Thoughts on Blogs

The use of blogs in my classroom is something I wish I would have taken an active step toward while I still had my classroom. I have known about blogs for years and had one for my husband’s overseas deployment, but I didn’t bring it into the classroom. I am committed to changing that when I return to classroom teaching. For my current job as an itinerant teacher, I think blogs might be just the ticket to linking the community I serve! Many of those students are isolated and are living with a hearing loss without anyone else in the district or region (or so they think!). I would like to settle into my job a bit and then set up a Ning (with blog pages) or something similar to allow them to connect in a safe environment that I can help to moderate and connect them as peers and people in a community--albeit one separated by miles of corn fields.

As a student, I am keeping two blogs this semester but have not kept an active blog for school purposes. I like the ideas shared in the PDF article about using a blog to share thoughts about the class with my students or teaching peers. I get nervous about the time commitment to keeping all the connections current and relevant though. As a student, I would be frustrated if my teacher didn’t respect the time it would take to create, maintain, and comment on each other’s blogs. I’ve had that kind of experience with a web-based course I took. The professor saw the online piece as an add-on and didn’t respect the time it took for us to read and respond to each other. I didn’t like collaborating because my time wasn’t respected and it became a chore rather than a valid piece of the learning culture in the class.

In the future I would like to apply blogs more consistently for myself as an educator (to connect with other educators) and as a way to promote community and writing. Many of my students struggle with writing, and having them write in an environment like this that is lower stakes (or at least feels that way to them) in a community that I can control the audience could be a very ‘safe’ and appealing way for them to write more often. They need to write more in order to progress in their skills. Additionally, so many times there are great thinkers in the class who do not participate in the group. It would be great if they could all have a safe place to read, write, and respond to each other without the pressure of processing time or the class dynamic interfering.

Additionally, I want my students to recognize the power of writing always in-progress. Too often today we have a due date where students complete work, turn it in, get a grade and recycle the paper (if we're lucky!). I want them to recognize the power of thoughts and writing in progress. There doesn't have to be an end-date to everything (although teaching time management is still important). If they are able to compose, interact, edit, change their minds, and go through this whole process continually, they are stronger learners and able to collaborate and grow as they would in a face to face community.

Some goals I have for myself this semester are to become more comfortable with the daily investment of blogging, using wikis, Nings, etc as a means of extending my learning. I am able to keep a blog (when I want to), but I am not skilled yet at linking and incorporating various sources into my approach. I like the idea of collaborating, but going out to find things is time consuming and creating my own personal ‘web’ of information seems sticky. I’m hoping to shake that conception and find ways to meld various 2.0 tools together. That epilogue sounds like a really great place to teach/learn. I would LOVE to be able to integrate all of these tools to that level and work in a community that can do the same.