For Now, Just Let Them Detox, and be Writers
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I read a recent post from the Edina School District (wherever that is 
) called Student Blogging that brings up Will Richardson’s recent post requesting examples of a certain type of student blogging he wants to use, presumably, as a (or is it “the”? That’s a key question) model. Here’s Will:
Maybe I’m asking too much here, but I’m still surprised at how difficult it is to find K-12 students using their blogs to really try to connect with their readers around the topics that they are reading and writing about. To do more than reflect, but to really articulate new thinking or understanding in the writing.
After trying to generate this type of connective, self-directed learning in my Visionary Student Blogging project, I have to say that I think Will is asking too much. I think he’s looking for something that will always be the exception in “unschooly” blogging: scholarly student blogging.
The Edina School District post (by Michael Walker) adds this observation to the mix:
[District teacher] Tim K’s response regarding his students attitude about blogging at school brings up an interesting point, “some suggested writing about movies they see outside class (definitely makes it seem less “schoolish,” which seems like a problem with blogging assignments in general). “
Do blogging assignments seem too “schoolish”? How can we make them more authentic, and less busywork? I’d love to hear your comments.
(Somebody should tell these folks the correct word is “schooly” )
I’m a language arts teacher, and after experimenting with different approaches over the past year with several high school grade levels, Tim’s question above resonates. I currently take this position:
I want students to fall in love with writing and self-publishing. (And by “writing,” I mean digital”communiciation,” more accurately, via whatever multimedia expression best suits your individual intelligence: if your strength is speaking or music, I want podcasts; if it’s acting or drama writing or filmmaking, I want movies; if it’s photography, so be it; etc.)
If they’re going to fall in love with regular “writing,” to return to it voluntarily and become habituated to an expressive, communicative (digital) life, it’s certainly not going to be so because I’m assigning them schooly homework. I don’t want my students to become English professors. I want them to become self-directed communicators of whatever their passions and interests are.
And I trust in time. Let them go through the movie stage – and let’s not forget that we can encourage quality film criticism if they want to stay in that stage. Many people make their living writing about movies, and some of them surely enjoy it at the same time, so it’s no crime.
I also can’t forget that some students will never take to voluntary expressive arts, period. I could force all students to write about a schooly thing (which could be a “good” topic, but the very act of it being teacher-prescribed still makes it schooly by definition), and try to force blood that way from the unwilling student turnips. But the cost of that? I’m quite likely forcing those who do have an authentic writer in them away from their authentic writing desires.
Maybe I get Will wrong here, but he strikes me as wanting to find student bloggers who blog like he and other (edu)blogging adults do.
While I think that’s a worthy goal, I just feel that the first order of business is detoxifying the acts of writing and thinking for students. Schooliness has so poisoned those acts for them by the last years of their school sentence.
(I have to add that my situation in the very toxic Korean educational culture – where education is so stressed it creates a nation of edu-aversive stressed-out youths – makes my case unique, perhaps. Or perhaps not.)
By allowing students the freedom to write about whatever they want, in whatever medium piques their interest – while at the same time only requiring that they do so a couple or three times a week – I hope to help with that detox treatment.
At least then, colleges will get students whose writing has improved in fluency and voice and, in the best cases, ideas and logic, via the sheer act of regular writing – engaged writing. And I don’t care how good the teacher, using blogs for teacher-assigned writing prompts is a recipe for disaster, in the long view, because there is no guarantee that this year’s engaging teacher will not be followed by next year’s bloodless drudge. (It occurs to me that my thoughts on blogging-as-homework haven’t changed much since my summer series on “saving blogging from teaching.”)
I’ll let the professors try to turn these writers into scholars.
Me? I don’t read scholars. They’re typically horrible writers, often writing about things only relevant to a few other people trying to make tenure.
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24 Jan 08 at 11:45 am
I think that if blogs are used in a class, they should be used for the students passions, like you said. If a student wants to go in a crazy direction, and try something new out, then they should be able to do that. Assigned posts don’t work. Assigned blogging doesn’t work unless total freedom is given to the author. Well, at least in most cases. I think I’m one of the only students that has kept up their blog since Mr. Watson’s class. I completely admire his attempt to bring this new medium into the classroom, but I at the time, I felt that he assigned too many posts. Or maybe that was his goal: to have students write blog posts instead of typed out and printed responses to class activities. But that doesn’t really do justice to the potential of blogging in the classroom.
If I could design a blogging class, it’d probably be similar to your PLN class. The students would use the new medium of blogging to express what they love (whether it be video, traveling, art, creative writing, analytical writing, etc, or a combination of all of them). The blog would be more about honing their passions and skills than responding to text read in class (although that would be part of it). Constructive freedom–much like Cuba’s Platt Amendment (sorry, too much AP U.S. debating).
I’m setting up a blogging network for my Ideas in Western Literature class. That’s the class I was twittering like mad about. It is basically my dream English class, reading some of my favorite authors, having philosophical discussions about thinking, learning, self identity, and all the other big questions. It is endless blogging material. Hopefully it will be a good experience for all involved, but if you have any advice, I will listen attentively.
Lindsea’s last blog post..I knew it
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Lindsea
24 Jan 08 at 12:00 pm
Clay, you are right on! When I read Will’s post…or rather, when I started reading it–and then stopped reading it because of what you mentioned–I felt the same way. I mentioned to you that I wanted to get a student of mine to write for Students2oh, and that she is an amazing writer and incredibly articulate. Well, after my “subtle” suggestions, she finally wrote an article, and while it was good, it wasn’t as good as her other stuff. I wanted her to be what I thought she should be, not what she wanted to be. It was sad.
So last year I did blogs as an assignment, and it was horrible. This year, we are working on a wiki hosted at wikispaces. It is called swatteamwiki if you are interested in checking it out. A few students have updated that wiki almost every single day with they did in our team of classes. They have also started their own wiki pages and invited others to be part of that. I told them they need to be safe online, and that was about all the direction I gave them regarding their personal wikis. I am much more interested in their wikis than I ever was interested in the blogs from last year’s students. The assigned blogs were a waste of time. I hated them after a while.
I am in a graduate program right now, and every time we have to read some scholarly article or book, I just about rip my hair out. I know I am not the best writer, but when I writer papers, I at least try to have some sort of I’m-a-real-person-and-not-a-robot tone to my paper. I can’t wait to finish my masters program so that I can have more time to devote to developing some sort of plan for how to incorporate these things into my teaching.
A little long for a comment, but it is the first chance I have had to sit down and think about that post by Will. Thanks, Clay. See you on Twitter.
jethro’s last blog post..Educational Software Review: Planbook
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jethro
24 Jan 08 at 1:00 pm
Clay, I’m with you on this. We need to help students learn to write in as natural a way as we can. And that means taking a broad view of the possibilities.
About a year ago I learned about a schema for teaching the universe of discourse, which may interest you.
It’s important, as you point out, to differentiate between models and find some that are appropriate, rather than looking for only one to celebrate.
Doug Noon’s last blog post..A Time to Write
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Doug Noon
24 Jan 08 at 1:28 pm
I don’t want my students to become English professors. I want them to become self-directed communicators of whatever their passions and interests are.
I love this line, and I agree with most people who have already commented here, that assigned topics are just homework and not authentic expression, which should be the goal of any decent blog.
Jabiz Raisdana’s last blog post..Spread The Echo
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Jabiz Raisdana
24 Jan 08 at 4:03 pm
I think you’re right that I am asking too much. And that asking kids to write like this in the context of the curriculum is very difficult. I know. I tried six years ago without much success. We force kids to write for contrived purposes and suck the passion for writing out of them for the most part. Yet we now have opportunities to develop their writing around the things they are passionate about, and I guess I’m trying to find, unsuccessfully, if that’s happening anywhere. My purpose, btw, is to include such an example in the 2nd Ed. of my book as a model of the potential.
You’re right Clay. This is a K-12, or as Karl Fisch says B to D shift in how we think about writing in general. We have to detox the curriculum as well as the kids.
Will Richardson’s last blog post..Here We Go Again?Part 2
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Will Richardson
24 Jan 08 at 8:44 pm
Clay,
I’m not sure that many, if any, of my blog postings would fit Will’s criteria.
I think it’s important that students be aware of what a blog is and the many ways in which they’re used. Perhaps a discover and respond activity would work? (I know it’s schooly, but we do teach in a school, after all!)
Much as I love blogging, I know it’s not for everyone. I’d like to inspire my students to begin blogging but realize that everyone comes to it in their own way and in their own time – if ever.
By not “requiring” them to blog, we may ensure that some of our students eventually discover and embrace it on their own.
diane
diane’s last blog post..Nodes
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diane
24 Jan 08 at 10:42 pm
By allowing students the freedom to write about whatever they want, in whatever medium piques their interest – while at the same time only requiring that they do so a couple or three times a week – I hope to help with that detox treatment.
This strikes me as an excellent approach. Demanding a certain “level” of writing, especially when the students are exploring a new medium that by all rights should be engaging to them, seems like a really good way to make it not so engaging anymore.
Trina
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Trina
25 Jan 08 at 1:22 am
CHOICE. Even more powerful than just detox, Clay– detox returns us to equilbrium. Choice makes us *healthier*– as writers, as communicators, as people. Check these out when you have a minute (forgive the seeming self-aggrandizement):
http://theline.edublogs.org/2007/12/11/let-them-eat-cake-or-write-about-it/
and
http://theline.edublogs.org/2007/12/19/self-determination-theory-for-dummies-part-one/
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Dina
25 Jan 08 at 2:16 am
I am extremely happy that my teacher got me started on blogging. It’s really helped me with my stress, and I can also get my message across to many people and not just my friends who listen to me rant and rave every day of our lives.
Schooliness kills me. It takes all the joy out of my life, because I’m learning what I have to learn, not what I want to learn. I’m learning a whole civilization’s culture in three days, and trying to do math that the human brain isn’t supposed to comprehend until approximately 21 years of age.
I think what you are doing is amazing! Just to let you know. Scholars don’t really know anything if you think about it. They know what the books taught them. They don’t know about life.
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..The Lost Generation
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Kaelie Curbxstomp
25 Jan 08 at 3:26 am
Hi Clay, I’m so happy I have found your blog as this will help me avoid some mistakes with student blogging that I would surely have made otherwise! I am an absolute beginner with these new web tools, but have dabbled in wikis a bit. Next year I was going to try student blogging, but my initial idea was to use them for – surprise, surprise – schooly EFL writing assignments. Aren’t we teachers stuck in a rut in last century pedagogy and practices? Thank you for making me think outside the box!
I liked your description of ‘the toxic Korean educational culture’ creating ‘a nation of edu-aversive stressed-out youths’. I have only done a one-month teacher exchange in South Korea, but agree with you there. To some extent, the same is true of educational culture here in Finland. No wonder perhaps that these two countries have come on top in the OECD student achievement assessments, yet fail to take into account students’ affective side. It must be a challenge for you to introduce your novel ideas there, although working in an international school probably makes a difference. Keep up the visionary projects!
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sinikka
25 Jan 08 at 5:58 am
Amen to falling in love with expression. Writers first, scholars second. Good writers make better scholars. And good lovers—of the world, of ideas, of passionate engagement—make better everything.
Maybe I’m just being intentionally dense and simplistic here, but isn’t Will saying that linking equals thinking?
Or maybe his definition of connective writing needs a tweak. If we’re looking for student blogging that connects with readers and shows new thinking, we have to remember to look past the post-as-product. There’s more than one way to link to a cat. As you’ve said so many times, where it’s really at is down in the comments section. Looking for connective? Looking for new thinking? Looking for deep understanding? Watch to see how nimbly the author responds to comments. Look for that bubbling ferment of conversation, and remember that a blog post isn’t static. It lives and breathes and incites riot or questions authority or carries whatever freight its author intended (or didn’t intend!) long after the publish button is pushed.
By the way, Edina is in my hood—a suburb of Minneapolis. And I know Mike. Small world getting smaller.
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Scott Schwister
25 Jan 08 at 9:05 am
Scott–I think I’m saying that linking is something we can’t do very well on paper, and is something that our kids need to understand in the context of creating and learning in networks. I want my kids to be good writers, yes, but I also want them to be good connectors. And I want their teachers to be showing them how to do that.
And where is Clay in this conversation anyway? ;0)
Will Richardson’s last blog post..?First, Kill All the School Boards?
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Will Richardson
25 Jan 08 at 9:58 am
Mr burell, you were my teacher “mister-burell” before entering this blog, but now you are my hero “clay burell”. I’m lying down on my bed, reading your blogs and this blogging thing surely is interesting.
You spread this “blogging” boom to KIS and students are complaining “I have nothing to write about!!!”. It is good that you are trying to persuade teachers from being to “schooly” (and not “schoolish”), and let us write about ANYTHING, but sometimes us students prefer being given with “broad” (and let me repeat,) “BROAD” topics to play within those fences.
I was one of your students but now I’m your twitter follower
interesting interesting interesting !
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shinheel
25 Jan 08 at 11:19 pm
@Lindsea, I wish all students were like you. But all students aren’t gifted with the fertile mind and playfulness you have. I have no silver bullet as yet of how to loosen students up to find ideas in their own heads and lives to write about, other than trusting that time will bring them to their own purposes, will give them “a-ha” moments, after they stumble about long enough to get tired of their own lack of inspiration. And some will never get tired of it, because some just don’t seem born to ever be inspired to want to express or enjoy anything at all. (See @shinhee’s comment below yours for more on that.) Re @SHINHEE’s commet, did Chris Watson’s attempt to use student-selected “essential questions” for their blogs help them generate ideas to write about? It seems a good fix, but your comment makes me think that that type of thing, which Shinhee says she and other students at my school need, still didn’t work. Which just frustrates me to no end.)
@jethro: please link to your wiki in comments (html for a href= works). I tried to find it but couldn’t. I think Will is looking for students who naturally get what we get, and I expect there are a few. My response was more a reflection of my own students’ failure to get into that much depth, and their resistance to (which means aversion for) my attempts to get them to blog connectively in that way. I left a comment on his post that explains that more. (And I hear you about graduate school. That’s why I left it. I hated the writing.)
@Doug: I think your post is pregnant with possibilities for getting students to improve their blogging about self-selected subjects. At the same time, I think Will is right that blogging connectively is probably the highest form of EDUCATION a student can get via blogs. My problem is that schooling has made students not want an education, so they don’t want to blog, mistaking it for just one more schooly thing. So the “just let them write” position is really a fall-back for me. At least it keeps them writing. I’m not happy with that, but it’s better than nothing.
@JABIZ: the irony is, the stuff I teach is godly. Literature SHOULD be something that young minds should enjoy exploring and writing about – not as English profs, but just as human beings with the freedom to write about great works in their own voice, etc.And as I said above, the pitfall of “write about your own passions” is undercut by the very real fact that the majority of students HAVE no such “passion” – a tragically false assumption in most case that I have to attribute to a lack of time to discover those passions due to a homework-cluttered soul with no time to find such passions.
I hope the responses above (and to come below) clarify my position. The sad thing is, I agree with your vision, but my attempts to implement it with my seniors this year was largely unsuccessful. Maybe half the battle is honing the “find feeds to read that appeal to you, and ARE SUITED FOR YOUR READABILITY LEVEL (that’s a big one, since most blogs are by adults whose style and knowledge-base are probably over the heads of most students, thus on the “frustration” level of the readability scale, instead of being the Vygotsvian “zone of proximal development”).
@WILL Here we go again
@DIANE: Can you elaborate on that “discover and respond” activity idea
?
@TRINA: I hope you’ll update us on your experiments!
@DINA: I HOPE EVERYBODY READS THE POSTS YOU LINK TO. I did, and there’s much there.
@KAELIE: Thanks for the encouragement, and for being an example of a great student blogger WHO HAS JUST FINISHED HER FIRST NOVEL! I have to disagree about scholars: they know very much, actually, and have much to teach us. But they gained that knowledge in the later years of college, when they had enough maturity and life experience to discover what they had a passion to learn, and the time to focus on it and go deep. High school doesn’t work that way, on either front.
@SINIKKA: Interesting comparison of the TEST SCORES of Koreans and Finns, versus their attitude and mindset toward self-directed, authentic learning. Seems we both might have a bunch of memorizing and test-taking experts on our hands who will do very well in life following others – who are imaginative, self-directed, motivated, visionary, creative. Not descriptors of my very grade-savvy students.
@SCOTT: INTERESTING. I have never pushed commenting as part of the student blogging thing. Well, I have, but only as “assigned” work, which means *sigh* switch-off schooliness. WHICH IS THE PROBLEM. It’s a great idea, but as soon as you assign it, it’s just an assignment. Thoughts on how to get around that? The Edina connection is wild! But YOU ARE ON TO SOMETHING. Not only getting them to comment, BUT TO ANSWER THEIR OWN COMMENTS. (Of course, we edubloggers and -readers are hypocrites, often, when it come to that. We’re too lazy to leave our RSS readers to read the comment threads, we don’t answer them often, we don’t leave them, etc. BUT in the best cases, it’s the comments that have value for me, every bit as much as the linking.)
@WILL Touche
Excused absence: A crazy schooly week of book and supply orders, AP Lit syllabus submission to the lovely College Board – talk about a schooly nightmare! Check out the 50 pages of bureaucratic crap they make a teacher go through just to write and submit a syllabus for them to rubber stamp – a high school-wide classroom blogging launch (which I have the pleasure of troubleshooting for all the knuckleheads who can’t read directions to set up a blog and respond to a password validation email), on and on. Full-time teacher, remember!
But HERE IS THE MAIN REASON FOR MY ABSENCE: A NEW EXPERIMENT IN CONNECTIVISM: NETWORKED LEARNING. I’ve got an elective and permission to make it as experimental as I want, so I’ve got students tapping into my Twitter network, seeking natural connections with teachers (and their students) around the world for organic, authentic, self-selected and -designed projects. It goes back to our “leaving or staying” conversation, in a sense. One guy wrote a post about our little storm called “Are you in? Or are you out?” – and I think this might be a way to be OUT without QUITTING – “beyond school” while still “in school.” It’s early, it will probably fail too ;-P , but it’s interesting.
@SHINHEE. You have always been one of my heroes too, you wonderful student. I’d like to hear your SPECIFIC suggestions of how teachers can help students FIND IDEAS, WITHOUT MAKING IT FEEL LIKE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS. Seriously. You’re smart, and you’re the problem (being a student). Tell us how you think we teachers can succeed!
(Okay, Will. What next? It’s 1.30 on Saturday morning, but I’ve been a good boy.)
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Clay Burell
26 Jan 08 at 1:37 am
Sorry, about the scholars thing. I think I’m just irritated that they fill up my social studies text book with hundreds of pages of information, reducing thousands years of development and amazing culture to ten pages. And I’m angry at my teacher for reducing it to one day of learning. Thanks for the compliment by the way. Makes me feel good.
Kaelie Curbxstomp
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..The Chase
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Kaelie Curbxstomp
26 Jan 08 at 2:54 am
@Will Learning how to be good connectors. . . yes, yes. I love the notion of “network literacy” you raised in your social networks vs. social tools post. “Learning how to be good connectors” serves as a pretty nice provisional definition. I look forward to seeing the network literacy idea fleshed out in coming days. Something for our various learning networks to sink their teeth into?
Another quick thought about connectivism, linking, and learning in networks: These days in Life 1.0 when I’m working on an old-fashioned .doc, it doesn’t feel just anachronistic, it feels. . . lonely. That poor document is stuck in the hinterlands of my drive, with no chance to see and be seen and grow new layers of contextual meaning out in the wider world. Silly bit of anthropomorphism, I know, but for me it’s a gut check about how experiencing networked learning shifts my perceptions.
@Dina: Glad to have found you. Your feed went into my reader so fast it made my head spin.
@Clay: No silver bullet suggestions, just a natural extension of the comments-as-connective-writing idea, if it has merit. With the usual caveats about the schooliness of assigning any kind of writing, of course. The extension: equip students with cocomment or something similar/better to track their comment breadcrumb trail (suggestions?) and send them out to explore blogs per their passion du jour. The *assignment* would be simply to interact with those bloggers via comments: challenging, critiquing, supporting, reinforcing, etc. Perhaps, as is the case for most of us, some of those comments would end up back on their blogs in expanded form. Perhaps not. It may be easier for students to find an authentic-writing mindset if they can enter into an already-established conversation, if they don’t have to carry the water of hosting and moderating the whole shindig. That IS a lot to ask.
One value to this, I think, would be short-circuiting the blog-it-and-they-will-come mentality. Instead of learning the connectivity lesson at *home* on our own blog pages, start by getting out there commenting on a connectivism field trip. My own blogging odyssey began at home and gradually mapped out into the unknown. I probably would have learned more about network literacy sooner if I hadn’t been so busy building my own nest. Travel light while you’re young?
Scott Schwister’s last blog post..in PLN sight: envisioning the future of professional development
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Scott Schwister
26 Jan 08 at 3:59 am
Here you go Clay:
The Wiki
Jethro’s last blog post..Educational Software Review: Planbook
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Jethro
26 Jan 08 at 4:01 am
@SCOTT SCHWISTER: You say it so well in your last comment, I have only two things to add:
1. EVERYBODY SHOULD READ SCOTT’S COMMENT. IT’S BRILLIANT. (And that’s why his blog (click his name) is my number one “blogs that deserve a bigger audience” nominee.)
2. I think I can implement this approach in my Networked Learning elective class (more on that in a coming post, hopefully this weekend).
@KAEILIE: No worries. We all help each other think in comments. That’s why blogging is such a great learning tool. We all think together and see more as a group than any individual can see alone.
@JETHRO Thanks for the link. Will check it out
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Clay Burell
26 Jan 08 at 5:05 am
Clay, I’ve been mulling over the same questions now that my semester is over and I’m on to the next. I feel like I’ve never had the same success as I did that first semester you and I collaborated with our student bloggers and writers on the Flat World Project. I’ve felt like the ideas behind your visionary project and a similar thing that I did get better and better, yet the blogs get lamer. What was it that we assigned our students that first time around? In some ways, the writing was more teacher-directed. But remember that conversation Elise started? So now I find myself back to the idea that student blogs are sort of akin to portfolios for their best writing (of course, the kinds of writing they do can be up to us or them or both). That scholarly blogging is more elusive and most like the upper level composition class I taught for a few years. So Lindsea and I have decided to co-author a new course proposal for those students who do aspire to the connective blogosphere. It’s going to be cool. And we’re hoping that she can co-teach it. How’s that for authentic learning and apprenticeship.
Chris Watson’s last blog post..Reflections On The First Days Of A New Semester With A New Group Of Students
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Chris Watson
26 Jan 08 at 10:19 am
Chris, Lindsea and Clay,
One of the most difficult exercises for me as a teacher is to gauge the appropriateness of activities for my audience, as I interact with students in grades K-12.
I can try to assess students’ interests and capabilities, but Lindsea IS a student (albeit a very articulate and gifted one). Teacher/student teams, should be the norm, not the exception. And the collaboration should begin in the planning stages and continue right on through the evaluation and feedback.
When I suggested a “discover and respond” activity in my previous comment, I was trying to articulate the need for students to have a large measure of independence within the structure of an assignment. To “discover” an issue (or blog) that captured their interest, then “respond” in their own “language”, be it a written comment, visual representation, musical interpretation, etc.
Lindsea speaks many “languages”: art, poetry, music, and she is a member of the generation that we are trying to engage in learning.
Do Chris and Lindsea want to keep this project student-based, or would they like to include other adults also. At the very least, it might be worthwhile for some of your other staff members to audit this, Clay. It could be very valuable as a professional development tool!
Love your posts and all of the comments. They certainly engage my mind.
diane
diane’s last blog post..Age of Aquarius
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diane
26 Jan 08 at 10:49 am
@Scott
Reading your comment made me think back to how I felt when I first started my blog. I really loved it, and became sort of addicted to writing about myself, my thoughts, etc (building my nest). It made me forget about the rest of the blogging world, and just focus on myself. After I became part of the Students 2.0 group, I was gently shoved into the other side of blogging, learning about the networking, and the conversation that goes on.
To me, that’s a key stone in the growth of blogging. Probably the main reason most people blog. My experience was backwards: I blogged to grow as a person, and then eventually stepped out into the world and grew my own little place in it. It was hard, because after my English class, I was alone. Eventually finding people who had the desire to learn, and propagate their ideas to change the world was were most of my personal growth took place.
Reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, and continuing the conversation seems like a good way of inspiring thought in student bloggers. It also serves the purpose of helping them find people who, with their writing, probe their ideas and oscillate the proverbial mixing stick.
@Diane
I agree. Why don’t students and teacher collaborate more often? To relate it to current events, it’s like the government leaders who don’t know anything about the people they govern and are elected by. Why not actually ask the people their questions? and more importantly, why not listen to their answers?
Lindsea’s last blog post..Recent Headlines in Hawaii
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Lindsea
26 Jan 08 at 3:09 pm
@will
@clay
When I first posted about Will’s request, I was hoping to find some examples of student blogs here in Edina, MN that would serve as exemplars for the students and staff here, as well as for Will. Then I saw Clay’s post about his student Christina K’s blog that seemed to fit the bill…
All of the 10th graders here are required to have a blog, and as Tim K. noted, there are some who wish it all went away, and others who wish it wasn’t so “schoolish”.
I think that it is typical of any technology integration effort… As soon as teachers start using it in school, it’s less appealing!
@Scott I will definitely start feeding your blog! By the way everybody, besides being a great educational technology leader, Scott is a mean trail runner!
@Dina Thanks for the links! At first I thought it had to do with Edina! (Scott will probably be the only one who gets that!)
M. Walker’s last blog post..Student Blogging
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M. Walker
29 Jan 08 at 4:09 am
[...] tilnærming – hvis jeg leser ham riktig. I en post for en måneds tid siden med tittelen “For now just let them detox and be writers,” skriver han: I want students to fall in love with writing and self-publishing. (And by [...]
Elevblogging: “business or pleasure?” « Mitt hJØRNe av web’en
23 Feb 08 at 8:57 pm
Clay….Great entry.
The idea of “writing detox” really resonates with me because I see my students as being imprisoned by the notion that all writing has to fit a particular format and be done for a particular audience to be judged by a particular rubric.
To write just to write (even though one of the accepted stages of the writing process is incorrectly called “free-writing” is a concept that is totally foreign to kids today….and that’s sad.
One of the things I’ve found is that commenting on blogs and participating in Voicethread conversations have helped in the detox process for my kids. Perhaps it’s because this work is never graded….or self-selected….or short and approachable…..but my kids seem jazzed to read and respond to others in these settings.
Either way…thanks for a post that made me think.
Bill
Bill Ferriter’s last blog post..Imprisoned by Mentoring?
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Bill Ferriter
2 Mar 08 at 4:45 am
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shh … i’m not here » Blog Archive » procrastination is not a good thing, but hey, at least it’s fun
3 Mar 08 at 4:41 am