Blogging Pedagogy
Anne Davis has a great post pondering the pedagogy that resides within blogging in the classroom. This quote by her really summed it up for me:
There is too much evidence to think otherwise about blogging. I think we allow too many others around us in the school building to control what we do for our students. Criticism about trying something new can be strong, but if we truly know the benefits for our students, why should we let the naysayers mess it up? I am going to make a coordianted effort to not only have my students blogging more this next year but to get more teachers doing it as well with their students. If they live in the glass house with me then they can't throw stones. Correct?
Any thoughts?
Categories: Literacy, Web2.0,Writing Process,EdTech,Blogs,Blogging,Voice,Pedagogy
... blogs can provide an opportunity to change our writing instruction to make it more meaningful and relevant for our students. Many times our classroom assignments are assignments where students reiterate or restate information they have read with an occasional opinion. Generally just the teacher will see the paper. Blogging lets many more become engaged. Blogging can be a place where we can make connections and dig deeper into how and what we are learning, both student and teacher. Sharing these thoughts and discoveries with others builds networks of learning that can cross continents. We get to toss our ideas out, have reactions to them, receive suggestions to build upon them and many more become involved in the process. It becomes more personalized and certainly more meaningful. Students are creating meanings that make sense to them because they are constructing them, not having pieces delivered to them that they just repeat.
There is too much evidence to think otherwise about blogging. I think we allow too many others around us in the school building to control what we do for our students. Criticism about trying something new can be strong, but if we truly know the benefits for our students, why should we let the naysayers mess it up? I am going to make a coordianted effort to not only have my students blogging more this next year but to get more teachers doing it as well with their students. If they live in the glass house with me then they can't throw stones. Correct?
Any thoughts?
Categories: Literacy, Web2.0,Writing Process,EdTech,Blogs,Blogging,Voice,Pedagogy
posted by Scott S. Floyd @ 7/02/2006 02:21:00 PM
3 Comments:
At 7/02/2006 3:32 PM,
Kelly said…
I think most of the battle is just getting the students to write. Whatever we can do to motivate them, we should do. I definitely think blogging helps with that. If they are interested, they will comply. And, while most of what I've read about blogging is opinion, I agree with it and supports its use.
You have naysayers at your school? ;)
At 7/03/2006 7:43 AM,
Katherine said…
I agree with Teresa's comment. This has also got me thinking about blogging and revision techniques. Hmmmm.
At 7/04/2006 10:27 AM,
Jeannine Hirtle said…
Ok, well I was just blown away by this statement:
Blogging can be a place where we can make connections and dig deeper into how and what we are learning, both student and teacher. Sharing these thoughts and discoveries with others builds networks of learning that can cross continents.
I think blogging goes much deeper than just getting students to write--It's in those "connections that cross continents" where accessibility never available before intersects interest and knowledge and will support not only "writing' but communication with a depth and breadth not available to a single writer.
Writing has so much to do with audience. In a classroom "the audience" is often just the teacher--maybe peers or a conference group. But, look what happens in a blog--with search engines out there capable of picking up on names or descriptors that let people with similar interests join in the conversation, then there is that opportunity for content experts to join in. Look how we had that one expert join in our comments, just out of the blue (seemingly).
I lack the metaphors to describe what I'm trying to say--but it's a Star Trek kind of connectivity, driven by interest, knowledge, accessibility. Opinion? Yes, there is opinion, but there is that making of meaning in dialogue with a larger community that helps us to create knowledge that would have been just too far outside the galaxy our individual classroom orbit in--too happen.
Ok, if anyone can straighten out that metaphor, have at it.
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