From Responding to Reaching Out

I have been using blogs to allow students to respond to a question online rather than always in class. I have allowed the freedom to respond at their convenience. Referring back to my baking analogy, I begin to think how I can move beyond the Easy Bake oven to a blogging recipe that has even more educational nutritional value. What I mean by that is a blogging experience where students are creating their own blogs that are true to the blogging form – a log of links and comments and posts that provoke peers to think, link and learn. Stephen Downes says “Blogging is something defined by format and process, not by content”.

Format and process? Not content? Is this Marshall McLuhan’s voice in a Web 2.0 world where the media is the message?

The act of blogging is certainly about the interactive process of linking and commenting. If students are to create their own blogs, they would be engaged in a world where they will be linking and blogging and commenting on ideas that far outreach the walls of the classroom. To a blogger, they would have reached blogging perfection. Yet, for a teacher this walks a fine line of danger. Students might be exposing themselves to information that is inaccurate or does not uphold the morals of the school. Thus, content in the form of response blogs became the safe route.

I had to stop writing this blog entry partly because I was not sure I agreed with the last claim I made. I think blogging in the classroom can be about process and format and content all together. Blogging and linking to research is a great tool to teach media literacy and to teach about reputable research sources. It also forces students to reference their research. All three of these strands of curriculum are important and their longevity and applicability far extend the cyber-world of blogging.

Finally, I think what would be so incredible in a classroom is if students begin to reference each other and link to each others’ blogs. This can be useful when examining literature or creating seminars that examine particular aspects of a piece of text.