This week I’ve had some wonderful opportunities to have discussions with educators as well as journalists in the northeast of the United States, in New Hampshire and Maine. One of the things we’ve discussed is why so FEW teachers today are using class blogs to facilitate interactive writing? Even in the state of Maine, where ALL students and teachers in 7th and 8th grades have been using laptops in 1:1 settings for ELEVEN years, interactive classroom blogs are RARE. Two of the possible answers we’ve discussed to this question are:
1. Teachers have so many mandates, blogs are seen as ‘just one more thing’ there isn’t TIME to do in the classroom.
2. Some teachers (perhaps many) fear the TRANSPARENCY which an interactive, classroom blog presents to parents, administrators, peers, students, and others.
This past summer, I conducted a few surveys with teachers at different conferences I attended, asking how many assignments they’d shared in the past year on an interactive, classroom blog. The responses from teachers in Houston, Texas, in June, were representative of most school groups I polled over the summer.
The results from the teachers attending the Summer 2012 Discovery Education Summer Institute were VERY different, and reflected a very skewed sample of teachers from across the nation. This reflects how we DO see teachers in some schools using interactive blogs with students, but teachers who are doing this are “outliers” among teacher-peers.
What do you think? What do you see as the primary reasons MOST teachers don’t share interactive blogs? I’ve created a quick survey/poll with Google Forms which you can complete, if desired, about this question. Add your own answer if you don’t like any of the possibilities I’ve provided! After submitting the form I’ve configured it to show the results so far.
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, interactive, playingwithmedia, writing
First of all, I DID try doing a class blog where students could interact at the start of the year but discovered my student’s writing ability was very low and the process was extremely time consuming. I may try again later once they are able to write more fluently. FYI, I teach second language learners and it took two hours for many of the students to type a couple of sentences and I can’t afford that kind of time.
Second, despite what people may think, many teachers do not have ready access to reliable technology.
Finally, many schools have privacy policies that make it difficult for teachers to have students do anything online that may divulge personal information, whether intentionally or not. Many teachers may avoid personal writing online so they don’t have to worry about upsetting parents or admin…it’s just safer to teach writing offline.
With all that said, I think interactive class blogs are a great idea and would love to try it again with a more advanced writing class where one class period would be sufficient to write a short post and still have time to comment on a couple of classmates’ posts.
Each of my students is a blogger. They get it. When we talked about the value of blogging recently, one of my students said, “My blog is about more than just writing.” Yes, the writing instruction is still important, but the enthusiam students bring to writing online creates conversations based in authenticity rather than theory. In addition, students see the importance of using digital tools to enhance their communication.
You’re welcome to check out the kinds of blog pots our students are writing: http://fremdeng.ning.com
For those readers here who are attending the NCTE convention in Las Vegas in a few weeks, I invite you to consider session G.30 that will deal with exactly this topic: “Igniting Student Bloggers: Using Creative Nonfiction Techniques to Connect with Online Audiences” Saturday, Nov. 17. 9::30-10:45 am. MGM Grand, Grand Ballroom, Room 118, Level One.