Their paper is found at the web site, here is my summary.
Both are secondary school teachers teaching Chinese language at Singapore secondary schools. There is a need for higher motivations as Chinese is not the first language, English is the official first language.
Their vision for blogs is secondary schools is to be for portfolio building, to track growth not just a showcase, across subjects and continue beyond the school-life, focus on self-directed learning (side line that the Singapore government pushing life long learning).
Project looks at building a reading portfolio with reflections (like a book report) to shift away from pen and paper. They are moving towards an open platform that allows students to interact, a type of 360 degree review of student work. This has been an interesting change for students as they are mainly use to teacher-centric feedback.
Two major benefits across motivation and modelling oneself from other students. Another benefit has been around learning to type in Chinese language, as a majority of people use the English language keyboard.
Issues and Questions
· IT literacy, especially teachers my feeling is this is a typical change management issue.
· Vulgarities and personal attacks, a lot of this is focused around “saving of face” within the Asian culture.
· A common thread through the last 2 sessions is also highlighted in Singapore on the time and effort in moderating the environment
· Copyright, especially around wholesale copying of content as part of the reading portfolio
· Can self-directed learning work in secondary schools
· Sustainable of the learning environment and the overall blog process (links back to IT literacy and change management)
· How “Life-Long” can the portfolio really be?
Michael Specht 