Random Thoughts

I am having the students in one of my classes blog this semester.  So far it has been crazy getting everyone set up and running, but it has been a lot of fun.  Links to their blogs are on my classroom blog, if you are interested.

I am going to make a presentation on blogging to a group of teachers on June 17th.  I will be talking about both personal and professional uses of blogs.  One topic that I want to discuss, of course, is blogging with students.  And that’s where I hope you can help me.

What blog sites do you recommend for K-12 students or class blogs?

My experience with blogs is at the university level, so I really need suggestions from those of you who are blogging with K-12 students.  Thanks for your help!

I have received a couple comments lately that I want to respond to.  The first was from Patrick Higgins on my post about teaching writing.  He asked if I grade blog posts.  When I have had students blog, I have counted numbers of posts or whether or not they posted the log on the day it was their responsibility to do so.  I haven’t really ever graded the quality of their posts.  I suppose part of the reason was that I didn’t want to make blogging just another graded activity.  And I was hoping that they would try to do a good job of writing when they posted to the blog.  That wasn’t always the case, but I am OK with that.  For me, student blogging is about increasing the amount of writing they do and the frequency with which they write.  It is stressful enough for my students to write and more stressful for them to write in public; I wouldn’t want to add to it by making them worry about the grade it will receive.  I am not sure if my reasoning has been good or not, but that is how I have done it.  And I think it is how I will do it next time, too.

And on a totally different note, Angie asked about the symbols I used to illustrate the pronunciation of andragogy.  That was IPA pronunciation courtesy of dictionary.com.  They offer both a spelled pronunciation and IPA pronunciation.  I had to learn IPA when I was in grad school and, at the time, felt it was more trouble than it was worth.  Since then, of course, it has been quite valuable.  For more on IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) you can check out this entry on Wikipedia.

Over at Open Education there is a post about using blogs with students.  This post, like mine did, refers to Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students.  The comment on Open Education that makes me think most is this:

Also, teachers need to be clear that a blog is an individualized tool for one learner. Yes, students can leave comments on a colleague’s blog that represent a reflection of the material presented. But if a teacher is seeking reactions from a collective group the tool to use would be a wiki or a discussion forum. In essence, teachers must select the proper tool for the task.

I think this is another part of the question that bothers me.  Even when I have blogged as part of a TESOL Electronic Village Online session, the blog has been mine.  I have written as an individual about things that were of interest to me.  I may have had tasks that I was supposed to complete and blog about, but the actual post and even whether or not I posted were up to me. And it wasn’t graded.

I am already planning to use a wiki for the courses next semester, and I am real comfortable with that.  I have used wikis with my students pretty successfully before — much more successfully than I have used blogs.  I wanted to branch out, to give students more technology.  But I am not sure if there is a real reason to do so.

If I can do what I want to do with the wiki, should I find a way to use blogs, too?  If I have students post their final drafts for grading to WebCT rather than to a blog, is it “bad”?  If I don’t have them post them anywhere, is it OK?

I think I am worrying too much about this right now.  But it is interesting to me how I keep running into the topic and, as a result, rethinking my stand.  It is good, part of the reflective process that blogging is for me.

I had a couple good comments on my last post, One from Scott McLeod with a good suggestion, and the other from an old friend, John Wylder.

Starting with John’s comment about why I blog, the answer is of course the connection to so many people like Scott McLeod and John Wylder.  Writing has always been a way for me to clarify my thinking, but  it is only through blogging that I have gotten input on that thinking.  I would love for my students to have that experience.

As to the question of what larger community I want them to be a part of, I think that is part of my question.  One larger community would, of course, be their families and friends in other parts of the world.  But most of my students have blogs already that they use to let those people know about their lives here in New Mexico.  So I am not sure why I would want them to start a blog for that purpose.  And I am not sure what other larger community I would want them to be part of.  They are adults.  They should choose their own community, I think.

Leaving that question not truly answered, I move on to Scott’s comment.  He suggests having students post their drafts and having others comment on them.  I could see doing that on a class blog, where everyone posted their drafts and everyone commented.  When I have done this using Nicenet, for instance, I have found it to be quite successful.  Students told me they felt freer to really comment on others’ writing in an online environment than they did face to face in the classroom.  That would be a legitimate use of blogs, I think.  But it is something I had been thinking they would do on the wiki.

A couple years ago in a discussion of tweaking student blog posts to make them more grammatically correct, someone commented on my blog that a teacher is judged by the quality of her students’ posts.   I then posted about that question.    In spite of my comments to the contrary, I think that is, unfortunately, part of my reluctance to have student post drafts in a blog.   Some of my students in the past have posted absolutely dreadful pieces, from a grammar-focused point of view.  But on the other hand, they wrote and communicated their ideas.  So the activity was really a success.

This is obviously something I have to think through more.

As I have been thinking about next semester, I have been thinking that I wanted to include blogs.  But a link on Dangerously Irrelevant made me realize that this might not be a good idea.  The link was to an article called Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students and it’s by Ruth Reynard.

Way back a couple years ago I came to the conclusion that blogging wasn’t going to work as a class activity if I didn’t have a real reason for students to blog.  But I forgot that.  And I had been thinking that it would be good enough to have them post final drafts of papers to the blog so their families and friends could see their work.  But the article made me realize — or remember — that there has to be a better reason.  If I just do an old assignment on a blog, it is almost assuredly going to fail.

So if I want to use blogs, there has to be a legitimate reason.  Reynard talks about the value of blog as a reflection or thought processing tool.  Of course I know that.  But for some reason I find myself reluctant to use blogs for that purpose with my students.  I have them journal for that purpose, and I like the old pen-to-paper thing.  Is that the reason I don’t want them to blog as a means of thinking?  I am not sure.

What I am sure of at this point is that blogs as I had envisioned using them next semester won’t work.  So I have to decide if I really want them to blog or if we can accomplish the same purpose better another way.  Maybe the wiki is enough.  Maybe I leave blogs for another class.  I really don’t know at this point.  But I am grateful to Scott for the link and to Ms. Reynard for the article.  I need to go back and reread my earlier posts on the subject and think about this all some more.

After more than two years blogging on Blogger, I finally clicked on “Next Blog”. I had always been curious but had never taken the time to check it out. I had heard horror stories of kids in school clicking on it and getting some inappropriate content, and I guess I figured that I wasn’t all that intereted in what I might find. But tonight I clicked on it, and I was really amazed by what I found.

The first blog I got was in Chinese. I am not sure what it was about, but it had pictures of food and a few words in English. I thought that was pretty cool, so I clicked again and got a blog in Russian. And the third time I clicked, I got one in Portuguese. Finally on the fourth click I got one in English — on Permaculture, of all things. The fifth one was in Spanish.

All of this got me wondering about the percentage of blogs that are not written in English. I know I have read about this before, but I don’t remember what I read. I could see asking my students (adults) to do a little investigation on the subject. They could do informal research by starting at my blog and clicking “Next Blog” say ten times. For each blog they come to, they could be asked to write like an annotated bibliography in which they tell what language it is written in and, to the best of the student’s ability to figure it out from photos or other clues if he/she can’t read that language, tell what the focus of the blog seems to be.

This project could serve several purposes. It would give students a chance to do independent research. It would give them a reason to read a number of blogs, and it would give them the opportunity to write. Of all of these, though, I think I am most interested in the blog reading they would do. I have yet to really get my students to read blogs. This would be one way to give them a chance to see what is out there. From there, then, it might be easier to ask them to find a certain number of blogs on a topic they are interested in and read them regularly.

Too bad I may not have students to try this with next semester.

Joanna posted a response to my reflection on the semester that got me thinking. She said that she had decided not to blog with her students now since there are so many other options out there, like Writely.

I wonder if there isn’t some wisdom in that. Blogging is, at its best anyway, a personal endeavor as the result of a personal commitment. Who was is it a year or so ago who said that blogging shouldn’t be something students had to do but rather something they did because they wanted to? Is that true?

I wonder what it would be like, if it would be possible to offer students a variety of outlets for their work and let them choose the one(s) they wanted to use. If a student wanted to blog, he could. If he only wanted to post inside Moodle, he could. If another wanted to use Writely, she could. Would there be any value in that? I know it would be a nightmare to try to evaluate student work if it were spread over too many different repositories – unless you have as few students as I do. But would there be value in allowing students that kind of freedom?

Mousing Around – MGuhlin.net – Editing Student Writing

Miguel writes about a discussion list posting about editing student writing that is going to be put online or, really, published in any way. I had seen the list postings when they were made but somehow or other I didn’t connect to them until I read about them in Miguel’s blog. (Does that say something about where and how I get my real professional development? I think so.)

The gist of the question was whether or not teachers should “tweak” student writing so it is “perfect” prior to publication. On the list several arguments were presented for both sides. Miguel talks about how he had decided to not do that kind of correcting when he was in the classroom full time.

The post got me to thinking about my own situation.

A couple weeks ago I decided that my students weren’t careful enough in their blog posts, so I had them look at other class blogs to see the quality of the student writing. (This was the basis of my “failed experiment.”) They didn’t see what I had wanted them to see there.

But I am wondering why I want their posts to be perfect. Is it for them or for me? I think I know the answer and I don’t like it too much. I have to think about this some more.

We have been asked to consider how we might build an online community from a collection of student blogs. This is perhaps the most important task we have been given in this course. It is the reason we have spent almost 6 weeks learning about podcasts and how to post pictures in our blogs.

The questions given as part of the task are good ones. Let’s see if the same can be said of my answers!

– How can I persuade students to post to their blogs regularly?

As with almost anything that I ask my students to do – literature circles, journaling, sustained silent reading – I have to participate with them as an equal. If they see me enthusiastically engaged in the activity, they almost always get on board themselves. So my example will be a big motivator.

Of course, students must have real things to blog about. I think that the assignments must be authentic. I haven’t quite figured out what that will look like in all my classes, but I am thinking seriously about it. I like the idea of reading and commenting on the readings in a blog, as Anne Davis has her students doing. Then there is Barbara Ganley’s writing class blog. She has students posting their writing and responding to each other’s posts. I do something like this already with my advanced writing students, so I think this will be an easy transition for us all to make.There is no guarantee, however, that students complete these assigned tasks.

- How can I encourage lurkers to participate?

Lurkers are some of my favorite people. Until recently I was always a lurker, and I still am in many situations. We need specific tasks and lots of encouragment. Success in this area will depend largely on the sense of community established. Of course, blogging could be a requirement, but that doesn’t seem like the best way to tackle the problem. And even if it is a requirement and lurkers blog, it may not mean they do anything substantive. So I think the community will have to be appealing and supportive. It may mean that I, as the teacher, have to find out what the reasons for lurking are and address the issue on a case-by-case basis.

- How can I encourage my students to read and post to blogs other than their classmates?

Here again, my first reaction is probably that it would have to be built into the course requirements.

A logical way for me to encourage students to do this would be to have them set up an aggregator and do a search on the theme of the course. An example of this is that in the spring semester, one of the themes we use is the death penalty. A simple search on Bloglines links to all kinds of references to the death penalty. So if students used Bloglines and were exposed to blogs on the topic they were researching, I think they would be likely to read them. Commenting on them would take more effort because I think they would worry about their English. But by the advanced level, maybe not so much. Of course, all this would have to be taught; skill would have to be developed over time. That is why I would like to start long before students reach the advanced level, giving them time to work into all of this.

- How can I encourage people from outside the classroom to post on student blogs?

I guess I would try what Anne Davis did: post a request on my blog. Now, that means that I would have to have a blog that is interesting enough to have readers. So that is good encouragement for me to keep my blog up.

– How can I encourage students to post and respond to comments to their classmates’ blogs?

This comes down to the feeling of community in my classroom. If my students care about each other, they will be more likely to want to read each other’s posts. What worries me more than getting them to read and comment is getting them to make substantive comments. The tendency would most likely to amke the kind of innane comments we all do from time to time – “Good point!”, “I like your ideas”, “I agree”, etc. I am, not sure yet how I would do this. In part, I think I would assign specific questions for the comments to address. Maybe the comments could be focused one time on explaining why the reader agrees or disagrees with the post and another time on how reliable the source seems to be, for example. Another time it could pose a question about the post. Something like that anyway. I obviously would have to modify the tasks based on the proficiency of the student and the topic under discussion.

- How can I keep the interest going when the novelty has worn off?

There are two things to keep in mind here, I think. One is to establish the habit. That takes time, but not all that much time. I have my students now journal every day. They expect that. They enjoy it, too. I hope that by the end of the semester, they will decide to continue journaling. I would expect the same to be true once I start my students blogging. Habit must be established. I think that would require a lot of blogging in the beginning. And fun blogging, too. But once the value of blogging has become clear to the students and once he has developed the habit of blogging, it will carry him through some of the plateaus and valleys in his interest. Another part of this would be getting students to regularly read blogs because they would provide encouragement and example as well as fodder for students’ blogs.

I also think that you have to be careful not to have students do the same basic blog every week. Give them some variety. That’s what Anne Davis has done with her Teachers & Technology class blog.

Ont thing that I noticed, though, looking at her students’ blogs, is that there are very few comments. I don’t know if this is by design or my accident. Or is that just what would naturally happen unless commenting were a course requirement.

- How can I design a course that will both build community and encourage continuing participation beyond the limits of the course?

I am afraid I don’t have a clue about this one yet. I can see it helping to build community, but that isn’t really a problem I have with my classes now. I have very small classes and we establish community fairly early on. But it all seems to disappear once the students leave the ESL program.

It might be nice to set up a blog for the ESL program that could serve as an orientation for new students. Huh! I like that idea! A wiki might actually work better, but I think I am sticking with blogs right now. This is something that I could do now in the middle of the semester. It could help to acquaint the current students to blogging and set up the beginnings of the program orientation blog. I could also ask former students to join and post their comments and reflections on the program as well as their advice for new students. I am going to work on that this weekend!

Wow! This has been a fruitful post! Writing as Thinking, as my friend Melanie reminds me. She has a blog at Blogger, too, called They Have Their Own Thoughts. It is about her experiences teaching in the New Orleans public schools. Check it out!