The "Blogging as Conversation" Conversation

A field headquarters in the War on Schooliness.

The "Blogging as Conversation" Conversation

Barbara has alerted me to Jeff Utecht’s recent post about “blogging as conversation”–and made me feel a bit guilty about my own absence in many “comments” boxes to other edubloggers. (In my defense, I’m running at 1000 mph, but the world right now seems to be going at about 1010. My plate will get emptier soon–lots going on behind the scenes that I can’t wait to write about!)

Anyway, that “blogging as conversation” discussion intersects with my own recent concerns about how not to be a teacher who ruins the blogging experience for students by turning it into “just another way to turn in homework.”

I read Jeff’s article after setting up a class history blog that is unit specific — World War I to World War II only — and assigning students to write a weekly reflective post about whatever strikes them about the content for the week. I’m still learning how to set-up multiple authors on my school’s new WordPressMU blog site, but think I got it right. So the students will start writing their reflections next week, and commenting–”conversing”–on others.

My goal as the “teacher” is to refine my Sumo skills (SUMO: “Shut Up and Move Over”), and not write my own posts on this blog. I want to create those “conversations” by having all students write, read, and respond to each other on this unit blog. I hope to limit myself to the role of commenter.

This represents a further evolution of my quest for the student blogging Grail. I like this unit-specific idea. I like the collective student authorship on one blog, and the absence of the teacher. I think students might be attracted to the site precisely because I’m not dominating it. And I can’t wait to see what happens.

As I write this, it occurs to me that I might need to scaffold the assignment to help the students find entry-points into ideas to write about. Chris Watson’s use of side-bar positioned essential questions to guide student blogging on his English class blog might be the thing.

Anyway, interesting times. Any crowd wisdom is, as usual, very wanted.

(Photo: “conversazioni domenicali” by pupanna on Flickr–wonderful photo!)

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