There's an episode of Seinfeld where George has lost his job and is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life and he suggests to Jerry that he could become a color man in sports broadcasting because he often makes "interesting" comments as he watches games. This, to me, has often been what blogs are all about -- lots of George Costanzas making "interesting" comments about random happenings. Yikes.
As a student, I am apprehensive about blogging because I'm a drafter. It makes me nervous to just put something out there without spending a lot of time polishing it, and, to be honest, I'm not always comfortable with making my work public, even if it is polished.
But, as an educator, I have started to come around to the idea of blogging, and I really do believe it can be a powerful learning tool. As Richardson points out, it is easy and it is "real" writing in that there is always some kind of actual audience to consider. This is powerful.
I also really like the idea of creating an "online filing cabinet" that students carry with them throughout their entire educational careers. Not only would this help schools become paperless, but it is an excellent way to archive student work, build on past learning and track progress.
Teachers, too, could obviously professionally benefit from online collaboration. And, I agree with Richardson that blogs could help better communicate with parents and the community at large (especially in extending the "walls" of the classroom).
So, as a teacher librarian, I think it is important to start demonstrating to teachers how they might use blogs in their own classrooms. Also, I would like to add something as a feature to the existing website at my current school.
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I am very curious to see what you think as you look at some of the sample blogs. You are not alone - I think that is a common thought among educators, wondering if it will look like a draft and not a finished product.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most powerful suggestion I can make, is that we don't have "final products" in this new century as we knew them before, but rather we are creating and learning and our work is never finished!
Lately, I have been considering this idea:
It's not about "what we learn" but teaching students "how to learn". Richardson and Warlick seem to confirm that for me.
We'll keep talking! Thanks
Hey Cari...I feel the same way about drafting. I have always been a drafter and how many drafts I devote to something is sort of a neurotic indication of how much I care about that particular piece of writing. I draft letters to people, papers, even sometimes to-do lists. So I understand what you mean. I think KTS made a good comment about how there really is no such thing as a "final product" anymore--makes me think of Wikipedia, constantly being revised.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to use some sort of blog with my students--and am wondering how the concept of revising fits in. As I looked at students' blogs on the Mighty Writer's class website, I couldn't tell if students had gone back and revised their blog entries. Maybe that's one of the benefits of having an "online filing cabinet" of writing, like you said--you can go back and select very easily the work that's worth revising.
I was also intrigued with the online filing cabinet idea. As we become more and more technically connected in the schools we have to figure out this storage issue. To have a place that is stored on someone elses server and not the districts would be one solution! I would like to see more examples of ways this is working!
ReplyDeleteI understand your feelings about drafting...I finally got up the courage to post a comment on an educator's blog. After I had posted, I went back to the site just to see my name in the list of comments and was horrified to notice a typo I had missed! So - I had to delete it - and add another comment...so where my original comment was it says something about having the comment deleted by Beth Swantz! ARGH!! How do people get over that???