| Head's Blog
In the digital age, children need to have an understanding of what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. They need to learn the technical how-to's, as well as a more global comprehension of how to navigate the online world. Children need to start establishing a positive digital impression of themselves. Without question, it will be the normal practice for our pupils to be Googled when they begin to look for jobs -- even if it's part-time. We want our pupils to have an understanding of how to use digital tools to communicate.
Blogging is one such tool. Blogging is a great way for the children to write and share their ideas. It also allows them both the opportunity to openly reflect on what they have learnt as well as the opportunity to learn from each other. This is something, that over the past few weeks, we have been discussing as a teaching team - how can we help give our pupils these opportunities?
Blogging gives the children a space to share their voice and this is extremely important. Blogging should not only be “school related” but “learning related”. In a blog, you may learn a lot about not only what pupils are learning in school, but what they are passionate about and hopefully how we could serve them better as teachers. In a world where everyone can have a voice, isn’t it essential that we teach pupils how to use this powerful medium to share theirs in a meaningful way?
Not every pupil will take to blogging the way that we envision as teachers, and to be honest, that is the beauty of blogging. If we make pupils do it the way we think it should be done, they might have trouble adopting this in a school setting. That being said, if we do give them the freedom to write or share not only what they are interested in, but also share it how they like, it could develop into something very powerful that will also give them an authentic audience.
I want our curriculum to be more transparent to parents; as our pupils write more about what they're learning, we now have a means for their parents to feel more connected to what happens at school. Where once a child would write for an audience of one – the teacher – now they are writing for a potentially much larger audience that includes their immediate and extended family. Pupils will not only have a digital archive of their learning, but will see comments from friends and family that they can revisit in years to come. Their access won’t be limited to the box of cherished school records and mementos relegated to the attic. For these children, an Internet connection will enable them to revisit their childhood and adolescent school years.
In school, we will encourage the children to share their brilliant and inspiring ideas with a wider audience via contributions to our new whole school blog. We will aim to share these blogs with parents via different platforms such as our newsletters, social media and the website. Through our blog space, the children will be enabled to build their collective pupil voice as well as a sense of individual ownership, value and identity when they offer their own content. We aim to make our classrooms windows visible to the world as the children will be encouraged to share information, inspirational ideas and things that they are passionate about beyond the realms of the classroom.