EDTECH597 – Introductory Entry

One of the activities for Week 1 in my EDTECH597 – Blogging In The Classroom was for students to introduce themselves and talk about why they wanted to take this course. As I am hoping to model each of the activities I ask of the students, I wanted to post an entry that introduced myself as the instructor and explained why I wanted to create this course.

For those folks that don’t know me, my name is Michael Barbour and I’m an Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology/Educational Evaluation and Research at Wayne State University – and this summer an adjunct professor for the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University. The courses I teach focus on the use of online tools in the classroom and qualitative research methods. My research interests focus on the use of K-12 online learning, particularly for students in rural jurisdictions. I’m originally from Newfoundland and Labrador, which is quite important to me.

In 2011, I was asked to design a course in blogging in the classroom for Boise State University.  The reason I accepted the BSU suggestionstemmed from my own participation in previous blogging initiatives. Over the past couple of years, I have participated in 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger that Steve Dembo ran, I participated in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog journey by ProBlogger Blog Tips, and I also participated in 7 Days to a Better EduBlog by Change Agency. I feel like I’ve gotten a lot out of these experiences, and I was wondering if I could take these experiences – along with my six + years of blogging – and turn them into a graduate level class that students would find useful. The course itself is a combination of “being a better blogger” activities and exploring various models of incorporating blogging into the classroom. It worked out pretty well last summer (although none of the seven or eight student continued blogging after the course concluded – at least in the same space they had blogged during the course), so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all turns out this summer.