I setup a blog for my school - Neale-Wade Community College - early in 2008. Nothing revolutionary and incredibly innovative about that, but I really felt the blog had the potential to be a positive driving force to encourage colleagues to share and update information.
The problem for us what that our website was never updated rapidly and frequently enough. Without a specfic paid responsibility to do this, I, as the Head of ICT, have continued doing the role. The school admin staff do update the College letters and relevant information but what wasn't appearing were the important, innovative and interesting things going on in College.
We've got the main College website on the 'offical' school domain - http://www.neal-wade.cambs.sch.uk but I setup the blog on our sister site - http://www.neale-wade.net. I decided to use Wordpress, the brilliant open-source blogging platform simply because I've used it before and I felt that all colleagues would be able to use it. The moderation funtions were also ideal. A member of staff could be given an account to author posts and they could directly control the comments that follow. No comment appears until that member of staff (or an adminstrator of the blog) approves it. Each time a comment is made, the member of staff gets an e-mail to ask them to moderate.
An ideal system for any school, build completely on open-source software.
Over the past year the blog has been used really well for a number of areas - specific parts of the College were catching on at how immediate and useful a blog could be. This was pleasing, but I could still see far more potential.
One benefit is how the blog makes the main College site appear fresh and updated. The RSS feed from the blog is shown in a ticker at the top of the main College website. As a new post is made, it instantly appears at the top of the main website.
However, over the last few days the College blog has completely exploded for one reason - the snow. On Monday morning I was able to post details about the College still being open. From around 06.50am I'd posted a message on the blog saying that the College was open and directed people to listen to the local radio and check back for further updates. By 7.30am, when I left for work, it was clear we weren't going to shut for snow. However the blog had proved powerful - we'd had around 450 unique visits that morning, showing staff, parents and students were using it as a reference.
When I got into College on Monday students kept telling me how they'd looked at the blog and found it really helpful. It seemed that the blog was no longer being seen as something extra but rather something that was accepted as a standard reference. If you look at Monday's post - http://www.neale-wade.net/blog/?p=647 - you can see that it wasn't anything special but it included links to find out more information as required. We had a couple of comments too. On Monday afternoon the College actually closed early so I updated the blog further with this information.
It was clear that the blog was being used as a reference source - this was pleasing.
However, nothing prepared me for what would happen yesterday - Thursday 5th February. It was clear the weather was poor, with quite heavy snow overnight. I put a new blog post up, basically copying Monday's post saying that currently the College was open, but do keep checking back for more information. This was at 06.50ish and I kept updating it every five or so minutes.
At 07.16 the Principal of the College phoned - informing me that the College was closed and could I update the blog posting. Immediately I was able to update the message and instantly the blog (and consequently the website via the RSS feed) was able to get the message out. The Principal also told me that he was having immense difficulties getting through to the local radio stations. Thus the blog was the main communication method. The county council was contacted but they update their list by editing and uploading a Word document. Fair enough, but this takes a while to appear.
Within the next hour we got hundreds of visits to the blog - and 17 comments offering thanks and further details / requests. By the afternoon we had 23 or so. This was the highest amount of comments we'd ever had for a blog posting and it was clear that the College was using the blog as a really positive tool for communication. As we were also getting comments back it was great to see this was no longer just a one way tool - this was educational Web 2.0 in action.
In the middle of the afternoon the Principal phoned me again and asked me to setup a new post. This time he wanted to gather people's opinions about Friday (i.e. today). We had conflicting weather reports, are a distinctly rural school with some students and staff from some very rural locations. Plus we have staff arriving from many different directions outside of the main town of March - Peterborough, Kings Lynn, Ely and Cambridge to name just four.
I didn't realise it at the time, but this was the post that would prove the worth of the College blog. Whereas it had been my brainchild, my creation, my time in setting it all up and my persuasion to get staff to use it, this one idea from the Principal had a transformational impact. I'd done the technical setup and got it all rolling, but his experience was the key turning point.
We posted the following at 15:49 [see the actual post]:
Mr Hitch would like to hear the views of parents, staff and students - what do you think about opening on Friday? How many of can make it into College tomorrow? Have you seen the latest weather forecast?
We’d like to gather together your opinions and suggestions. Please do leave a comment.
Within an hour we'd had 14 replies. Mostly from students and, as you'd expect, they were suggesting the College be closed tomorrow. Yet these comments were not over the top or daft, these were students genuinely taking the opportunity to try and persuade their headteacher why they felt the College should remain closed.
Within the next hour we had 36 comments - now gaining traction with some staff and parents leaving their thoughts.
By six thirty we had around 65 comments with no sign of it stopping. We were gathering a range of fews from the whole College community. By the midnight last night we had a total of 172 comments - (we ended up with 184 by this morning). They had been two extras which I didn't allow though (one was daft and the other was from another local schoolchild swearing).
This morning (Friday) I was phoned by the Principal at 06.50 and a decision to close the College had been made. I'm not yet sure how much the blog influenced him, but were were one of the first in the county to close. Quite a few schools opened today and were then forced to send students home, closing middle to late morning. I'd like to think he'd felt empowered by the support and views on the blog to take a tricky decision early on. It was clearly the right decision to take.
Anyway - my apologies for going on so long - but I was really eager to share what I hope is an example of really good practice. Use of an open source Web 2.0 blogging tool - and not just as window dressing or some sort of added extra. This is using open source software as a key communication tool.
Useful links:
Wordpress - open source blogging software
Neale-Wade Community College blog
Neale-Wade Community College website
Excellent, that would have been good for my school too. Well done.
Ive set up (blogspot) blogs for our PTA and link to them from our school web, so that they can stay in touch without us having to update the web with their events. You are right it gives a fresh feel to the school web and benefits are plenty.
http://whitehillandhighbury.blogspot.com/
I also set one up for a project the children were working on. It was to document and plan for a monetary bid from "Children's first" Enabling proposed plans if we were granted the money to be recorded and feedback via comments from all the children, parents and governors must have been fundamental in us being granted the money. The project all visible via the blog.
Really interesting read, thanks for sharing it here.
What an excellent showcase for the power of blogs! Maybe it'll give the teachers a little shove to start putting content up? My own primary school origianlly had a quite extensive website with lots of content on, and a separate blog site. Now, the website has merely become a front end to the blogsite - It has even been rewritten to look like the blogsite! www.chorltonpark.manchester.sch.uk
Having used a Wordpress blog for our school for nearly three (or is it four?) years. It revolutionised the way we did things. Very nearly everyone contributes in some way to the blog. From viewing to posting to photographing to videoing to commenting to talking about to passing the word to collecting views and opinions to spreading information to sharing success to building links (locally and internationally) to beng enthusiastic.
Everything that is said in the post we agree with!
Brilliant work Andrew
http://greenparkschool.org.uk/
Our school website [1] is also built on blogging software, although ours is a typepad hosted site. Not really, open source, but it allows me to play with the templates and alter the look and feel to how we wish.
Like mentioned above, it really came into its own this week when the Head was able to add a new post the moment he knew the school was closed, and I was able to add a banner headline too informing pupils, parents and staff. Along with the texting service not one pupil arrived at the school on the days we were closed.
http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk [1]
Attending presentations that said open source is really not any cheaper or much easier than other LMS such as Desire2Learn or Blackboard
Regards
SBL Software
I'm not sure I understand the point. Blogging software is not competing with Blackboard, that woud be Moodle which includes blogging if you want to use it. Since nearly all the FE Colleges in the UK have or are migrating from Blackboard/WebCT to Moodle there must be some perception at least that it provides better value for money. The real issue is in development costs. If it takes £100k to develop some software is it best to reinvent the wheel 100 times and chuck masses of money at marketing to try and establish a monopoly and leverage it to get the biggest margin possible from selling licenses or start with somethig that does the job and then iteratively improve it drawing on existing work and sharing, making outcomes freely available without the complexity of managing license keys etc. It's looking increasingly obvious that the first business model is less efficient than the second in terms of use of resources and value for money. That is why Gartner et al say Open Source is the biggest change taking place in the software industry since the 1980s. However current commercial interests are likely to resist as their business models are destroyed and Government procurement methods are massively slow in reflecting the changes - but they will have to eventually. Water flows down hill and economics in free markets will find routes of best value.
Hi everyone!
Having a Blog in a school or adult college is great!
It really gives a different dynamic. I am an EGuide Lecturer in Westminster Adult Education Services and I have set up a blog just for Elearning matters where I share all my findings, tips and guides to all the staff.
It's definitely another channel to train teachers and it is quite popular now. Even students use it.
http://eblabla.wordpress.com/
Neale-Wade is my school and I just want to say that it is definately a fantastic idea!
I had the RSS feed on my iPod and just woke up on the friday morning and viewed the feed on that, didnt have to go to my computer or anything - definately a great idea.
I think the comment above says it all - a student thinks it's fantastic, and didn't even have to get out of bed to find out if the school was open! Brilliant!
I too am currently in the process of setting up a site for our school using Wordpress for just the reasons mentioned in this post. Plus you can have a number of editors, and they can even post via email if you want to make it really easy.
On a similar topic, I have been thinking about the potential for using Twitter in a similar senario - to push out urgent important information, but am worried about the message getting lost in the general 'white noise' of tweets - any ideas on this guys?
Of course the other application for twitter is to have the Twitter feed on the website/blog, then you can even update the site via SMS!
I think it's time schools (particularly secondary schools) use Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and all the other applications that our students use and are comfortable with to help communication and to aid teaching and learning - which as we all know, takes place outside of the classroom more and more.
As a student of NWCC i found it really useful to wake up in the morning and switch on my laptop to check out the schools blog and find out whether i could have a lie in in the morning.
The blog proved to be very useful throughout the adverse weather conditions we experienced as the more conventional way of finding out about school closures (local radio stations) did not broadcast the closure until it was too late.
As an A-Level student studying ICT at the college the blog was an excellent way to find out just how effectively Web 2.0 tools could be used in not only day to day situations but in times where vital information is needed to be passed on quickly
The above comment is a very good way of enhancing the potential of the internet to relay important information to not only pupils but parents aswell. Almost every teenager uses atleast one, if not more, of the many social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Myspace and many many more. If a school was to create a group on these sites which students and parents could join then those who do not know about the blog, or do not think to check it will also find out anything important without having to rely on the old fashioned letter in the post or sent home with the student, which, in most cases, is never seen by a parent.