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.
Three points Aaron:
1) I vote for “explicit” but will need a rain check on “why?”.
2) You’re right that’s a killer question: using the software vs really blogging.
3) Your recent posts have been really thought provoking and therefore useful- thanks and keep it up please.
Comment by Cleve — November 3, 2005 @ 7:19 pm
We are explorer-learner-educators-coaches dealing with a new medium and trying to reconfigure our practice by creating a new environment together with our students. What we try out is not always successful…but it is from failing, reflecting on it and sharing our experiences that we learn and progress.
My two humble cents of real (Brazil)
Comment by Bee — November 4, 2005 @ 5:10 am
Koodos on the post…and on Bee’s comment. I agree with this idea of ‘a new medium’ … in order for us to get comfortable with it, we need to make mistakes and be ok with that…. I think, like Bee says, we are all trying to “reconfigure our practice by creating a new environment together with our students”–this is a big one and I am trying to wrap my brain around it and the implications it has on our teaching pedagogy, practice, and what it looks like in the classroom (the nitty gritty stuff).
Yes, totally it is from trying and failing (right on Bee!) that we learn, that our practice evolves…so refreshing to hear this being echoed across the blogosphere…
I recently posted a similar comment after reading another ed bloggers reflections,
http://jamesmatthew.wordpress.com/2005/11/04/teaching-blogs/
If you want to read the initial post (i link to it from mine,) it is at the Blog of Proximal Development:
http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2005/07/25/evaluation/
well worth checking out!
Thanks Aaron,
it is a tough one to work through…I think you would like that post from the Blog of Proximal Development…
Comment by J.M. — November 5, 2005 @ 4:52 pm
Hey Cleve, Bee, and J.M.,
Thanks so much for your enthusiastic comments. I really appreciate them.
Cleve: for blogging in the classroom, I too am starting to swing towards more explicit objectives. After listening in on a skypecast over at edtechtalk.com which featured Barbara Ganley as she explained some of her classroom blogging practice, I started to think that classroom blogging needs to have some explicit controls placed on it. I think that if you’re working from within a curriculum, you’re sort of bound to play by its rules.
While I’m doing some pretty heavy reading around curriculum (much of which I’m still trying to bust my head around) it seems to me that there are, at least, two types of blogging for our discussion here: the classroom blog, and the personal/professional blog.
The classroom blog, if my thinking is anywhere close to correct, is very likely going to be under some explicit control. Teacher has targets to hit, “have to” topics to cover, and evaluations and grades to assign - like it or not.
However the other side of the coin is like what we are all doing with our own blogs. They are, in my mind, and if I’m understanding the difference correctly here: are governed by intrinsic objectives. I´m writing about what I find interesting, and what I’m passionate about: teaching, and doing it better. Nobody told me to do it. Nobody is telling me what to write about. It comes from within. I read and research things that I need in my own classes, or that has caught my attention for one reason or another.
I see similarities and some major differences between the two approaches to blogging. Perhaps I need to retreat a little from my position of thinking that the use of…light control for classroom blogging purposes in some way robs it of authenticity. (Listen to Ganley.)
Bee: Awesome. I totally agree. I see failure as a sign of massive progress as well. Afterall, he who never fails is likely sitting very still! I’ve been living your post…trying to encourage my students to blog has been….an uphill struggle. It’s happening…SLOWLY…but it’s happening. The journey, I think, is just as important as the destination. How you get there, can shape your practice deeply…I know I’m being shaped by what is happening (or not happening the way I thought) in mine. I, for example, am really learning the value of striving for a more personal connection with students and my fellow teachers. Influence happens best at close range! I likely never would have walked into that idea if I weren`t trying something new like this.
J.M.
It is all a big headshift isn’t it. The deeper I go into all this, the more I feel like I don’t know. I love it! I will check the Proximal Development blog out again…I went just after you posted your comment, but I don’t recall it now. His stuff is great though, another teacher who is really testing and thinking about why he does what he does.
Comment by Aaron Nelson — November 8, 2005 @ 12:11 am