Overdrive: That Classroom Blogging Grail, and How Teaching and Grading Obstruct It
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I’ve been up all night catching up on my reading, which these days means feed-reading, more than anything.
Two that struck a chord:
1. That LearnerBlogosphere Idea
Sylvia Martinez on the red-hot GenYES blog writes several posts about getting teens to use Web 2.0 independently - like we adult edubloggers do - to develop their literacy skills in ways that classrooms typically cannot match.
One reason I love Sylvia’s posts is that she references reports and data that I don’t have the will or temperament to seek out, but which speak almost always to my own priorities as an educator. A case in point: the goal of creating a “LearnerTalk” (but that sounds schooly) of student edubloggers to give us teachers lessons on how our Classroom 2.0 attempts measure up. Sylvia writes that this is already happening spontaneously, which encourages me to seek ways to harness and shepherd that trend into this arena. Here’s Sylvia:
Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork. (Read her “Web 2.0 - share the adventure with students” post as well)
Does anybody else read into this that the students are stuck, like we adults are, in their own separate echo-chamber? And that combining the student and teacher discourses in one truly universal “edublogosphere” has the potential to steer our shared enterprise into fertile territory sooner than the current “parallel echo-chambers” situation we seem to have right now?
Scott McCleod’s offer to host a “LearnerTalk” type thing a month or so ago has not been forgotten.* Life and work have been too fast to focus on generating interest in that. Last week, before we began our week-long Chusok holiday, I pitched blogging to my Web 2.0 activity club, and many of my students seemed to get a glimmer from that sermon of the power of real-world blogging. I think a few will bite.
2. The War on Teaching Bad Writing
Anybody who’s taught high school English should know why most students hate to write in schools. It’s because they’re taught to write badly.
If I assigned any of you to write about ideas that aren’t self-selected, in forms that aren’t self-expressive, for an over-worked audience of one that puts two or three words, random red hieroglyphs, and a permanently-branded number into a ledger that threatens to determine your fate, face it: you would learn to hate writing (and school) too.
Like Sylvia, Jeff Wasserman of When the Hurly-Burly’s Done shares some hard data and classroom anecdotes to help us teachers of real writing wage the war against teachers of the poisonously schooly 5-Paragraph Essay [*jeers and hisses*]. I replied to Jeff’s post,
Jeff, this makes me want to make my AP Lit class Ning public. We’re having forum discussions about Organic Form v. Mechanical (5PE and all that garbage).
I’ve been making them write timed essays without outlining, trusting that an organic form will come from simply responding to the prompt and writing from there.
I modeled it for them by writing an old AP Lit exam essay about a poem, under timed conditions, in a screencast here, for what it’s worth. Interesting to be able to let them into my interior writer’s monologue as I read, annotate, and write a response, recording voiceover all the while, to the same exercise they did.
My best student responded to watching it by saying, among other things, “I didn’t think you could make a one-sentence paragraph in the body of an essay.”
One last tidbit: I took an AP Lit workshop from UCLA this summer - a waste of time, mostly - but got this from the College Board/APL celebrity who taught it: AP Lit exam graders appreciate organic form, “as long as it has a beginning, middle, and end.”
I like that: beginning, middle, end. None of this “introductory paragraph, body, conclusion paragraph” drivel.
Then, instead of sleeping as I’d intended, my mind shifted into overdrive. Sylvia’s and Jeff’s post led to these fantasies of how we can teach real writing (based on real reading in this “infinite book” we call the internet) with web 2.0:
First, students would write self-directed blogs. No homework assignments allowed in terms of subject matter, though standards of style and conventions would be set;
Second, assessment would be based on readership, comments, subscriptions, visitor stats, Technorati authority ranking (with safeguards against fraudulent links, which are easy enough to spot), self-assessment, and other non-authoritarian, teacher-gives-grades assessment styles. (And yes, as usual, it’s the institutional but otherwise counter-educational imperative to grade everything that presents the biggest obstacle to this approach to learning.)
–Wait, you say. That’s not fair. Some students who are not blessed with verbal intelligence
will not attract subscribers, visitors, comments, and so forth. But not so fast: the art of compensation with other intelligences is so much more possible on blogs. Not a great writer? Then compensate by communicating through images (see Diane Cordell’s blog), podcasts (see Wes Fryer), films (see Marco Torres and Mabry Middle School), graphic novels and comic strips (see ToonDo). Carve out a niche doing Google Earth productions (see Google Lit Trips) as your blog’s specialty. Find some skill you have, or some passion you want to extend, and adapt your blog to exploit that.
Really: What form of multiple intelligences does blogging exclude?
Third, grades would be weighted toward the end of the year or term, to allow for experiment, dead ends, learning - through - failure, and other writerly discoveries afforded by real-world blogging. (I’m more and more fascinated by the fact that my own blogging has been a real-world case of what we call “project-based learning” in school, and more and more convinced it’s the way to engage young writers to naturally want to hone their skills and excel.)
I shouldn’t have tried to write this right now. Too tired. But these holidays are short, and I love them for allowing this type of reflection.
–
*I’ll probably just buy the domain and host it alongside the Project Global Cooling site anyway, since I’m already adminstering WordPress MU for my school - and soon will train students to administer these sites themselves. It’s so hard to let go of the reins and give them to the young, and so easy to forget that they’re more than capable. But I will ask Scott to boost, support, read, seed, reply 
Photo credits:
Writing by oskay
Borg Drones by Dunechaser
Bible 2.0 by jeff w brooktree
Looking by eskimoblood
Fusion Festival 2005 by Udo Herzog
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Clay,
I showed a student my blog today and told him how to sign up for his own.
He isn’t in my class and I gave him no direction on how or what to write.
Here’s hoping that Dan will have soem fun while exploring the blogosphere.
[Reply]
diane
26 Sep 07 at 10:51 pm
Am I the only one who turns dyslexic on the keyboard!!
[Reply]
diane
26 Sep 07 at 10:59 pm
Clay,
I’m thinking about your post and wondering how I would feel if I were a student in your clas having to write and be assessed in the manner you described in your post. What I would enjoy, 1) Freedom of expression, 2) Freedom of form, and 3) Freedom of choice. What I would still be bothered by though is the assessment method. I want to write because I have something to say and I want to say it my way and mainly for myself. Whether people read me or not, I would care less. My problem in being assessed by readership, comments, and subscriptions is that once again, I’m writing for someone else. This time however my grade is going to determined be by a group of people I don’t even know. Now I feel that in order to get a good grade, I have to abandon my organic writing and become more of a “pop-writer” so that I can gain the readers and subscribers I need to do well in class. What’s wrong with just assessing a student by the number of postings that they make?
[Reply]
Anthony
27 Sep 07 at 8:59 am
Anthony, I would argue that blogging is not about writing just for yourself. It’s writing for yourself AND for an audience of people who share your interests. Audience is key. And only attractive communication - language art - is going to win readers. Writing just for yourself is something a paper journal more than suffices for.
I don’t think the “pop writer” inference is necessarily fair (see the “Long Tail” phenomenon) or, if true, necessarily bad. “Pop” doesn’t have to mean “garbage.” Moreover, if the writing is not good - to an audience - it’s not going to be popular.
Writing a lot (being graded by volume) is not good writing either. By basing assessment on real-world results - readership - the student writers would have to grapple with all the traits of writing we want them to take seriously (titles, good ideas, good style and presentation, good voice, all of that). If they’re not getting readers or subscribers, not getting return visits and comments, then that’s their opportunity to ask themselves the questions that will start the authentic discoveries about their writing:
“Why is nobody reading this? Are my titles good? My ideas interesting and clear? My style and voice attractive?”
I do agree, though, that the content has to be guided away from gossip and “my cat, Fluffy” topics. For my AP Lit class, I’m about to launch a year long “My Mental Journey” project in which students identify the niche they want to explore and write about, and I will exercise some editorial veto power.
You understand this is written from the perspective of a writing teacher who’s trying to make students write like writers - and writers do write for audiences, even if those audiences are ideal instead of real.
The wonder of blogs, as you know, is that they transform those ideal readers into real ones - if your writing is good enough, and your web 2.0 skills (search engine optimization and all of that).
I’m hacking away at this jungle one machete-swing at a time. Thanks for helping me try to clear a bit more path.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
27 Sep 07 at 9:53 am
red-hot GenYES blog? wow, I’m blushing!
Thanks so much! I always find your posts original and though-provoking. Now I’ll have to step it up to keep this label!
[Reply]
Sylvia Martinez
27 Sep 07 at 12:02 pm
I’m ready to ‘boost, support, read, and seed’ whenever you are!
[Reply]
Scott McLeod
28 Sep 07 at 6:26 am
Re: assessment, I’ve struck a balance between WEBSITES in my class and BLOGS; students do both. For the blogs, it’s purely a self-assessment thing - they ‘declare’ their work in the Gradebook based on a rubric, and get the points - in terms of the grade, there is no distinction between an awesome post and a mediocre one, although there is definitely a distinction in peer responses; people know if they do an awesome post they will get feedback about it… which is a great motivation, and many of my students do, in fact, create awesome posts. I treat the blog as a place for them to experiment with creative writing, take risks, try out all kinds of styles: some people do amazing work in their blogs, some people do the minimum. That’s fine.
In their website projects, they are engaged in a REVISION process based on regular feedback not just from other students in the class, but from me on a weekly basis. Some students have huge writing deficits, so they have to do a lot of work on revising; they eventually do get an A on the project, though, because it is broken up into a continuous cycle of writing and revision with lots of feedback from me helping them with their writing.
I love having both of these public events going on: as students work harder on their writing in the Storybooks, they thrive on the positive feedback and end up working harder on their blogs, too - but the blogging is a great way to get started, low-pressure, exciting, fun…
I would never (NEVER) go back to traditional papers… they used to bore me to tears - and to bore the students even more. Life is great now: blogging, webpages, images, self-expression. IT WORKS…. why? because the students WORK at their writing - by the end of the semester they are so proud of their accomplishments (as they should be!).
I just posted something about my strategy with links to assignments, student projects, etc., in a discussion over at classroom2.0 about the evil Turnitin.com. My personal impression is that students cheat because they are BORED. Now that I do websites and blogging, students are way way way less bored with their writing - it’s creative, it’s real, it’s an ongoing process. Anyway, links to the stuff I’ve been doing and more specific comments on the evils of traditional writing and the industry it has spawned (e.g. Turnitin) are over here at classroom2.0:
Tech Tools and Academic Integrity (but it’s actually a discussion about Turnitin and student writing)
[Reply]
Laura Gibbs
1 Oct 07 at 8:32 pm
Laura, what an AWESOME comment. I’m at work, so more later. Can’t wait to hear and see more.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
1 Oct 07 at 10:45 pm
I thought your post was GREAT and the discussion was very thought-provoking for me.
I am pragmatic about grades: I would not give grades at all if it were my own choice, but students are 100% trained for OVER A DECADE of their life (ugh) to regard grading as essential, so there’s no avoiding this issue.
My goal then is just to make sure that the super-hard-working students get the recognition they deserve, while the students with low motivation get some positive and negative reinforcement to prod them along. I don’t make any claims that one person’s “A” work is the same as another person’s “A” work, and I have huge philosophical problems with such a position.
I just want my students to WRITE, enjoy their own writing, enjoy each other’s writing, and improve their writing - those are goals I have for every single student, no matter what their level of writing ability and background. So far, my system is working to do that, so I am happy with it. Pragmatically.
[Reply]
Laura Gibbs
2 Oct 07 at 9:52 am
Clay, I was wondering how to teach writing using Read/Write Web tools (doing a workshop) and your post asked some great questions, but more importantly, forced me to ask some. Thank you!
Best wishes,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net
[Reply]
Miguel
6 Oct 07 at 8:00 pm
Clay -
Glad I ran across your blog…I have 46 students blogging independently in Atlanta and most are doing a great job. Excited to learn from you and bounce around ideas. I have seen AMAZING things when encouraging students to “self-select” topics - I get a bit of everything which encourages a larger audience and a variety of comments. At first, the kids were super hesistant - there’s a shift that must happen from being told your whole life what to write about to creating quality independent pieces.
[Reply]
Megan Howard
15 Oct 07 at 6:05 pm
Megan, I hope you read this. Let’s talk offline (or on, I don’t care) about the possibility of at least introducing our young writers to each other. I don’t believe in “assigning students” to reply to blogs - who “assigns” real readers to like another writer? But to at least expose them to each other and “invite” connecting - that I’d love to play with.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
15 Oct 07 at 7:48 pm
Bible 2.0 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
3 Feb 08 at 4:49 pm
Bible 2.0 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
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