24 | VLOGGING | PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
ABOVE: Dave Cormier
Dave Cormier, an educational consultant, sees blogging and vlogging as an excellent medium to engage students with what’s happening in the wider world. “Global citizenship is difficult to build inside of a four-walled classroom, but seeing other parts of the world presented from the perspective of people your own age can be much easier to contextualise.” School networks such as Youth Voices bring students together from all over the world and can be a valuable way of creating opportunities for students to make international links. Blogging and vlogging's
benefits are also not just limited to students, but also extend to parents. “They're a great way to increase community engagement, especially in areas of deprivation where parents may have lower social skills,” says Simon. Vlogging in particular is a good way of engaging parents with school
activities, and can strengthen the relationship they have with a school. For example, if a parent is unable to atend an assembly or sports day, a vlog post can enable them to still be a part of the day. Amy Muir, a Year 2 teacher at
the Marlborough School in Cheshire, started blogging to link in with the curriculum for the term. “Our cross curricular theme is 'Bears Bears Everywhere', so we created our own 'bear blog' in Word to get the idea of blogging, and then blogged on our class homepage. Currently there are only a few blogs but the children are taking charge of this from now on.” Amy has found it takes a lot of promoting and encouraging to get parents to log onto the blogs, mainly due to a lack of time, but she’s in no doubt about how much the students enjoy it and the benefits it’s creating. “The children love seeing pictures of themselves on the blogs and no doubt go
home and tell parents about it.”
Making e-learning safe While the advantages for students' literacy, numeracy and communication skills can't be denied, with the news full of the dangers of children spending too much time online and viewing unsuitable sites, is bringing blogging and vlogging into the classroom really appropriate for schools to do? Absolutely, says Geoff
Millington, the founder of PrimarySite, the UK’s leading provider of websites for primary schools and academies. “It allows children to learn about e-safety and how to behave online within a safe and secure environment that is monitored by teachers and parents. Making and learning from mistakes on the school blog is safer than on Facebook or Twiter!” A school could just set up a page on its website, but Geoff
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