To Blog or Not To Blog: A Teacher's Dilemma

Teachers are always being asked to add "one more thing" to their already long and demanding list of responsibilities. Implementing the "latest and greatest" technology tool is frequently included in that list. Blogging is becoming a popular medium for student writing in the classroom. Stephen Downes describes several uses for blogs in education in his article, "Educational Blogging." But he also raises some interesting questions, ones that probably should be addressed before a teacher decides whether or not to implement blogging into the classroom.  These questions get to the heart of the dilemma blogging poses for teachers.

One question is: "What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system?" While we, as teachers, want students to write about their personal thoughts and feelings, a classroom blog is generally not considered the place for such writing. Teachers usually assign a topic or prompt related to a curricular subject, and then expect the students to respond to that prompt.  However, if the prompt/assignment is constructed creatively, students can not only demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the desired learning goals, but they can include some of their own personality and strengths at the same time.  For example, students who dislike writing but are visual learners can include images and videos in their blog post to support their ideas. In addition, due to the nature of blogs, the student's writing becomes more of a conversation starter rather than an end product. Other people can comment on the writing at any time, which allows a conversation on the topic to ensue.  Too often, due to time constraints during the school day, students are unable to participate in any type of conversation about what they have learned.

Another question Downes poses is: "What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don't say the wrong things?"  I suppose my initial (read: smart-aleck) response to that would be, "Well, what is happening now, when students are NOT writing blogs?"  After all, students are still required to write.  If the writing isn't going to be graded, not many students are likely to write. When students write offline, they are still bound by the rules and boundaries of acceptable grammar and composition structure, and the writing is "monitored" by the teacher, who is usually the only person to read that piece of writing. But that same assignment, written as a blog post with those some rules and boundaries and only written because it will be graded, takes on a new level of engagement with the topic for the student. The student realizes that his writing will be public, so he will work a little harder on his writing. The ability for him to connect his written ideas with the ideas of others on the Internet (including images, videos, and podcasts) though hyperlinks means he is more invested in the research and spends more time thinking about what he wants to "say" in his blog post. Feedback from people other than the teacher allows the student to continue learning, even after the assignment is "turned in." Now the assignment holds a bit more meaning for him that it would have if it was turned in to the teacher on looseleaf paper. What if a student DOES say the "wrong thing?" That is why I think it is important for the teacher to approve all posts before they are published. But if a student's writing is not suitable for public consumption, the teacher must work with the student, explain why the post won't be published, and give him the opportunity to revise his writing This becomes an additional learning experience for the student, as he learns what it means to be a good digital citizen -- a skill that will serve him well throughout his life.

To blog or not to blog? My vote is to blog.  But like any new technology tool, the teacher should not implement blogging without some solid training on best practices. Otherwise, students will lose interest and the blog will lose its potential as a powerful learning mechanism that incorporates higher level thinking into the core curriculum.  One of the students quoted in Downes's article said it best: "The blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more. When we publish on our blog, people from the entire world can respond by using the comments link. This way, they can ask questions or simply tell us what they like. We can then know if people like what we write and this indicate[s to] us what to do better. By reading these comments, we can know our weaknesses and our talents. Blogging is an opportunity to exchange our point of view with the rest of the world not just people in our immediate environment." 

What teacher wouldn't want that?

Blogging: A NETS-S Power Tool

"Simply being able to use technology is no longer enough. Today's students need to be able to use technology to analyze, learn, and explore. Digital age skills are vital for preparing students to work, live, and contribute to the social and civic fabric of their communities." (ISTE, 2011)

Sounds good, right?  Tell that to the poor classroom teacher who is already overwhelmed with the pressures of NCLB, implementing the Common Core standards, new teacher evaluation systems, and the usual heavy workload of planning lessons and assessing student work, and you are likely to be greeted with a groan and complaints of "just one more thing added to our already overflowing plates."  Not that teachers don't want students to use technology for learning, but having to embed the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S) could be the stressor that puts them over the edge. Since more skills need to be taught in the same amount of time, the key is to integrate the technology into the classroom so that the NETS-S and curriculum learning objectives can be met at the same time. One technology tool that lends itself well to the integration of the NETS-S is blogging.  Let's take a look at how blogging can address each of the six standards outlined in NET-S.

1.  Creativity and Innovation --When students blog, they are applying existing knowledge to generate new ideas, and they are expressing themselves through original work.
2.  Communication and Collaboration -- Blogging is a form of communication, and students interact with peers, teachers, and others when they publish their thoughts online. It is also possible for students to develop global awareness by engaging with students from other cultures.
3.  Research and Information Fluency -- Before students blog, they need to have background knowledge of the topic they will be writing about, and this knowledge can be obtained from a variety of resources, including websites and videos.  The information they gather would then need to be evaluated and analyzed, and the students would synthesize that information to compose their ideas.
4.  Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making -- A well-crafted blogging assignment could have students examining research from various sources and analyzing that data to identify solutions to authentic problems.  Alternative solutions and other perspectives could be shared with each other through comments.
5.  Digital Citizenship -- This is an underlying component to any use of technology, but it is one that must be taught and modeled to students. The personal nature of blog writing necessitates that students practice safety and proper netiquette, so that students view blogging as a safe medium for sharing thoughts and ideas.  Additionally, any resources used when writing a blog post should be cited accordingly.
6.  Technology Operations and Concepts -- This standard is addressed through the actual experience of using digital tools such as blogs.  Students will learn the "nuts and bolts" of the blogging software/interface and will begin to understand the complex nature of the Internet through the inclusion of hyperlinks, images, sound files and video files.

In my situation, integrating the NETS-S standards is not as challenging for me as it might be for other teachers, because my classroom is a computer lab and my curriculum is technology.  The challenge for me will be to find topics interesting enough to be able to blog about them in depth; describing how to format text or insert a photograph into a Powerpoint presentation is hardly blogging material.  One topic that generates good discussion is cyberbullying and Internet safety, so I will be sure to use blogging during that unit of study. I can try to coordinate other topics with the classroom curriculum whenever possible.  Current events can be another source of discussion topics, especially with the older students. Regardless of the subject matter, I want to include blogging in my lessons this year, because I think that the skills they will learn while blogging will carry over into other aspects of their education, helping them to become 21st century learners.  I am eager to teach my students how to blog this year, and I hope they will be just as excited about it as I am.

Reference:
International Society for Technology in Education, "ISTE | NETS for Students." http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students.aspx, 2011.

Metablognition

As educators, we are familiar with the term "metacognition" -- the awareness or analysis of one's own thinking process.  We try to help our students develop this awareness.  We want them to know how they arrived at a particular conclusion and be able to explain it to others.  Blogging can help students develop this awareness.  Will Richardson, renowned edublogger, coined the term "metablognition" to describe the thinking processes that occur when a person blogs.  But how, exactly, does that work?

When a person blogs, he first needs to have some knowledge of (or experience with) the subject matter. This cognition can be acquired in any number of ways.  In order to share this knowledge with others via blogging, the author needs to be aware of what he knows, and he needs to process and analyze the information in order to decide how to express this knowledge in written form. Once these thoughts are composed, the author must decide if the words he has written sufficiently communicate his thoughts.  If they do, they are shared with an audience, with the hopes that someone who reads the blog post is motivated enough by it to post a comment. (Hopefully, that comment is also a well-thought out response.)

Once the post is published, the cognitive process doesn't have to stop. Comments to a blog post can support this thinking process by communicating additional information to the author.  This information can support the author's ideas, refute the author's ideas, or even present new ideas for the author to consider. In any case, the author further engages in analyzing information, continuing the cognitive process.  When students see that they have put a great deal of thought into a piece of writing, that it affected someone else in some way, and that they have been able to broaden their knowledge of a topic and create meaning from the ensuing discourse, they have engaged in metacognition, or in this case, "metablognition."

Welcome to my blog!

Hello there! Welcome to Storms Surge, my new blog.  Here I will discuss all things related to educational technology.  I plan to "re-energize" my curriculum this year, and I am hoping that blogging will help me to find the inspiration and motivation I need. Please join me in this endeavor, as conversation is much better than a monologue.