Blogs, short for weblogs, are online journals with entries posted in reverse chronological order.
Blogs can promote interaction, the sharing of ideas, and reflection. Thus, for students, as they read and respond to classmates and others outside the class on class topics, they develop their understanding of content, improve their critical thinking skills, and gain a sense of authorship and ownership, thus bringing student interests into the learning equation.
Blogging for Interaction and Reflection
Blogs can promote interaction and reflection via a class project. For example, Will Richardson's class corresponded with Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees, and wrote a study guide for the book, which by a few years ago had already received over 1.5 million hits.
A class blog can also promote interaction and reflection when students take responsibility for scribing classes, as in Darren Kuropatwa's high school Pre-Cal 20S class. Note how students can easily find and review previous class notes by clicking on particular categories.
Blogs as an Instructional Tool
Teachers can use their own blog (or a class blog) to recap lessons, provide instructions, give models, direct attention to materials outside the class, and more. Here are some of my posts along these lines:
- Recapping how to frame a quotation
- Instructions on adding classmates to one's neighborhood
- Modeling how to frame and respond to a quotation
- Drawing attention to a well-known blogger's take on Paragraphs and Rules
Blogging as a Conversation of Writing
Academic writing takes place in an ongoing conversation. Authors respond to others (paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting), and add their own thoughts and perspectives to the conversation. (For a little more on this understanding of writing, see my presentation Building Blocks of Writing [pdf]).
Blogging is a natural medium to develop a conversation of student writing. Students can comment on each other's posts, cite each other when discussing issues, and give their own perspectives as they build their own comversation.
Blogging for a Research Project
Some ways blogs can support a research project include:
- Linking to sites of interest
- Exploring possible questions for the research project
- Summarizing and citing sources (building a bibliography)
- Reflecting on how sources tie into questions
- Posting weekly updates on project progress
- Posting drafts
- Networking with other students (e.g., Youth Voices)
- Soliciting comments on drafts for revising or updates to resolve issues
- Integrating multimedia: videos, podcasts, slideshows, and photos
- Reflecting on how different media affect communication and meaning