This week’s Times Education Supplement Scotland (Friday, April 6th 2007) includes a feature we’ve been awaiting with interest on the use of social software in schools. Sue Leonard, the author, set out to investigate recent events where public web sites had been used to post anonymous comments on teachers. As part of her research, she contacted East Lothian to hear how we were using these tools.
You can read a cut-down version of the article on the Times Ed site. It’s in two parts, and the on-line version provides about 3/4 of each:
- THE BAD – a discussion of problems arising from the use of a US-based site by students to make comments on teachers in Scottish schools. Perhaps inevitably, and despite inclusion of supportive arguments from the site’s founder, it paints a dark picture.
- THE GOOD – a review of Exc-el, based on interviews with Don Ledingham, Lynne Lewis and Barry Smith. In addition to the on-line text, there’s coverage in the full article of the Pencaitland Primary blog and Preston Lodge High School’s Active Learning Partnerships (ALPs) programme and the student learning logs.
I’d been a bit worried that the article could so easily have painted a negative picture. It’s a relief to find that Sue’s interviews with some of the Exc-el community have provided more than just an abstract sense of balance: they’ve provided a tangible example of an alternative, positive way to view, and use, social software. I hope that’s helpful to people making decisions elsewhere.
It does make me think, though, we’ve got a much stronger story to tell, though, than can be covered in just a couple of pages. Although we’re trying to share what we’re doing via blogs, for example, we know that – by their nature – they’re preaching to the converted. They also tend to focus on a short time period; what we’ve done today, or this week, rather than what we’ve achieved over 6 months or a year.
There’s a gap here. We need to find ways of making it easy for people new to Exc-el to quickly get their heads round not just what it’s all about, but to find stories about successful examples they can build on.
Great to see such a positive article. I had good comment before Easter from a community group Stepping Out. On re applying for funding for their programmes they had given a podcast I had posted as an example of how their work was proving to be successful.
https://www.edubuzz.org/billstephen/category/stepping-out/
So it’s proving useful for Community groups too!
A boost for me too as I am beginning to see some tangible reasons for spending personal time blogging.
Thanks for sharing this story, it helps to know where benefits are being seen.
It’s surprising me how useful old blog posts are proving to be. At first I thought their main use would be for memory jogging, but that’s proving to be just a small part of it. I suppose we’re not used to having that kind of history at our fingertips, so it’s only as we create these archives that we’ll find out what uses emerge. Having, through eduBuzz, an authority-wide blog archive in more or less one place is building a unique warts-and-all resource. We’re fortunate that so many people are currently prepared to give their personal time to it.