Thing 2: Student Blogging and Writing

Student blogging has always been a fear of mine, due to the amount of thought and time needed to adequately prepare students for publishing work publicly. I really appreciated the first three articles posted to this assignment by Paul Wagner because I appreciated his positivity about blogging. In my personal experience when I have had students type work on their Chromebooks or Ipads, I have found that the grammar and punctuation has been that of “text messaging” with acronyms and abbreviations that would be embarrassing if a possible college or employer ever saw their published work. Paul Wagner noted that by helping students target their thinking with an audience and helping them understand that all of the work that they publish can be viewed by the public, meaning anyone, can be helpful in curbing this problem. I also appreciated how he reminded me to incorporate time for free writing, which can make the task of writing less burdensome since they do it so much. Something else that was brand new to me, even in these first three articles by Paul Wagner, was the idea that student accounts can be controlled by a master teacher account. I did not even know that this was possible. I thought that each student would need to separately create a blog and that in that way I would not be able to help protect them if necessary. Right now, Weebly seems more appealing to my working with secondary students than KidBlog which was also proposed, due to more options for personalization, and the title itself which could be off-putting to my older students who do not consider themselves “kids.”

 

Something else that I had not considered was the inclusion of parents in this process. In the article by Chrissy Hellyer, she made it clear that it is important to have a specific purpose for the blogging and to share that purpose with others to gain support from the school community and parents. As someone who is pregnant with their first child, I am personally very nervous about my child online, even though we are years away from their online interaction. I would most likely be a concerned parent if I learned that my child was blogging in school. This makes it very important to use a blogging tool that allows the teacher to monitor what is being posted. That would help me as a parent to feel safer about my child interacting online, and I would want that safety net for my own students as well. The idea of allowing students to personalize their blogs is also important. When I was teaching kindergarten, I remember veteran teachers telling me to allow students to simply play with tools first, such as counting bears, to give them time to “get that out of their system” so that they could then use them as educational tools, productively, for counting, without as much of the temptation to play. I feel that this same idea can apply to personalizing blogs. By allowing students some free time to personalize their blog, as well as do some free writing, then they should hopefully be more focused on the writing tasks themselves when assigned.

 

As a teacher who would be new to blogging, I really liked the article by Kathleen Morris titled, “50 Blog Topics and Prompts for Teachers.” As much as the prompts are intended for teachers, I think that it could be really beneficial to work through most of these prompts with my students. I have been told in the past that I do not need to be an expert in something to use it with my students, because often they will be able to teach me! I agree with this sentiment and think that these proposed prompts would be a fun way for all of us to get started. For example, the first prompt is “Share Your Blogging Story” which provides questions that ask the writer to share about their blogging experience, as a reader and a writer. It also asks about an individual’s goals of blogging, or general feelings of fear. Finally, it asks that if an individual is more experienced with blogging, that they can give advice for newbies. This would be a great prompt for my entire class to address, myself included, to learn about each other. Many of the articles about blogging mentioned that it can give insight into students that may not speak or participate very much verbally in class, and I think using a prompt like this makes all students vulnerable and makes me vulnerable as I admit to very little blogging experience. It will support building classroom community because the entire class will quickly learn who might need help in the process, and who we can ask for help.

 

Video blogging is also something that can be very beneficial as an option for my students, all of whom are English language learners. I took time to explore Flipgrid and love the idea of allowing students to have multiple tries to get their video the way that they want it. For example, you can start a video post and then if you make a mistake or don’t like it, you can stop, delete, and record it again. Speaking is one of the first language modalities to develop in second language learners, so allowing them to speak and do video blogs will not only allow them access to participate at their language ability, but it will also allow them to hear themselves when they play back the video which can help them develop clarity in their speaking, as well as more deliberate word choice. This will also give a starting point for students, to then transition into more writing which is a more difficult language skill.

 

Overall, my comfort level with blogging and vlogging has greatly increased, and I am excited about it! The resources provided helped me think deeper about it as a tool for writing that can truly be more than another space to write, such as Word. It gives students more freedom and options, as well as an authentic audience to not merely write, but truly publish their thinking, which I find to be very powerful.