Educational contexts are full of complex concepts and tricky terminology that can be challenging to understand and even harder to put into practice. Here we’ll explore the British Columbia connections to frameworks relating to digital literacy and 21st Century teaching. Blogging, both professional and classroom based practices, should be informed by connections and designs to address curriculum and literacy needs.

British Columbia has outlined a digital literacy framework [BCs digital literacy framework document] and provides explicit links to the BC curriculum by grade ranges [Digital Literacy website]. As you scan through the examples and possible activities, think about how blogging would fit into this framework.

Blogging needs a purpose, a passion, and a commitment to student learning within the 6 Cs framework as graphically represented by Sylvia Duckworth (2015). Part of your blogging practice should be to bring each of these six C’s into the process and products within your own blog site and/or the classroom blog site.

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One example comes from the Gr. 6 curriculum competencies (links to the BC curriculum) for Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies strand. The big ideas include:

• Design can be responsive to identified needs.
• Complex tasks require the acquisition of additional skills.
• Complex tasks may require multiple tools and technologies.

For this example, let’s examine the competencies and content as suggested in the curriculum document with an eye on blogging as a teaching strategy.

Under the curricular competencies, among the many that are listed, students are expected to: generate potential ideas and add to others’ ideas; record iterations of prototyping; decide on how and with whom to share their project; select and learn about appropriate tools and technologies to extend their capability to complete a task. Under the content/ modules suggested, among the multiple options available, students will experience and are expected to know: digital self-image, citizenship, relationships, and communication; methods for personal media management; strategies to identify personal learning networks; legal and ethical considerations, including creative credit and copyright, and cyberbullying; digital and non-digital media, and their distinguishing characteristics and uses; techniques for using images, sounds, and text to communicate information, settings, ideas, and story structures; or, influences of digital media for purposes of communication and self-expression.

Blogging as a learning strategy

With blogging in mind, consider the KNOW, DO, UNDERSTAND model when designing your own life-long learning or for your classroom practices in teaching and learning. This website page on the Scarfe Sandbox blog site [Know Do Understand (KDU): A Starting Point in Planning] provides details and ideas about the application of the KDU model in British Columbia educational contexts. This page contains downloadable and fillable templates for lesson and unit planning available for use with BC curriculum.

Blogging practices can become embedded within your growing assessment literacy, as outlined in the BC supporting documentation on assessment in K-12 education. View this video on Assessment Literacy in BC as a starting point. As you watch, consider where blogging might fit into this framework.