Beyond School

Uploaded on November 14, 2006
by Magander

[Maybe you'll want to skip the next paragraph. I'm just summarizing what I've learned about administering web-servers in the last bloody week. After that, the topic moves to student blogging.]

As I write, I’m uploading a zip file of our school Moodle onto our new hired server. I’m also waiting for the domains (website names) for our new server to “propagate”–which seems to mean “stake their territory on the world-wide web,” becoming real virtual sites instead of just site names we paid for. All of this tech language seemed like English to me until I tried to make sense of it, and failed. But a phone call to a tech support guy at our new server steered me through the cPanel enough to get our website ready to launch after a day or two of “propagation.”

The new server means this for me-as-teacher and my students: a second chance to get classroom blogging right–or “righter,” anyway. (Some student blogs in my classrooms are so right already I’m amazed.)

Strike that. It’s a second chance for me to guide and manage student blogging better. And I only share this because I figure many teachers out there are wrestling with the same challenge. So here’s what I’m thinking about how to start this “blogging–the sequel” episode better than my first outing.

One student blog, or several? Efficiency v. student overload

When I first started my students blogging a few months ago, I made an English class blog, and had students set up their own English blogs on Learnerblogs (sorry, but LB is so unreliable and slow it forced this move to our own WordPress MU school site). I then linked their blogs to the class blog in the blogroll.

Now here’s the twist–or, I’m thinking now, the wrong turn: A month or two later, I had my history students (not English) set up individual blogs for history, and linked them to a new history class blog. Why am I thinking this is a wrong turn? Because some of my English students also have me for history–so now they have to manage two blogs.

I know, I know: many of us adults have multiple blogs, and it’s not a hard thing at all. And maybe it’s not hard for students.

But does multiple blogging make the activity more enjoyable and engaging to them? I like having multiple blogs for multiple purposes, but unlike my students, I blog freely. I don’t blog for “homework” or grades. If I were blogging by compulsion, though, the way my students are, it might be more aversive to me. Blogging is just a new way to do homework assignments.

So this is what we’re up against as teachers: an institutional imperative to turn what should be a form of authentic writing into schoolish drudgery by attaching grades to it. (And I’m not saying the contrary, no grades, is the solution. I’m just identifying Scylla and Charybdis.)

So, to sum up so far, we have this: authentic teacher-bloggers who love blogging for its freedom and power, trying to instill that same love into student bloggers who are denied that freedom (it’s assigned) and power (teacher moderates student comments, censors student work; parents and other authorities probably create “internal censors” in the student writer–and teacher–as well).

So this teacher is trying to be mindful of how to minimize further aversive factors for student bloggers–which brings me back to my question: one student blog, or more?

Because when I think about it from the students’ point of view, I know that other teachers in school are catching on to blogging too (often without being bloggers themselves, unfortunately), and having students create even more “homework blogs” (blech) than the ones I’m assigning.

So the worst-case scenario? Student X has to “do homework” in the following blogs:

* my English blog
* my history blog
* my foreign language blog
* my math blog
* my science blog
* my PE blog (no joke–I hear students are now given tests and essays about, e.g., the rules of football)
* my elective blog

If it’s not happening yet, it’s probably just a matter of time.

So if it’s happening–and “Should it?” is a question worth pursuing–can we at least think of alternatives to having so many subject-specific blogs?

Again, I’m already responsible for my students having two. And I think I can, and will, halve their burden, when the new school WordPress MU site goes up, by assigning one blog to them, and having them organize their posts with subject-area tags. Blogging for history? Tag it “history,” among your other tags–or better still, “history9,” since next year you might be blogging for “history10″. Blogging for English? Same thing, mutatis mutandis*.

This think-aloud has done its work: I’m going to propose to my k-12 faculty a “one blog per student” policy (unless a reader can show me something I’m not seeing by commenting**). All teachers can click on their subject’s tag to see the student’s work for that subject. Reflective student work, not related to academics, could be tagged something like “personal” to create a space for the “real” student’s writing.

The added bonus of this? That one blog is the archive and “digital portfolio” of the student’s holistic development over the years. A scrapbook of the growth of Johnny’s brain, heart, spirit , and horizons (not to mention his network) in his k-12 years.

Or we could do the traditional thing, I guess: slice Johnny into compartments, the way we’ve sliced the world of ideas into “disciplines.” Maybe we should put a “bell” widget in their blogs too, so they have to start and stop writing on schedule?***

—
*Latin: “all necessary changes being made”–and a hint that the conversational tone of this blog, rather than the academic and self-consciously “impressive” one so many educators affect, is a stylistic choice. File under “Why I chose not to pursue a Ph.D.” and “philosophy of writing.”

**Reader comments are a rarity on this blog, despite a decent readership. I’d love input on what I can do to change that reality. I learn best in teams.

***For the irony-blind: a joke.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

1. Post-script on Student Blogging Think-Aloud
2. "Teachers as Blogging Vampires" and "Blogging as Conversation" Gone a Bit Surreal
3. An Idea to Elevate Student Blog-Writers: Giving them space on Support Blogging.com

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