My latest paper: not brilliant, but I explored some ideas about how using a blog in a classroom might provide some additional advantages to writing students.
Educational Blogging: A Writer’s Place
I Blog: my perspective
As I open up my new blog, I hear a sound like wind howling. This place echoes like a huge, empty building. Acres of passageways and chambers, ballrooms, even closets, all empty. In this one room, a small study, I have a little furniture: a few postings. I am intimidated by how much space there is left to fill, and by how uninteresting my posts seem. I check again, every day, for about three days, then I realize that nothing will happen until I make it happen. I have started this blog as a way into the currently hot conversation on educational blogging. In a couple of my classes, I have participated in class blogs, but up to this point, I have felt uncomfortable and unsure of myself. Now, with my own blog, I feel my confidence growing. I’m posting pictures, and links to other sites, trying to imagine what will draw readers to my site.
My original intent in creating my blog “Write Like Mad” was to simply research what a blog was and what it might be used for. We use a blog in our English 595 Language, Technology and Culture class, and it seems to get everybody involved, sharing their thoughts, posting links. Michael Faris, one of the other graduate students, has gone beyond comfortable: he does an enormous amount of his work for school on his own blog, and even presented a paper on blogging at a university conference. A few of my writing professors also use blogging in their classrooms, and this intrigued me. Curious about all the brouhaha, I began to wonder whether I could make use of a blog, and whether it might be something I could use when I’m teaching Writing 121, Freshman Composition.
My purpose in this paper will be to explore not just the possibility of blogging in my own classroom, but also to investigate the implications of educational blogging. Why should we? What should we keep in mind when using blogs for educational purposes? What ways might we use the Web, should we choose to use online composition with our students, and how might a blog be different than, say, a web page, or a discussion board? I hope to answer these questions, and to uncover the ways that students of varying stages of writing expertise (and technical expertise when using computers) might learn from the world wide web. I feel it would be useful to explore educational blogging at all levels, K-12 as well as in colleges and universities, in order to see what’s going on now in classrooms.
“The increasing presence of personal computers in homes, workplaces, communities, and schools has brought about dramatic changes in the ways people across the world create and respond to information” (Selfe 1). This is the opening to Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe’s book Literate Lives in the Information Age, which deals with the question of what the term literacy means today for students. Much of their research deals with the impact of current technology on the writing classroom, and in this particular book, they question the ways in which the growing importance of “technological, digital, or electronic literacy” (1) affects what we as individuals need to know in order to function in the world. Educators don’t know enough, Selfe and Hawisher state, about how students gain, or don’t gain, literacy today, or even how to define the word. Another problem made worse by this lack of knowledge is access: not all students have equal access to technology, just as students years ago didn’t all have access to the written word.
It is not that schools and colleges are ignoring these issues. Learning theories and new pedagogies have emerged recently that take into account the various ways culture and technology affect student learning. According to Allen Carey-Webb, in his book Literature and Lives, Reader Response theory values what an individual brings to a text when s/he reads it: “…this approach respects student reactions and insights and focuses on the interactive process of their learning” (7). Carey-Webb also promotes Cultural Studies theory, which sees each of us as standing in the stream of ongoing culture, and places importance on integrating learning with the ways in which the culture we live in affects how we perceive the world. “In exploring a particular issue or theme, a cultural studies approach might involve doing a close and careful reading of one or more literary works, along with studying a television program…” (8). Such a teaching approach tries to embrace multiple literacies: reading books, analyzing advertisements or films, writing poetry or prose, using the web and the library to conduct research, carrying on discussions.
What I value most about the combining of these two theories is the emphasis on respect for student experience. Instead of viewing learners as empty vessels waiting to be filled, these pedagogies take into account that students are powerfully affected by forces outside the classroom, that there is a whole world out there that they are already learning from—a world in which they need a broader literacy than simply knowing how to read and write.
What I hope to discover in this paper is how writing online in a public space, but most particularly blogging, might help to accomplish the goals of such theories as Reader Response and Cultural Studies, which I have come to value more and more as I gain experience as a writing teacher.
We Blog: a classroom perspective
The next step is to understand why a blog would be used in a writing class. How can students benefit from a blog, and why might a teacher go to the trouble of using one? Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey and Meg Hourihan in their book We Blog point to the phenomenon of feedback: readers can comment on author postings, they may include links to related stories or other items of interest, and the author may post these. Readers are encouraged by this to post more feedback, and so a loop is created (Bausch 30). The implication for a writing classroom would be that blogging could provide a space in which students have more contact with each other and provide feedback to each other’s work.
James Paul Gee, a professor at theUniversity of
Wisconsin, makes clear why this sense of community is so vital. In his book What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, he explains how we can examine the way student’s engage with video games to better understand how to get students as involved at school as they are with the games. He questions what it is about the games that motivates learners to participate, then he describes why the games are actually teaching learners successfully. Because the developers of the games can only make money if they are purchased and played, the games are designed to fascinate players and keep them playing. This is accomplished by providing learning opportunities that get players fully involved.. Gee describes how active learning is accomplished: “The learner must be enticed to try. This is done through building bridges to his or her real-world identities and by creating a psychosocial moratorium” (Gee 65), or a safe place for learning. The student needs to be able to feel secure in the learning environment, then s/he needs to be able to project themselves into the semiotic domain (specific community, like science or writing) as a competent participant. Gee suggests that learners must learn to project their own identity into that community by imagining themselves as being an accepted member.
Gee also emphasizes importance of practice: “…learning for human beings is, in large part, a practice effect. Humans need to practice what they are learning a good deal before they can master it” (68). And this is true of many areas of skill. In a Chemistry class, perhaps memorization of facts is absolutely vital, but students must also find a way to apply the information they have memorized or the data will be pushed into the back of the mind and forgotten. Writing is one skill in which memorization has little effect; practice is vital and necessary.
Finally, Gee explains why learners need to feel ownership. They need to be able to feel that the creation of a particular identity with skill is up to them, their responsibility. Gee believes this is part of active, critical learning.
To apply Gee’s theories to learning through blogs: Blogging gives students a way to project their identities into the learning community by giving them a space in which they are active participants and members of a writing community. A blog also provides a place in which students can get practice in a way that is useful and part of an ongoing conversation. Finally, a blog can be a safe place for learning: a shared place to publish.
A K-12 Perspective
Richard Ferdig, in an article for T H E Journal, a journal for K-12 administrators and teachers, describes the pedagogy behind blogging and suggests methods of application that could be generally applied to secondary education as well. First, he refers to Vygotsky’s educational theory (1978), which suggests that learning is a social process (which is why writing communities are so valuable to writers), and that meaning is made when students can see ways to apply the knowledge they are acquiring. Blogging is a place where students can publish their texts, revisit and revise them, and most importantly, get feedback. Depending upon the way the blog is set up, students can even get feedback from worldwide audiences. This has the effect of breaking down the walls of the classroom and giving students a forum with connections to a wider community. Blogs can also contain links that readers can follow to other similar sites or more blogs. College students, if not younger students, could learn to add their own links.
Ferdig further discusses the advantages offered by blogs as compared to discussion forums, which are used in many institutional settings. Both offer interactivity, a place to share ideas and get feedback, but blogs potentially give students greater control (depending of course upon how they are set up): “Unlike a discussion forum that is shared by many, a blog gives students full control and ownership over their online content. It becomes a virtual space to try out new concepts that do not have to fit within a hierarchical or topic-based discussion forum” (Ferdig). Choices in settings allow users to decide if what is on the blog will be partly public, or entirely private (seen only by members), or something in between. Blogs seem infinitely flexible, even allowing for settings that create a private space between teacher and student.
One of the most important points that Ferdig makes is that a blog provides a forum for diverse opinions, a chance for every student to express thoughts that s/he might not normally share during class time, and extends the walls of the classroom out into the world (Ferdig): a blog can level the field in a manner of speaking, allowing a chance for every student, not just the outgoing ones, to speak and share their ideas. As a student, I have experienced the benefit of “extending the walls of the classroom”: in our English 595 class, we posted letters to the authors of our textbooks, and three responded directly to our blog entries. I can’t emphasize enough what a powerful effect this had on us, in helping us engage with their work. More importantly, we felt that what we wrote truly mattered, and we were, in reality, a part of a writing community that included these authors. That is not something that can be usually be found within the classroom walls.
Another author, Will Richardson, has written books on educational blogging and has his own blog at http://www.weblogg-ed.com/, where he has resources (a link connecting to Bloglines) and advice regarding K-12 classrooms. I include this because he allows teachers to discuss how they have used blogs in their own classroom: those adding to the discussion on his site remark on how the shared discussions possible on sites like blogs give students a feeling of ownership of the space as well as the benefits of community: “…a moderated discussion forum does have a positive effect on student writing abilities…Given that the entire class is involved in a discussion, all ability levels are working together” (Tech Learning). Another teacher says, “I’ve come to feel that reading and writing the Web is a way for me to tap into a writing space that students already use–and more importantly, want to use. This is very important…we need to make them connect what they do for fun with writing and reading and learning. Weblogs can do that” (Kairosnews).
In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms,
Richardson asks some important questions about how blogs might be used educationally:
What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls? What changes must we make in our teaching as it becomes easier to bring primary sources to our students? How do we need to rethink our ideas of literacy when we must prepare our students to become not only readers and writers, but editors and collaborators as well? How do we best put to use the reams and reams of ‘digital paper’ that Weblogs provide? (5)
His questions carry just a touch of sarcasm, I think, since each one opens up a world of possibility. By framing his words as questions, he forces us to think more deeply about what he proposes. Brushing aside objections to use of blogs and the risks they may pose (of inappropriate posting, or exposure of students), he points out that students today need a wider definition of literacy than they may have twenty years ago: they need a global literacy. And so do educators if they want to keep up with the students.
Richardson lists a few results of a March 2005 Netday survey: “81% of students in grades 7-12 have e-mail accounts, 75% have at least one Instant Messenger (IM) screen name, and… 97% believe strongly that technology use is important in education. And the fastest growing age group for using the Internet is 2- to 5-year-olds” (6). He refers to most teachers as “Digital Immigrants” (a term coined by Prensky), because we didn’t grow up surrounded by these technologies. He claims we don’t multitask well, but students are able to use multiple technologies at once. He believes that the use of technology in the classroom is vital to close this gap between student and teacher, which is necessary if we are to help them make the most of their digital literacy.
Richardson provides an elaborate list of ways that a blog might be used for a classroom—and I can see using these not just in K-12 classrooms, but in a college setting as well. I will list only a few of his suggestions:
Þ Post announcements, schedules, events, homework
Þ Have students post their work and responses, creating a kind of “blog portfolio”
Þ Post examples of classwork or even games
Þ Provide online readings or websites for students to respond/react to, create a book club
Þ Gather together internet sources, links
Þ Have students create their own Weblogs
Þ Create a newsletter with students providing their own articles and photos
Þ Link your class with others (42)
Richardson also provides a list of standards sponsored by the NCTE and IRA. To summarize, these ask that students have varied exposure to reading through print and nonprint texts, learn about different cultures, learn about society and themselves, read various genres and time period literature, learn to adjust their language according to audience and purpose, apply this knowledge, do research, use various technology, respect and understand diversity, and use all of these skills to accomplish their own purposes. For the original list, go to http://www.ncte.org/about/over/standards/110846.htm (
Richardson 44).
A College PerspectiveKevin Brooks, Cindy Nichols, and Sybil Priebe ofNorth Dakota
State
University provide some useful information on how their students responded to blogging activities in the classroom. They begin by explaining their own enthusiasm for using blogs, which seem like such a rich resource: it doesn’t require specialized knowledge to use, it incorporates familiar writing practices, and it provides what writers need most—community and feedback… not to mention motivation. “Our initial study has convinced us that weblogging as a general writing activity is worth pursuing in college courses” (Brooks).
They quote Rebecca Blood:
As he enunciates his opinions daily, this new awareness of his inner life may develop into a trust in his own perspective. His own reactions… will carry more weight with him. Accustomed to expressing his thoughts on his website, he will be able to more fully articulate his opinions to himself and others… Ideally, he will become less reflexive and more reflective, and find his own opinions and ideas worthy of serious consideration (Brooks).
Considering that these are the goals of a writing course, a blog sounds like an effective tool.
However, Brooks et. al. were skeptical of this vision of writer-without-teacher and were aware that there might be drawbacks, so they conducted some research on their own students to see how they were responding to the blog activities. “Our research question…is ‘which weblog genre(s) (if any) engage or motivate students to make significant contributions to their personal or class weblog?’” (Brooks) The results of this research did not provide any conclusive evidence that blogging contributed to stronger writing, but they were able to come to a better understanding of how weblogs might best contribute to classroom learning: first year students were not motivated academically to blog, but they were interested in expressing themselves in blogs; upper-division students were more interested in how blogging could add to their academic learning (but they also preferred personal weblogs). To summarize their findings: notebook blogging (“notebooks are distinguished from blogs [journals] by their longer pieces of focused content” (Brooks) seems more successful when used in a collaborative weblog; filter weblogs have rich potential but are complicated to use; and journaling was by far the most popular genre of weblog for students
On the topic of blogging as a kind of personal journal, Charles Lowe ofPurdue
University and Terra Williams of Arizona State describe the ways their students use blogging in their writing classes. They also refer to three web authors who provide excellent models of how student blogging might be accomplished: Dennis Jerz’s Literacy Weblog (which can be found at http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/index.jsp), John Lovas’ Jocalo’s Blog (http://faculty.deanza.fhda.edu/jocalo/stories/storyReader$25), and Jill Walker’s jill/txt (http://jilltxt.net/). Each of these websites are examples of using a blog for journaling in a useful way.
Lowe and Williams suggest that the idea behind educational blogging is not new: they compare blogging to personal print journals (on paper!). They quote Susan McLeod, who describes these as a place for students to explore ideas, to “explain things to the self before explaining to others” (Lowe). She compares them to a scientist’s notebook or an artists sketchbook. The complication with blogs, Lowe and Williams state, is that they are public. The advantages are many. For instance, print journals are difficult to distribute, and they do not extend possibilities for feedback beyond the classroom walls.
In the author’s classrooms, students use blogs for reading response, to post interesting items related to class work, for exploring personally chosen topics, or even for posting off-topic material such as links or other items they found fascinating. This last surprised me: in our English 595 class, we too posted off-topic material, but I assumed the professor was being lenient with us. Now I realize that this activity encourages students to 1) write, and 2) consider the world outside the classroom, then bring it inside with the students.
Lowe and Williams also consider other ways to use the internet for sharing work, but none, they feel, can compare to the freedom and flexibility offered by blogs. WebCT and Blackboard, both of which I have used as a student, offer the opportunity for shared discussion. Students can post and respond. E-mailed peer dialog journals also offer the chance for feedback from classmates. However, all three of these are still confined to the classroom, and they are rigid in the ways they can be used. Web pages are highly similar to blogs, but they require a high level of expertise in order to create and use them. Teachers are required to spend a great deal of time learning the technology and then supervising how students set up their pages. Blogs are already set up, but they also offer some flexibility in design.
One drawback that is cited occasionally by educators is the fear that students will be exposed by the very public atmosphere of a shared blog. Lowe and Williams don’t agree that this risk outweighs the benefits: “As teachers who have used weblogs in our classrooms for the past 2 years, we have found that by extending the discourse to a large community outside the classroom, our student bloggers regularly confront ‘real’ rhetorical situations in a very social, supportive setting” (Lowe). They refer to Kenneth Bruffee’s theory on the importance of public writing: when students share their work (with others besides the instructor) and get feedback, they learn to value themselves as writers and to see themselves as part of a social activity. The authors also quote Jill Walker, who observes that blogs create a feeling of companionship—they combat the idea of writer as isolated and alone. In fact, Lowe and Williams believe, as teachers, that the blog, by providing a space outside of the classroom to write, reduces anxiety about teacher and peer response: “weblogs can facilitate a collaborative, social process of meaning making, leading us to believe that weblogs as an instance of ‘publicy’ [as opposed to “privacy”] enable a comfort zone, a social environment where anxiety about the teacher and of school writing is reduced, while also drawing on other benefits of writing publicly” (Lowe).
All of this sounds ideal, but some experts fear that enthusiasm for online writing could obscure problems. Like any activity used in any class, if instructors don’t keep in mind their own goals and pedagogy, the results can be disappointing. Hawisher and Selfe, in their article “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class,” warn that simply having students blog will not automatically guarantee the formation of community or foster collaboration. We must think critically and carefully about what we are doing, and be accountable (Hawisher).
David Alan Sapp and James Simon ofFairfield
University in
Connecticut agree. They are concerned with low completion rates of online writing courses, so they offer some ideas for getting students more involved. They don’t refer specifically to blogging; rather their comments are aimed at courses that are taught online, but their conclusions can be applied, I feel, to the way students might participate—or not—on a classroom blog. Sapp and Simon point to teacher involvement: students need positive feedback from their instructors to maintain their interest in any activity, and online posting can make a student feel isolated: “… increased interaction among teachers and students (as well as among students themselves) helps students engage in online learning contexts” (479). Healthy online collaboration with teacher feedback can enhance the building of community. This is an important point, because many teachers (one of my professors at
Western
Oregon
University as well) feel that they should keep their distance and let students use the online space without teacher interference. Sapp and Simon believe that to build a whole community, the teacher should participate too.
Sapp and Simon also recommend “ice-breaker sessions” to help students get to know each other, and they emphasize as well the importance of face to face interaction. So student involvement with blogging may be in direct proportion to how the classroom itself incorporates these activities. I’ve seen this in our English 595 class: we are given posting assignments, then we read and share these with each other as a group, in class. Our professor gives us positive feedback on everything we post, including items that we might post spontaneously, like reflections, or questions, or links. This classroom discussion peaks our interest in posting, and the face-to-face contact is invaluable in building community.
Barclay Barrios atRutgers
University feels that it isn’t just teachers that need to keep themselves involved in online interaction between students, but the university itself. He believes that there is no longer a question of whether students benefit from Web writing instruction, but that there is still a great deal of exploration to be done in terms of how this instruction might be shaped by university programs (74). He gives as example, the Rutgers Writing Program Website (http://wp.rutgers.edu). Since its inception, the program has been redesigned to better encourage the development of a sense of community among student who post there. The site, he says, helps students to see themselves as producers, part of a community of producers. By being student-centered and content driven, the site emphasizes collaboration, while students develop skill in writing and in critical thinking (81). It’s vital to note that this website isn’t simply a place for teachers to provide information for students to consume. He describes what he has seen happen on the website: “We were expanding our technological literacy, defined by Selfe (1999) as ‘the complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating’” (82).
I visited the website myself, and I’m impressed at the simplicity of its layout, and with the amount of information provided. It’s also interesting to note that the box that contains links for teachers includes an invitation for students to take a look as well. This, I think, adds to the feeling that a student might get from looking at this site, that s/he is a member of the site, not an outsider.
The value of this feeling, that one is a member of a community of writers, can’t be emphasized enough. Kristie Fleckenstein ofBall
State
University gives a particularly clear explanation of how a teacher might most effectively use Web writing instruction to build community. She recommends that writing classes use blogs, online discussion boards, and wikis in conjunction to expand the walls of the traditional classroom. First, blogs give students a feeling of ownership: “Frequent blogging of the self-reflective kind will help students develop subjectivity and explore their thoughts and feelings in a space that is public, yet controlled by the student” (189). Second, discussion boards expose students to criticism, which fosters awareness of audience and encourages research and critical thought. Students, aware of the responses they may get, will spend more time and effort in creating accurate entries. Third, wikis provide a communal space “where students strive for consensus and learn to share a common, community voice” (189). Fleckenstein believes that each activity is vital to the development of the others. Each is necessary in order to develop voice, and a sense of identity. Students might ask, “where do I fit in? What is my community?” Perhaps most importantly, they might ask, “what do I want to say to that community?”
Although I see the advantages outlined by Fleckenstein, as an inexperienced instructor, I have some reservations. Establishing a blog in a writing classroom takes time, and incorporating all of these different activities would take up an enormous block of energy and effort on everyone’s part. For instructors with more experience, it can obviously be accomplished, but for myself, I’m not ready to get this involved. I might explore which of the three online sources above I want to use, keeping in mind my goals and outcomes, and let class work fulfill the rest. For instance, a shared class blog would provide a sense of ownership and an opportunity for shared class posting and feedback, but in-class discussion could also provide peer feedback and teacher feedback, as well as building consensus and common voice.
Another Perspective
We must also take into account the students in our classrooms that are not native speakers. Can they too benefit from online collaboration? Frank Tuzi of MTS Technologies discusses the way in which L2 writers can benefit from what he calls “e-feedback,” and I like his term because it can be applied to any response a student receives from online: websites, e-mail, blogs, wikis, discussion boards, to name a few. L2 writers prefer oral feedback, but Tuzi’s research found that this feedback most encouraged correction at the local or sentence level, and a focus on surface errors. E-feedback, on the other hand, encouraged revision. Comments from peers motivated students to add more information to their texts, or to make changes in organization. E-feedback motivated correction of global issues and gave positive reinforcement for revision.
Tuzi points out that preparation for giving response is vital, and I believe we can transfer his findings to any situation in which someone is going to be giving response to others, such as any student in a writing class, as well as teaching assistants. Students with training and coaching in the writing process give more specific feedback, he tells us, and they read the feedback they receive more carefully (222). This preparation can be as simple as having an involved class discussion in which students share ideas as to what kind of feedback they find helpful, or unhelpful. Tuzi places a comment on the overhead projector, then asks students, “Is this a helpful comment? How would this comment make you feel? Would it encourage you to revise?” Students can see visually what kinds of response are effective, and they can share their own ideas about feedback. Tuzi promotes at least two hours of training in order for peers to be ready to provide effective feedback (222).
I particularly valued his comments, because I feel that the skill of responding to others cannot be emphasized enough. I think it takes time for students to develop this skill and that more practice is called for. I’ve seen teaching assistants beg for advice on responding to their students: “What am I supposed to say to them?” It is not a simple question, and it isn’t one that can be answered in a moment, but what if we placed more importance on making certain our students had a foundation in response theory? Like the ability to write, the ability to respond takes years to develop—and I think it’s an ongoing process for everyone who teaches writing. I don’t mean to imply that the current system is flawed; I’m just wondering if response could be emphasized more than it is, especially for those who will teach. If we are teaching writing as process, then we must teach students to promote the idea of process by valuing feedback, response, and revision, and I see this happening in upper division classes. By actively involving students, by helping them see themselves as part of the process, we can help them learn to place more importance not only on what they say to others, but on what others say to them.
In Tuzi’s view, the greater variety in the medium of response, and the more feedback students get, better chance they have of understanding the importance of audience awareness and the value of revision (231). In other words, he believes that there is value in multiple methods of response, such as oral, written, and online response. Writing 121 classes already incorporate written instructor response, conferences between instructor and student, and peer feedback in class and through e-mail: interaction on a blog would simply add another facet to the process.
The training mentioned above by Tuzi includes preparation for using the technology involved with online responding. Which leads to the next topic:
Access
The specific conditions of access must also be addressed in order to assure people productive environments within which access can make a real difference. One necessary, but not sufficient, element of these conditions must be a broad understanding and valuing of multiple literacies—emerging, competing, and fading—in home, school, community, and workplace environments (Selfe 234).
Not all students have the same level of experience with technology, and this is difficult—for me at least—to remember. Not all have the same access, but more importantly, not all have sufficient access to help them develop the level of technical/digital/electronic or other literacy that they need to function in today’s society. In my WR 121 class, I did not take this into account: did all of my students know how to use a word processor on a computer? Did they all understand how their school electronic account worked? Did they all know where campus computer labs were, and if they did, did they know how to get the work they had done on one computer to another? There are many questions I should have asked, and before I decide to blog with my students, I had better start asking these and more. I did ask them if they had activated their accounts, and I did demonstrate how to find and open Blackboard, which was where I posted a great deal of information for them to use for class, but brief demonstrations and explanations won’t be sufficient for teaching blogging. For one thing, asking students as a group about their access to technology is an invitation to get vague positive responses that are not at all informative. If I decide to use a blog in my class next term, I will have to devote a certain amount of class time to this activity: first, in teaching how to do it, second in taking time to look at what has been posted. Also, it might be helpful to ask students to do a freewrite on how they view digital and electronic technology, as well as how much they know about how to get access to computers, word processing programs, and printing.
As Selfe and Hawisher make clear, students need access, they need a way in, and they must have understanding of how various literacies work. If helping them learn to use a blog can break down these barriers, then it is worth the risks. It is worth my time and theirs to learn to use this technology if it can provide the benefits claimed by the many teacher/authors we’ve seen. “None of these considerations, of course, can be addressed in isolation from the cultural ecology within which access to computers, and the acquisition and development of the literacies of technology, make a difference for people” (Selfe 234). Blogs provide a place to examine the vast diversity of acts of literacy that take place every day, with students able to post comments, pictures, or even links to interesting sites.
Conclusion
What is it about blogging that makes it unique? What does it have to offer that differs from what other forms of writing, online or otherwise provide? Blogging offers true social interaction, in an environment that expands the walls of the classroom to include the world. Blogging offers a space to share one’s work and get real response from a variety of sources. Blogs help students gain access to the world of digital and computer technology and help them make sense of that world.
There are still problems, of course. How effective it might be to share entries on the web might depend heavily on class size. We use a blog for our English 595 class atOregon
State
University, but there are only 15 of us. I’ve been able to link my own blog to this one, and it works very well. But Professor Ede says that she would not use a blog for her ENG 104 Introduction to Literature course, which has 65 students. There is just not time to incorporate web use. I would consider using a blog for a Writing 121 class, but there are usually 25 students in this class, and it might not be feasible to get them all working on the web. It would be helpful to have access occasionally to a computer lab. Five years from now, maybe all of the students will have laptops, but for now, having access as a group to computers is difficult. In ENG 495/595 we work in a lab, and we can blog together. This strengthens our interest in the blog, enhances the feeling of shared experience, and motivates us to post after class hours… Not an opportunity that I could share easily with my WR 121 students.
However, reading the comments of experienced teachers who use blogging for their writing classes strengthens my interest—and my confidence—in the idea of trying to get a blog going with my students. Considering Gee’s explanation of how students learn from being active participants in a particular community, and considering Self and Hawisher’s statements regarding access to learning and technology, I feel that it would be worth my time and that of my students. By introducing them to blogging, perhaps I could help those students with less access to gain confidence in using digital or electronic technology. I think blogging would be a wonderful way for them to build confidence in their writing as well.
I realize at this point that the project may not come out the way I hope at all: I can only begin at the beginning and hope that over time I would gain the experience I need to make blog use go smoothly. First, I must teach them where to find the blog, how to accept introductions to it, create user names and passwords, then show them how to post. But after that, we might discover that we had a rich resource for feedback and sharing of ideas. Imagine students posting their drafts, watching each other’s work take shape. It would only be fair if I posted rough drafts as well, or even examples of the drafts created by professional writers. Students could see the process of writing take shape in front of them.
Writers need community if they are to thrive; they need feedback and response. Certainly this can be created without blogs. But writers also need motivation, and I’m feeling that every time I think about “Write Like Mad.” We are only limited by what we choose to put into our class. It is worth the effort, and worth taking a chance, to find out whether classroom blogging can provide a benefit to students that they may not find anywhere else.
Works Cited
Barrios, Barclay. “Reimagining writing program websites as pedagogical tools.” Computers and Composition 21 (2004): 73-87.
Bausch, Paul, Matthew Haughey and Meg Hourihan. We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs.
Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc, 2002.
Brooks, Kevin, Cindy Nichols and Sybil Priebe. “Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs.” Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. June 2004. 19 November 2006. <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/>
Carey-Webb, Allen. Literature and Lives.
Illinois: NCTE, 2001.
Castro,
Elizabeth. Publishing a Blog with Blogger.
California: Peach Pit Press, 2005.
Ferdig, Richard. “Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere.” T H E Journal 31.7 (Feb2004): 12-20.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S. “Faceless Students, virtual places: Emergence and Communal Accountability in online classrooms.” Computers and Composition 22.2 (2005): 149-190.
Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class.” College Composition and Communication 42 (February 1991): 55-65.
Kairosnews. “Why Weblogs?” Weblogg-ed. Will
Richardson. 6 April 2006. 27 November 2006 <http://www.weblogg-ed.com/why-weblogs>
Lowe, Charles and Terra Williams. “Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing Classroom.” Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. June 2004. 3 December 2006. <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/>
Richardson, Will. BLOGS, WIKIS, PODCASTS, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.
California: Corwin Press, 2006.
Sapp, David Alan & James Simon. “Comparing grades in online and face-to-face writing courses: Interpersonal accountability and institutional commitment.” Computers and Composition 22.4 (2005): 471-189.
Selfe, Cynthia L. and Gail E. Hawisher. Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy From the
United States.
New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2004.
Tech Learning. “Why Weblogs?” Weblogg-ed. Will
Richardson. 6 April 2006. 27 November 2006 <http://www.weblogg-ed.com/why-weblogs>
Tuzi, Frank. “The impact of e-feedback on the revisions of L2 writers in an academic writing course.” Computers and Composition 21.2 (2004): 217-235.
