On the Uses and Abuses of Student Blogging

[Update 12 June 2007: This post marked the beginning of a series of posts grappling with how to save classroom blogging from becoming "just a new way to turn in traditional homework," and kill its potential magic for developing the love of--and growth in--writing for students.

This post, in other words, begins the journey. To see where it went, this post is key. It links to all the intermediate stages in this month-long meditation.--Clay]

I’m posting this comment on another blog here because the question is coming up frequently in my reading: What purposes should blogs have in the English / Language Arts classroom? (Actually, this probably applies to many other disciplines as well.)

I’d love to hear others’ views on this:

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Hi C,

You write:

“Which brings me to the second conversation. One of my sophomores came to see me about her second quarter grade, which was pretty low. She couldn’t figure out why it was so low, so I explained to her that she was missing many blog entries, which I require as homework. Now, a couple of things happened right after I said that: She said that not only were there technical difficulties with learnerblogs, but that she and many of my other sophomores think that blogging is useless and “pretentious.” At the same time, I realized how counterproductive it was to force my students to blog on a schedule. I was grading them on their participation in something that I find valuable in my own learning (blogging) but in a way that doesn’t even work for me (posting by a deadline, rather than as I come up with things to write about). Long story short, I adjusted her grade but also made it clear that we’d continue to use the blogs for the rest of the year, albeit in a more productive/logical/useful way, TBD later.”

Learnerblogs did “suck,” as my kids (and I) put it, in Dec. and Jan. Still slow. Want tips?

If you use Moodle, try a “Learnerblogs Back-up Forum.” That way they can post to Moodle when LB is down.

I struggle with assigning teacher-dictated blog posts. If a teacher told you to write your homework in you personal journal, wouldn’t that ruin your journal?

So if you want students to warm to blogging, maybe the blogs should be about what…they care to write about, instead of what teacher does?

You can always make them respond to your literature questions on Moodle. If they’re really interested in the class stuff, they’ll choose to write about it in their free blogs anyway.

We’re English teachers. We’re responsible for helping their writing develop. Holding them to deadlines, whether they like it or not (remember, they’re human, so they’re not generally going to like hw), is the only way I can see to ensure they practice writing.

Deadlines are authentic. We tend to become losers if we never meet them, in life, love, and work.

But “My Personal English Homework Blog”? Why would I care about my blog if I’m just answering teacher’s version of “End-of-Chapter Questions”?

But you already wrote yourself to this position when you wrote:

Maybe the blogs need to be less academically focused? Maybe the student blogs need to be pushed to become more like the blogs I find myself reading–the ones with voice, the ones that are focused on the blogger’s interests. Maybe it’s okay, even more than okay, to have students just write about what they think is important–I’d be a hypocrite if I got mad a student who wrote about her favorite album like I did a little while ago.

I wonder–and this is the invitation for my sophomores to respond–if I need to just bury the whole blog-as-reading-journal model once and for all. Enough with the “post before and after you read” nonsense. Enough with the “comment on someone else’s blog for credit” malarkey. Enough with making the blogs as fake as the five-paragraph essay and as seemingly pointless as a quadratic equation. In my enthusiasm for the new technology, I’m afraid I’ve run roughshod over one of my basic beliefs about education–it has to be authentic to be important.

I say amen to that. And blogs are the perfect place for it. And yes, ASSESSING the blogs for development in the writing skills we’re paid to develop in students is, to me, fair game. Six Traits is the best way I’ve found to make that happen. Over the rest of the year, my students will be expected to show growth in their selection of ideas and content, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, conventions. If they don’t, I’ve failed.

But at least they get to work on these things writing about what THEY like, instead of what I do. Because let’s face it: they’re not all going to become English majors, any more than you became an algebra major.

But they might become music or film critics, lawyers, PR people, science writers, etc. Blogs are great for that.

It’s not “rah rah technology.” It’s rah rah authenticity and audience, students connecting with other students outside the classrooms. It’s rah rah more than teacher reading what I write. It’s rah rah reading what other students think of me and my ideas and writing.

The technology is just a tool. It moves teacher out of the way. If/when you start using wikis (or letting your students), you’ll discover how much students can teach each other. It’ll be messy, yes; it’ll be imperfect (though less so the second time); but it’ll also be preferred–I’ve got student reflections that overwhelmingly demonstrate their preference for wikis for any process writing.

This is too long. It’s just there’s so much interesting stuff going on in your reflection. Skepticism is good. But not if it’s a show-stopper (I’m not saying yours is). Baby’s bathwater will always need changing.

To change metaphors (for another unoriginal one): wikis, blogs, etc are just new pencils and tablets (and really, they ARE just as easy to learn for kids), so your verb choice of “forcing” instead of just “giving” these new read-write tools to your kids is suggestive to me….

Final comment: I think I’ve read in earlier posts (I subscribe to you and read everything you write) that you use Moodle. Why not create a dummy user, give the dummy username and password to your students, and create an anonymous feedback forum? That way you’ll always hear student criticism–not just at blog-grading time. That feedback is good stuff. I post my students’ anonymous feedback on my blog. Sure, I get beat up, but what leader of crowds won’t? It helps.

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