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« Overblown alarmism and empty rhetoric | Main | A superwave is on the horizon: The 2007 Horizon Report »

A Problem with Blogs

There is a problem that I see arising with blogs in the classroom. A problem that has many educators looking at blogging and not understanding why one would want to blog, how it benefits students and how it engages them in the learning process.

There is a problem with blogs: The word Blog is short for Web Logs or Web Journals. If we look at blogs as nothing more than an electronic journal and it only replaces the written journal, than I can understand why educators do not get how blogs work. Blogs as journals do not engage students any more in the learning process than a regular journal would. A journal is simple; a student writes, the teacher reads. An online journal is much the same. The students write on their blogs and the teacher and the world reads.

There is a problem with blogs: Blogs do not make the grading of journals any easier. In fact, many teachers find it more time consuming. Slow Internet speed, the constant clicking from one blog to the next or the typing of URL after URL reading blogs does not make the grading process an easier.

There is a problem with blogs: We cannot protect our students from ‘bad people.’ Anyone could stumble upon our student blogs and we are not sure if we want a stranger reading student journals. We do not know these people; we do not know where they are from, or what they do.

There is a problem with blogs: We do not understand them.


Anyone who has a blog understands that education has it all wrong. If you are not a blogger or are still trying to wrap your head around blogs in education, let me see if I can help.

The problem with blogs is that it is not about writing, it is about a conversation.
If you think of blogs as conversation vehicles, then it becomes easier to understand how blogs can be very powerful in education and the classroom. Too often, educators use blogs as a replacement for journals, when really what blogs should do is extend conversations from within the classroom to a wider audience. Those conversations should then be brought back into the classroom for further discussion. The word ‘blog’ might be short for Web Log, but the power of blogs is not in the writing, it is in the thoughts, the comments, and the conversation that they can start, sustain, and take into a million different directions.

Blogs as a journal assignment look something like this:



Blogs as conversations look like this:



Just because blogging is a writing activity, does not mean it is about writing. Blogs are about extending a conversation outside the walls of the classroom into a social-network where thoughts are shared with other classmates, other students, or yes even complete strangers. I have seen teachers give students an assignment on their blog to write the answer or their thoughts to a question in class, yet those thoughts, those conversations are not brought back into the classroom to enhance the conversation within. Sure, it is great to read how students answer a question, but if you do not bring the conversation that blogs start back into the classroom, they are no different from an assignment written on paper and handed in to the teacher for a grade.

The power of blogging comes in the conversations that can be carried on within them. Yet very few teachers give their students time to read, reflect, and leave comments during class or even as homework on other’s blogs. Yet those comments either made by classmates or by others, can deepen the conversations taking place within the class.

When blogs are viewed as a conversation vehicle, they bring on a completely new meaning to the term blogging. They no longer become journal assignments; they become thoughtful discussions that extend well after a lesson ends.

If you are blogging with your students, or you are thinking of blogging with your students, I encourage you to not think of blogs as a writing assignment, but instead to look at them as conversations. Conversations that can give you both feedback about a lesson, or continue a conversation well after a lesson has ended. Blogging brings a new dimension to the classroom. You cannot blog and not change the structure of your classroom. Two great examples of this are Mark Ahlness and Clarence Fisher, both of whom have seen blogging completely change the structure of their class.

You see the problem with blogs is we are not accustomed to conversations extending past 3 o’clock when the bell rings. We are not used to having conversations that include more than the 30 students in our class or can affect others in a different hemisphere.

So really, there is not a problem with blogs, the problem lies in how we utilize the power of the conversations that they create to engage students in the learning process.


Posted by Jeff Utecht on March 15, 2007 11:38 AM |

Comments

Jeff
Great post. This is where we need to keep exploring blogging as a means of extending the classroom walls and to keep trying different tools to do this. My experiment into ELGG this year has really helped to build community learning and class conversations through comments and interaction. This does not all happen within the scheduled class time of course.
Thanks for your thoughts and perspective!

Posted by: Julie Lindsay | March 15, 2007 12:17 PM

That's it! I was wondering how to tackle this with 7th grade when we return from Spring Break. Some are indeed conversing past the time confines of our class, some think blogs are the same as Myspace, and some just don't get it at all. I really need to work on this!! Thank you for crystallizing these important thoughts!

Posted by: Mrs. Durff | March 15, 2007 2:10 PM

We're still trying to fit 21st century tools into 20th century instruction without changing our pedagogy or recognizing the fact that the audience makes the difference. This is a great article that I'll be sharing with others today.

Posted by: Diane Quirk | March 15, 2007 3:48 PM

Not A Problem: If teachers think clicking from one url to the next is more time consuming than collecting 30 notebooks, flipping/searching to/for newly written pages, translating bad handwriting (of which I have as well), and then add time spent assessing a grade/mark, then they have not heard of wikipages or del.icio.us. Blogs have sped up my journal grading time immensely.

Not A Problem: Even Blogger has a very easy set up where viewers of the blog can be invite only, keeping out random clickers and keeping our kids safe. A small snip of HTML Code can remove the "Next Blog" Link. And in reality with 55 million blogs out there and growing, I am not thinking too many people will find our blogs on technorati. I would like to think my blog is that cool, but probably not.

It's all about the Small Things, right?
My favorite small thing about blogs, or comments, is the fact they will stay and be archived. We can look back at the blogs from August in June reflect with one click. I don't know of many notebooks that last more than a semester, let alone a month with some students. And I know of few teachers that have enough space to keep every writing assignments a student completes throughout the year. But the blogs solves both of those issues.

Posted by: Thomas Story | March 15, 2007 5:14 PM

The problem with blogging is not blogging: It is writing. By writing I am not talking about the use of conventions and crafting paragraphs, but rather the development of an idea for an audience. Blogging gives an authentic audience. But who are they. Good writing is about having an audience you are writing to and for. Blogging allows for your audience to actually respond to you, if you choose--then it could become a conversation. All too often comments are simply things like "great post," or "I disagree..." But they do not take the time to develop a counter idea. They do not extend the conversation.

For a student, to have an audience beyond their immediate classmates can prove a rewarding and dynamic experience. It can raise their game. In reading other students' posts they can enrich their own perspectives. Good blogging has to start with good writing--having an idea to share with an authentic audience. In so doing you may discover your voice. And that is the power of blogging.

Posted by: Shaun | March 17, 2007 7:14 AM

I still don't quite understand the term blogging. It's new to me that teachers are assigning journal writing on the internet. I assume that the students write on a site determined by the teacher. What are the possible kinds of sites? What other kinds of blogs are there? Students journal writing on the net, where others can respond, sounds like an interesting learning activity.

Posted by: Mary Lee | March 18, 2007 11:19 PM

A nice explanation of how to make blogs more meaningful for classroom use. I've noticed some teachers at our campus who have tried blogs discovering that as they went and wanting them to be something more interactive, so this is a helpful analysis!

One aside--Will Richardson showed our staff another idea to make blogs easier to keep up with if you require students to create one by using Pageflakes. Then you can subscribe to the feed of all the students' blogs in a very visual format.
(which I'm sure you are already aware of....but it's a handy tool and I wanted to share).

Posted by: Carolyn Foote | March 19, 2007 1:58 AM

Jeff,
This post is just brillant! It takes the blog concept and makes the reader make the personal connections. It is all about the conversation and extending our classrooms. I will be sharing this with my teachers in our staff development.
Cheryl Oakes

Posted by: Cheryl Oakes | March 19, 2007 2:42 AM

Great article! I am using some form of class blog in all my classes this semester.

Posted by: Delaney Kirk | March 22, 2007 5:41 AM

I really enjoyed reading this discussion. I have started blogging and using threaded discussions with my 8th grade language arts students this year. It has been a tremendous experience as we all learn from each other in order to develop our own interpretations of a text or topic.

I wholeheartedly agree that blogs and threaded discussions should NOT be used as journals. To me that stifles the stream of consciousness that I am hoping to foster within and among classes.

Blogs and threaded discussions ARE conversations. I use them to enhance classroom discussions and to nurture enduring understandings. In my opinion, Blogs and threaded discussions should not be considered formal pieces of writing. Yes I do want my students to write coherently with attention to mechanics, but that is not really what I am after with electronic discussions. We have formal research papers and IT-assisted project based learning for that.

Blogs and threaded discussions are all about sharing ideas, analyzing other people's perspectives, conversation and building and extending knowledge.

For those who wish to analyze student blogs and electronic communications for convention minutiea rather than big ideas that are developed and shared; I think you might want to reconsider and return to lugging home those 100 journals on a weekly basis.

Just my opinion.

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