I learned about blogging in the middle of high school when a more tech-savvy friend introduced me to http://www.xanga.com/. I really enjoyed sharing my thoughts with anyone who bothered to read and leave comments and give "eprops". Soon, many friends subscribed and we were able to know more about one another through reading each other's posts. Never having been a careful writer in the classroom, I spent time and effort to ensure that every entry I published was grammatically correct, and stimulating, yet tasteful. Knowing that it wasn't just one random teacher who would be reading my work motivated me to take pride in my writing. Blogging created a way for students to read each other's work and brought about peer pressure for me to start writing better.
Based on personal experiences of when I was a student and teacher's aide, I believe that children would put more effort into their work if they knew their peers would be evaluating it. Blogging allows a community of writers to be formed where everyone has access to each other's writing. If I knew a paper I had to turn in for class would require peer-editing, I would make sure to put in my best effort because I wouldn't want that person reading my paper to think I was incompetent or uneducated. Aren't children also mindful of being judged on their work? No one likes to be "that kid" who always misspells or "the one" who can't form sentences.
My main concern with having students blog is safety, parental resistance, and liability. I don't know if I'd be brave enough to mandate blogging as a class assignment, but I'd encourage my students to blog as a hobby and form of communication between each other. I am post likely to be old school and use the two-way notebook!
That is a really important point that you make about improving grammar. The children who I know seem to know very little about proper grammer and spelling, so I would love to find a way to make studets take pride in the gramatical part of thier writing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the safety and liability of students on the internet. Maybe if a teacher was going to have blogging as part of the classroom it might benefit to have an information session with the parents before the students could participate. I know that even if a student states the name of his or her team name that it could be tracked to what town the child is from. I think with anything else there is good and bad but it does seem to be the way the future is going, it is up to us as future teachers and parents to make sure that our students are as safe as can be.
ReplyDeleteI think your point about kids working harder when peers will see it is a good one. I also wonder how many kids will find it difficult to participate at all, knowing that their classmates will see their work. I know I would have been terrified to put anything out in public at that age.
ReplyDeleteCommunity shaping is a dying art. Ironically, i think the increase in social networking and sound byte-communication is a big contributor to the problem. I tend to be a bit old school as well, and I think that finding a way (blogs or otherwise) to encourage students to put something out in front of their community is essential for learning how to respond to criticism, shed defensiveness, and grow both socially and academically.
ReplyDelete