1. Blogging Belief<br />Self Designed Case Study<br />Jessica Hollon<br />ITEC 5090<br />March 13, 2010<br />Julie is a twenty eight year old teacher who has been teaching for the past seven years. For the first six years of her teaching career, she had a boss that was supportive of her ideas and would let her try out new methods and technologies in her classroom. However, in the last year the principal at her school has changed and the new principal, Mrs. Dean, is not as trusting when it comes to teachers trying out new methodologies and technologies.<br />Julia does not know why Mrs. Dean is not supportive of teachers trying new technological methods in their rooms. She speculates it is because Mrs. Dean is new to the district and under scrutiny herself. It has been an issue this year that Mrs. Dean isolates herself from students and is not really becoming a member of the school community, which is not the leadership style her staff desires from her and the style which they are used to. <br />Mrs. Dean’s style appears to be to lead from behind closed doors. She regularly sends out directive emails, but does not have staff meetings. She has recently come under fire from teachers, parents, and the superintendent over this issue. Mrs. Dean is clear to her staff in that she wants them to only teach what the district purchased curriculum dictates, and only teach in those methods published in the curriculum teachers’ guides. The curriculums she would like to be followed allow for no technology integration. This is a large shift in leadership style and philosophy from the prior principal who was out and about around the school each day interacting with students and teachers and who loved to see new and innovative techniques being tried out. <br />Knowing this about her principal, Julie has already met with Mrs. Dean once about her latest endeavor of starting a classroom blog. Julie knows she will need the principal’s permission to embark on this activity, but does not feel as though the principal is open minded about the students blogging. This is disappointing to Julie, who has had a classroom in the past with a high level of technology integration compared to other classrooms in the district.<br />In their prior meeting, Mrs. Dean told Julie that she did not see how blogging could be beneficial. She also commented that “kids do not need to be taught to blog; they all have cell phones and computers of their own and use this technology outside of school. School hours should be spent learning academics and using this time to blog, even blogging responses to academic material, could be better spent elsewhere.” <br />Julie also remembers Mrs. Dean stating that, “parents here are so overly involved that if we have the kids blog, parents and students will be reading the blog and blogging from home, and this will create something that one teacher cannot effectively manage, nor would want to.” Julie had not thought about the home connection made through blogging before Mrs. Dean brought it up, but Julie did not view the home connect as a negative.<br />Mrs. Dean went on to tell Julie that blogging would be just one more thing for the students to manage, when instead they could be discussing whatever they were blogging about out loud or in their written responses in class. Mrs. Dean made it clear that the curriculum Julie was supposed to be teaching did not call for blogging as a response method, thus she felt it was an unneeded activity. <br />While Julie was disappointed in the reaction from her new principal, she was encouraged that Mrs. Dean has finally agreed to hear her side of the case for blogging in her classroom. Mrs. Dean has asked Julie to meet with her and to be prepared to discuss why blogging would enhance her classroom. Mrs. Dean has given Julie until the end of the week to prepare reasons and research based facts that can speak to the fact that blogging can enhance the curriculum and be successfully managed.<br />Julie’s next task is to find support for her feelings about blogging. She feels as though blogging can be a tool that students could be motivated by and that could be used to enhance the curriculum already in place. She also thinks that it may reach a student demographic that is currently unmotivated, and that parents commenting on work would not be a bad thing at all. She also feels that blogging may create a larger community and audience for students to show case their work. <br />Julie thinks that this meeting will be her only chance to convince Mrs. Dean of this, so in the next week it is her mission to come up with evidence that blogging is not only appropriate, but a worthwhile activity for her students. Since this may very well be her one and only chance at changing Mrs. Dean’s mind, she needs to be fully prepared when she goes into the meeting. She finds herself asking these questions: What are her best chances of changing Mrs. Dean’s mind? How should she prepare for this meeting? What sound and traditional educational methods can she compare blogging to in order to illustrate its effectiveness?<br /> <br />