Electronic Journals in the  Secondary and University Classrooms

This paper is Part One of a two part series describing research that was conducted using electronic journals in the science classroom. Part One describes the technical component of the software and how it was used in the classroom and provides some examples of students' works. Part Two describes the intended research that will be conducted to determine the effects of electronic journals on students' self - efficacy and academic achievement. Currently, the outline of Part Two does not include research components. See first aid cabinet for main building

Part One

A journal database program gives students the opportunity to put their journal writings into a computerized format. This provides teachers with opportunities to view students' writings easily and effectively.

Research has indicated that journal writing plays an important part in the development of learning. In secondary school, many educators use student journals as a way for students to process their thoughts and summarize what they have learned. The process of journal writing helps promote critical thinking skills and an interdisciplinary learning approach. However, teachers reading these journals find that it is a time consuming process. Therefore, many teachers just do a quick check to make sure that students are doing the journals. Time prevents teachers from reading the journals completely. By not reading the journals, teachers lose valuable insights into their students' development. If a teacher is able to easily read journals and if the journals give additional insights into student understanding of class activities, then the journal becomes a valuable tool in the learning process. Для мужчин - мужская одежда в москве в интернет-магазине одежды, обуви и аксессуаров Bellore.ru

Using a popular database program (FileMaker Pro), an electronic journal has been developed. Following guidelines of accepted reading and writing practices, a database with pull down menus was developed. Students enter their writings into the electronic journals under the following fields:

* What you already knew about the topic

* What you learned about the topic

* What you want to learn about the topic

* Interest and understanding of the topic on a scale of 1 to 5
 
 

The SOS button provides students with an opportunity to anonymously write to the teacher a comment or a message of concern. During this school year, there were only a few SOS, however, some did provide me with insights that encouraged change.

Different layout designs of the database, permit teachers to view the data in various formats and the "Find" command permits access to a particular student's works and fields. For the teacher, this ease of reading the ejournals provides a greater opportunity to respond to the students' learning styles.

Electronic journals permit teachers to easily check the "pulse" of the class. Journals promote student learning because the process of writing a journal helps students to conceptualize and process instructional activities. Furthermore, students have the opportunity to make comments or ask questions to the teacher in their journals. The teacher is now able to easily read the journal and to assign a score (if desired) by a pull down menu. I have found that in my classes I need to give students a desired word count for the journals. Therefore a script was written to indicate the number of words for each of the sections. Краснодарские рестораны

Electronic journals provide the teacher with an opportunity to easily read (and access if desired) students writings. During this research, students' ejournals were accessed on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest). The assigned values focus mostly on the students' team efforts to follow directions and participate.

The developer of the database journal program has been using this electronic journal in his secondary classes and in his college courses for the past school year. In most cases, students work in learning teams before entering data into the ejournals. The students' responses have been very favorable and the reading of the electronic journals is a great way to see how students understand the material. Often, adjustments are made to the class lessons to clear up some concerns and misconceptions that are listed in the journals. I have found useful the students' response to the interest and understanding of the lesson. A layout provides a summary of the students' responses.

I have developed a layout that provides for quick access of a particular student's journal along with his/her average score. This function provides an opportunity to view all the journals of a particular team or student. In addition, if a grade is assigned for the journal, an average of the scores along with the number of entries is provided.

During this conference presentation, the layout of the electronic journal was displayed along with sample student entries. Instructional strategies on how to use the electronic journal in a classroom were illustrated as were strategies for using the electronic journal in classrooms. As mentioned earlier, in this project students worked in teams of three to four students and each item was entered in a summary or collaborative journal. My classroom consists of five networked computers. If more computers were available, an option would be to have each student do their own electronic journal.
 
 

About the Author

Joseph F. Zisk, Ed.D. - an experienced science educator and teacher for over twenty years is actively involved in curriculum development. He promotes the incorporation of technology into the classroom and he has conducted numerous courses, workshops and presentations on instructional strategies for using technology in education. He is currently conducting research on using technology in the secondary classroom.