Mac - Week 4: Comments to Andrea Nichols

@Andrea Nichols-

Wk4_Thinking Outloud Post #1

Students Blogging by K. Valunas

I guess I should have posted this sooner as I am thinking a lot about whether to publish or present. I guess I want to do both, in a way. I certainly don't want this project to end at the end of this program.

I've learned so much about blogging through this program. I believe the biggest insight into blogging in education is that the determining factor to whether blogging will succeed or fail in the classroom relies on the teacher's ability to participate in the blogging experience. Kids will do what their told, mostly, and complete writing assignments on paper or digitally, whatever is required of them. The attraction of blogging is the feedback bloggers receive from others, especially the teacher. The more time that a teacher has to make comments to the students, the more excited the student becomes about writing. It's fun to get feedback from your fellow classmates, but it's even more fulfilling to get feedback from your instructor. The problem is (as an instructor) finding time to read and respond to all the blogs. It's more convenient to have all the writings in one place, rather than in a pile of papers on your desk, but the burden is the same: When will you find the time to read and respond well? I guess it goes back to the old adage: The more things change the more they stay the same.

Back to present vs. paper. I think I'm going to work on the presentation (slides) for this week's Wimba. I've signed up for Wednesday night. The process of making the slide presentation will help me get my thoughts in order for a paper. I really want to be published in a journal someday, so this is as good a time to start towards that goal as any!

My comments-

Andrea, you have some good ideas and I appreciate the writing focus for your project. With so much time spent in social networks and texting by students, I could see blogging and tweeting being activities that encourage and reinforce writing skill development.

I worked with a teacher a number of years ago who was involved in the National Writing Project. I know she would agree that the blogging would be a big improvement over having to read all the papers. One nice thing about the blogging is that we can use it like a conversation. If we keep our comments short each time and let it flow as if we were talking with a group of people, then it makes it a lot easier and less time consuming to read and respond to the blogs than sitting and trying to read through all the papers.

I used blogging one year with my student publication students who had to learn to do interviews. They kept the “discussion” on their blogs going by asking questions and then getting answers from others in response to the questions. Then I just facilitated and monitored their conversations. You don’t necessarily have to respond to each one every time they post, but could post general feedback once or twice a week, or respond to a personal post from a student if you feel it is warranted. Also tweeting, having to limit tweets to 140 characters, could be a way to learn vocab and post definitions or a sentence to clarify meaning of a term. Thanks for sharing your ideas and your project! Best wishes as you move into the final presentation/publication phase.