Blogs as Writing Curriculum
Blogging is an effective and powerful tool to encourage and sharpen the 21st century student's writing and communication skills so they find relevance, context, and live readership for their writing. Andrew Sullivan, famous blogger for past fifteen years explains the essence of blogging as:
Blogging is an effective and powerful tool to encourage and sharpen the 21st century student's writing and communication skills so they find relevance, context, and live readership for their writing. Andrew Sullivan, famous blogger for past fifteen years explains the essence of blogging as:
a genuinely new mode of writing: its provisionality, its conversational essence, its essential errors, its ephemeral core, its nature as the mode in which writing comes as close as it can to speaking extemporaneously.
Writing is a much hated activity among young students and even adults. It seems complicated, scary, and unnecessary altogether. However, simply put, writing is organizing one's thoughts – in order to share them with another - for the purpose of self-expression. Blogs offer students a personalized public space in which to do that. I recommend educators begin small:
- Maintain your own teaching blog or a class blog. This is great modeling for the students.
- Ask students to visit the blog and write comments. Getting the feel for public writing through short comments will introduce students to public writing and pave their way for their own blog posts.
- Get students to read other blogs. Prepare a list of good weblogs with relevant and appropriate content. Good writing begins with good reading, make sure your list is well picked.
- For their first own post, I like to ask students to introduce themselves in whichever way they want; using text, image, or video. They can create it themselves or find something online that they feel represents them well.
- Next, posts can be simple annotated links with a brief highlight of what they felt was important or meaningful about that link.
- In subsequent posts students begin to be more comfortable delving deeper in thought and draw on personal experiences and reflections in their writing.
Blogging presents ways to extend learning beyond the classroom and mere technology integration and truly take advantage of online learning communities as part of a blended teaching/learning initiative. Blogs allow for intricate links to other posts, images, videos, and multimedia in general. Blogs offer a chance to comment and debate and build relationships.
- Maintain your own teaching blog or a class blog. This is great modeling for the students.
- Ask students to visit the blog and write comments. Getting the feel for public writing through short comments will introduce students to public writing and pave their way for their own blog posts.
- Get students to read other blogs. Prepare a list of good weblogs with relevant and appropriate content. Good writing begins with good reading, make sure your list is well picked.
- For their first own post, I like to ask students to introduce themselves in whichever way they want; using text, image, or video. They can create it themselves or find something online that they feel represents them well.
- Next, posts can be simple annotated links with a brief highlight of what they felt was important or meaningful about that link.
- In subsequent posts students begin to be more comfortable delving deeper in thought and draw on personal experiences and reflections in their writing.
Blogs and Digital Natives
Blogging presents ways to extend learning beyond the classroom and mere technology integration and truly take advantage of online learning communities as part of a blended teaching/learning initiative. Blogs allow for intricate links to other posts, images, videos, and multimedia in general. Blogs offer a chance to comment and debate and build relationships.
Educational visionary Marc Prensky has coined the term "Digital Natives" to refer to young generation who has grown up engulfed with new technology and spend majority of their time using it. Prensky refers to scientific data asserting young student brains may have physically changed and that certainly their thinking patterns, the way they think and process information, have changed.
Digital Natives phrase isn't so much about technology as it is about attitude and culture. In his 2001 essay, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Prensky writes:
Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to "serious" work.
Blogs are really good at personal expression and exploration and meet educational needs of 21st century student.
Receiving information really fast: Blog posts are typically, but not always, short and allow for quick topic introductions. Additional follow-up posts can be written to develop topic further and allow deeper levels of thought. But the main goal still remains that a blog post is short and fast.
Parallel process & multi-task: Blog posts encourage linking to relevant information from the internet. Writer is constantly multitasking between reading, writing, thinking and linking to other material out there.
Graphics: Blog posts encourage the use of graphics and video as stand alone or to supplement written text. An interesting student assignment can require the use of only graphics to represent an idea. Or encourage free expression through self-published video as a post.
Random Access: Blog posts encourage and are greatly enhanced when they link to and from other great content on the web. This allows writer and reader to jump from one link to the next and connect idea to each other.
Networked: Blogs have the added connection to a live readership beyond the classroom instructor. The writer is networked with his/her reader and also with other content providers to whom he/she has linked to.
Instant Gratification & Frequent Rewards: The ability to show your personality via personal blog and self-publishing provides instant gratification. Also, what better way to be rewarded and encouraged than when you receive a comment on your blog.
Games: It can be great fun to incorporate less serious game-like posts into blogging assignments. This fun treasure hunt assignment is a great example of incorporating games into classwork.
Tune in Next post on how to further use blogs in a blended classroom environment.
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