Short story: Creative writing

The young monk had journeyed long to reach the great and wise blogosphere. Resting upon his heavy and travel worn wooden staff he looked upon the radiance of the lightning scared blogosphere and spoke thusly:

“Blogosphere! What is the primary advantage of using a blog in the classroom? Conversely, what is the biggest disadvantage?”

Green lightning streaked across the wise being’s surface. And thus, the Blogosphere responded.

The primary advantage is the most obvious: blogging gets students writing, and since writing is a critical part of literacy acquisition, anything that encourages more writing should be closely examined and adopted if it works to encourage writing. In classroom use, blogging can also contribute to community building, another critical literacy skill. Most obviously, perhaps, using blogs also promotes technological literacy, a critical literacy for both present and future. Also, blogs are an easy way for teachers to make use of the Internet. Given the ease of creating and maintaining blogs on template driven sites like Blogger.com, the time investment for teachers is small. If they would be reading paper-based writing, they’d be spending a similar amount of time, and the blog has the advantage of being accessible anywhere/anytime you have a connection to the Web.

Disadvantages to blogging include resistance by students who do not see or do not want to see the positive potential to this kind of non-traditional “non-academic” writing, as well as the potential for mis-use of the medium. If anonymous posts are allowed, for example, that could lead to problem—nasty comments or hijacking the discussion. Both can be avoided by NOT allowing anonymous posts and by setting up protected or private blogs. Student resistance can be addressed in the same ways you address resistance to traditional academic endeavors. A blog is a tool, one potential element in your pedagogy, not the only one.

The young monk scratched his chin and said,

“With that in mind, great blogosphere, do you think middle schools or junior highs today are ready to integrate blogging into their classrooms?”

If the teachers have a clear understanding of the pros and cons, if they have the support of their administration, and if they can create “protected” blogs (password-protected sites that prevent predators from accessing the students’ writing), then I think blogs would be extremely helpful. The format and context of blogs are so non-academic that students more readily accede to writing in them than they might given the traditional pen-and-paper assignment. In addition, using blogs allows teachers to continue discussion beyond the physical constraints of the classroom. Some people have questioned the use of blogs v. discussion boards, but the critical point there is that threaded discussion boards can pull participants off into side threads and fragment or derail the discussion.

“I see,”

said the monk,

“the argument that seems to always come up against blogging is that some schools may not have the means to provide computer time to every student, and that many students may not have internet access. Also, many argue that many educators lack the training to properly implement a blog in the classroom. How would you counter this argument?”

The issue of access is a critical one. Schools in poorer districts frequently have trouble providing access, a problem that may be addressable by appealing to wealthier districts or nearby colleges or businesses for help in the form of hand-me-down computers. Grants are another way schools can expand their resources. In terms of training teachers, it is relatively easy to teach someone to create and monitor a blog—much easier than a website, for example. In many cases, if schools appealed to their local universities or colleges for tech-savvy faculty and grad students to volunteer a few hours to train teachers, that problem could be solved. When I was WPA here, we did some of that. We also had a regional conference for K-16 teachers here that introduced many of them to using the Internet (this predated blogs, but we had a bunch who built MOOs and websites). There are almost always was of dealing with these kinds of problems.

“I understand.”

Said the monk. And thus, he was off to reflect on what he had learned.