Early Discoveries: Online Discussions using Blogger Comments

During 2012 and 2013 we (Neith Moore and Shelanna Sturgess, visual arts educators at Durban Girls high School) began posting  briefs and links online and testing various hand in formats.  We wanted the learners to interact with our blogs so we experimented with using the comment function on Blogger to create online discussions.  

This photo by Carey-Anne Dooley captures my mom laughing as she engages with an Indian lady on a bus in Jaipur. It brings back many happy memories of our India travels and reminds me how important is to engage with people around you which is something we have tried to increase in our visual arts classrooms. Sometimes it is online conversation and other times it is in the here and now.

Link to Project using Comments

How our journey into online learning began

Photo Courtesy of Shena Macdonald 

Sometimes the best journeys in life are the unexpected ones- the little pit stop you had at quaint coffee shop because a monkey stole your padkos or the magnificent storm sky that broke open a landscape while you sheltered under a bridge.  Our experience of blended learning feels something like that.  It was something we (Neith Moore and I) had heard  about and were vaguely considering but most of the discoveries feel like we stumbled upon them and were surprised by the view.  

In 2011 Moore was invited to a Microsoft presentation and they happened to mention Skydrive. Our school server was giving a lot of trouble at the time so we started saving things online.  In that same year Moore also built a website (theopenstudio.co.za)  as part of a web design short course she was doing through UNISA (University of South Africa). 

Thus in Term 3 2011 we taught the Grade 10 Jewellery project off the website and the learners seemed to enjoy the concept of accessing work online. However Moore found that it was complex to alter projects on the website so she decided to try a blog at the end of 2011.  I had thoroughly enjoyed handing in my assignments online at DUT and Moore was encouraging me to create a blog so I created my first online teaching experiment at the beginning of 2012. 

Moore and I decided that it would be better to each have our own online classrooms as we each have slightly different styles and often work on different projects to facilitate sharing of physical resources within the Fine Art Department.

Introduction to the Blog Author

Hi my name is Shelanna Sturgess (nee Macdonald).

 I am an art educator at Durban Girls High School,

 who has been experimenting with online education since 2011. 

 You can view my Visual Arts classroom blog at:

 studio2-41.blogspot.com 

In 2009, I returned to my former High School (Durban Girls High School), as a young art student intent on understanding the world of teaching.  Part of our third year of the Durban University of Technology's Fine Art Course included a month’s work experience at a location of our choice. I was excited about the opportunity to continue exploring the art-making opportunities that DGHS's art studio had to offer. I will also excited to work with high school art teacher Neith Moore, who is a highly accomplished Visual Arts and Design Educator. Mrs Moore has an deep love for sharing knowledge and exploring new ideas and the art studio seems to acquire new disciplines each year. I thoroughly enjoyed my work experience and realised that a month is far too short a time to glean all the wisdom that Neith Moore and the staff at DGHS had to offer. Thus I was delighted to return to DGHS as an art educator in 2010. Since then I have spent a lot of time eavesdropping on Mrs Moore's lessons and rushing in to share information with my classes.

Mrs Moore loves to start new things so she began experimenting with an educational website in 2011. Her passion for education is infectious and her experiments generally have amazing results, so I found myself joining in the online world when Neith migrated from the website to a blog. Thus we having been using blogs as online classrooms since the end of 2011/ beginning of 2012.  

We have since began experimenting with Google Apps For Education (GAFE) and are hoping that some more teachers will join us so that we can add lots more content to our GAFE site and hopefully launch it soon at Durban Girls High School.

I had no idea how much I would enjoy blogging and I have since created a blog for my life orientation classes (dghslife.blogspot.com ) as well as blog showcasing some of my Tech art work (shelannakhethiwe.blogspot.com).  

This blog (ictschoolexperiment.blogspot.com) is the next in my online journey.... I have so enjoyed teaching online that I decided to register for my MTech in Fine Arts with a focus on Visual Arts Education. Part of my writing and practical work explores creating online educational resources. Some of the other teachers at this school as well as friends at other universities have asked for help with setting up their online classrooms. Thus this will blog will document some of the things we have learnt about working online, as well as tutorials on various aspect of online education. I will also include some articles and reviews on online education that I am reading for my MTECH studies.

When I am not exploring art or education, I love cooking so one day I may start a food blog about how we sometimes turn my parents house into a restaurant and enjoy all the deliciousness of friends and inventing recipes...but for now I think I'll stick to education...

Photos Courtesy of Shena Macdonald (my darling mother)