When blogging meets the classroom
This is sort of re-examining a line of thought around blogging practices in the classroom.
This morning I was revisiting Aaron Campbell’s post over at Dekita.org around approaches to classroom blogging.
Today’s focus: how involved should a trajectory coach get in the content of a student’s blog post. Is it hands in and on, or largely model and invite?
Taken from EDUCAUSE REVIEW | September/October 2004, Volume 39, Number 5
“What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don’t say the wrong things?”
“After returning from a writing teachers’ conference with sessions on blogging, Richard Long, a professor at St. Louis Community College, explained the issue this way: “I’m not convinced, however, the presenters who claimed to be blogging are actually blogging. They’re using blogging software, their students use blogging software, but I’m not convinced that using the software is the same as blogging. For example, does posting writing prompts for students constitute blogging? Are students blogging when they use blogging software to write to those prompts?”
That’s a thinker isn’t it? There’s a huge difference between using blog software, and really blogging. Between journaling and edu-blogging.
So, based on the above thoughts, can/should trajectory coaches (be they esl, math, lit, writing etc. coaches) be stipulating student content? Can authentic, passionate, blogging be done without a “teacher-set” direction? Is it poor edu-blogging practice to set some sort of direction or standard to work to?
And that brings me back to my cluelessness around objectives. Should they be implicit or explicit?
The jury is still out.
