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?