Welcome from ECML in Graz

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The final dissemination workshop of the ECML Blogs project is under way! Here are the first photos from the intro.

ECML Memories

I’m back in Graz at the ECML for a BLOGS project team meeting. I’ve been introduced to the Camilleri’s photo album which contains a few photos of past meetings. Here’s one for the scrapbook. Mario’s caption:

While after hours, Peter Ford and Ewan McIntosh discuss the joys of culinary blogging at our favourite haunt – Stacher’s.
“The zanderefillet mit pommes frits looks worth blogging about, Ewan” says Peter. “De.li.cio.us!” says Ewan.

It’s a never-ending spiral of connections.

Using blogs and other new collaborative technologies can be immensely rewarding as summed up by one teacher in the ECML blogs project above.

Contrast that with the blogging experience of a student from another class in another country.

Boredom, all the students i class alwazs have the same project topic. I”m not surprised, that other students don”t read our blogs.. They”re all ”bout the same!

Same platform, same project but a very different experience.

Blogs are neutral

There is much to reflect on already as the ECML BLOGS team look at the teacher and student evaluations of the project. Are there any surprises? Not really.

From my preamble to the summary of the teacher responses to an evaluation of the project.

It seems that the ECML BLOGS platform, like other blogging software, is flexible enough to be used successfully across a range of cultural and educational settings. Like a mirror, it also reflects the individual pedagogical preferences of teachers using it with their students. The platform is, in effect neutral. The vision of the teachers for teaching and learning, together with its application with students, appears to govern the wide range of differing yet successful implementation and outcomes.

The real debate for me lies with the word ‘successful’ – what you consider successful as a teacher is what you get when using blogs – more mirror than panacea! 

ECML BLOGS

I’m off to Graz in Austria tomorrow to begin the evaluation of the ECML blogging project. Many things to explore but Gareth reminded me in an email of the potential of the World Cup for the ECML Blogs. Most students have stopped blogging but perhaps it is not too late to get some cross-cultural commentary on the tournament. I wish I had thought of this earlier.

School Trip Blogging

Sophia, one the teachers working on the ECML BLOGS project, is blogging her school trip to Paris and so are some of her students. She grasps the potential of blogging and makes great use of it. It’s that simple.