Edublogger: Science Education on the Edge

After poking around the interwebs for a little while, I was sucked into a blog by a science (Biology and Chemistry, with occasional Physics) teacher named Chris Ludwig. His blog is called "Science Education on the Edge: Experimenting with Student-Centered Science Education". Mr. Ludwig's writing style is engaging and personable, and even more importantly, I learned several new things just by reading his first page of posts. It seems his blog has been going for three years, so there's a lot of material for me to sink my teeth into when I have the time.

One thing that attracted me immediately to the blog was the tone. Mr. Ludwig is clearly frustrated by standardized testing and standards-based education, but he doesn't rant about these topics, instead posing level-headed (though sometimes sarcastic) critiques of a damaged system. His frankness is particularly notable given that his blog is hosted on his school's servers. I particularly liked a post in which he mused about a girl whom he had observed come in for state testing, listen to the instructions, then close her booklet and sit quietly while all her peers took the test. She did this four days in a row - 24 hours total of silence. He was thoroughly impressed by this display (as was I!) and mused about its possible motivations. Alas, when he showed her his blog post wondering about her behavior (in lieu of asking her directly, for fear of getting her in trouble, I think) she just smiled enigmatically and went back to talking to her friends. Most intriguing! Mr. Ludwig takes this anecdote as an opportunity to wonder what would happen if a large number of students engaged in such peaceful protest. Food for thought...

Mr. Ludwig also blogs extensively about his own classroom techniques, which, it appears, have evolved significantly over the last three years. He's not kidding about having a student-centered approach. One post discusses using portfolios as a way of demonstrating "student achievement." He linked to some exemplar portfolios from his own high schoolers and I had fun clicking through them a bit. He seems to favor creativity and collaboration, as well as activities like blogging, as a means of helping his students learn. At the same time, his teaching (and the portfolios themselves) are carefully aligned to a set of standards. While this last makes me a little uncomfortable (probably because it looks so foreign - as a private school student, no such thing as a standard darkened our doorstep, and I recognize how lucky I am in that), it is a demonstration that it is possible to have a fun, engaging classroom that still adheres to the externally imposed standards we must answer to.

He also blogged about what seems to be an excellent tool for teachers to give feedback to their students and keep track of how students are doing in all of their classes. It's called BlueHarvest and I recommend reading his post about it, which serves as a nice introductory tutorial about its capabilities. Basically, you create courses and student profiles within those courses, then give each student the login info for their own profile. When a student produces something needing feedback, the teacher goes in and leaves feedback on the corresponding standard. The student receives an email that feedback was received, and they can respond in turn. This is an excellent alternative to keeping student records on your own computer, partly because it's better organized, and partly because students can keep track of their own progress at the same time. They could even show their progress to their parents. The only thing I wonder is if the site has a space for the teacher to record comments/observations that they don't want to share with their students. Regardless, it seems like a great tool!

I've only touched on three of Mr. Ludwig's posts, and you can see how diverse and engaging the topics are. There's a lot of practical advice to be found, as well as lots of sound thinking. This is definitely a blog I will be exploring further in the future.