Empowering Students Through Blogging

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2014/08/empowering-students-through-blogging

Students writing for an authentic audience is a challenge many English teachers face.  An English teacher can spend hours preparing a writing assignment that promotes originality and creativity using the best writing techniques, but then receive mediocre writing from students because of the lack motivation for students to create their best work.  Students become fixated on the fact that only the teacher is going to read it, so they only need to write “good enough” to get the desired grade.  

According to Eric Patnoudes, a former teacher and instructional technologist, this result is due to the fact that students lack an authentic audience.  When most students write, they are only motivated to write “good enough” because it is only their teacher that is going to read their work. Patnoudes challenges this trend by recommending that teachers using blogging as a writing tool in the classroom.

In his article, Patnoudes relates an example of a teacher named Jeff using the public format of blogging in his classroom.  After obtaining the proper permission from parents and researching the implications of using blogging as a public forum, Jeff had his students create their own personal blog.  Then Jeff used a format to link the class blogs together and share them with other classroom blogs around the world.  

The results were encouraging.  Students took great care to create their best work since it was going to be read by others.  Students had an authentic audience which helped them consider subject matter, language, tone, and voice to appeal to their readers.  Students became more confident writers and learned from their peers.

Patnoudes stresses that blogging is not always appropriate for all classrooms, and it should not necessarily become the only focus of a class.  Instead, he stresses that incorporating it into a writing classroom can be beneficial to the writer and reader by providing motivation and engagement.

I feel that Patnoudes observations are very valid.  Facing a generation of students that are only motivated to “get by,” it is hard to promote excellent writing and the work it takes to produce it.  My only concern is that since it is a public forum, there can be issues with using blogging in the classroom.  There would definitely need to be communication with parents about the activity, practice or preparation with students before going “live”, and accountability or consequences if this forum is used inappropriately.  It would also be challenging to have to address issues of misuse with the other classrooms involved.

I could see this type of activity becoming beneficial in my school due to the lack of cultural diversity in my district.  Most of my students were born and raised on our small rural community, and their only reality is small town life surrounded by fields of grain.  This type of activity could really expose them to different global cultures.  In addition, they could easily share about their environment to other students that are only familiar with an urban or city setting or have a community outside of the United States.

I feel that Patnoudes hits an important issue that teachers face in today’s classroom environment: engagement.  The use of technology can definitely encourage motivation and engagement in the classroom by providing these avenues of dialogue that were nonexistent a few years ago.