has changed dramatically.
The results are overall very positive. Obviously, I wouldn’t keep blogging with my students unless I felt it was valuable, but it is nice to have some research to back up what I think is happening.
October 2, 2008 at 3:16 pm |
This is beautiful! It is great to see the things we’ve been taking about for the last several years begin to show up in numbers and research and not just in our “gut feelings” and anecdotal evidence. Thanks so much for sharing this!
October 2, 2008 at 5:54 pm |
Great that you’ve had some research done. It’s obviously nice to have numbers to back up what you know and feel is/has happened. I particularly liked the last graph, sometimes teaching can be very thankless and it is nice to see the number high for appreciating what the teacher does in the classroom! The classroom blog is certainly a great way of sharing not only the great learning, but the great teaching too
Thanks for sharing,
Rachel, NZ
March 17, 2009 at 5:25 pm |
Thanks so much for sharing all this info. Is it possible to get a copy of the original questions that were sent to parents?
In doing my own research on classroom blogging practices, I came across your site and conference presentation with Prof, Lewis. Your collaboration with Prof. Lewis to provide mentoring for the students with blogging buddies is really exciting and a great example.
Maybe it will be possible for your students to use text-to-speech software to save you the time of reading back comments to them.
March 17, 2009 at 8:22 pm |
[...] research study centered around this blog and how parents viewed it. You can read about it here: http://primarypreoccupation.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/proving-it/ Tags: blogging, blogging buddies, first [...]
May 23, 2009 at 11:53 pm |
Hi Kathy,
I’m putting together a presentation on blogging for teachers in my district for August. I would love to use this post as a way to show what happens when you blog with your students. Would it be okay to include some of the graphs in my presentation (with proper citing)?
I have included your classroom blog in my list of exemplary class blogs. Your students are so lucky to have you as their teacher. I just hope as they continue on their educational journey that their other teachers are as innovative.
May 24, 2009 at 1:06 pm |
I’d be happy for you to use some of the graphs. They are really Etty’s graphs, but she has always freely shared her results.
Good luck with your presentation.