Now hear this.

Someone asked me the other day what’s such a big deal bout blogs. If the administration is nervous, why not just use something else to get teachers on the web? The reality is, it’s not just about weblogs. It’s about giving people a voice.

I remember when I got my first computer, I thought it was a pretty darn cool invention. But when I figured out how to attach a modem to it, it became so much more. I was a very unpopular kid. Until high school, I really only had one friend. But online, I had dozens of friends. Back then we were on DDials, but all of a sudden there were dozens of people who know who I was, who were happy to hear from me, who even sent me Christmas cards for goodness sake! My voice felt important.

I moved on to Bulletin Board Systems, where I wrote a few articles. Nothing serious, just the usual 8th grade ranting about overthrowing your parents and taking over the house. Then using your newfound power to stay up late and watch R-rate movies. Those articles were posted all over the place and people downloaded them. I never heard back from anyone (this was pre-email and I wasn’t about to give out a phone number), but I was extremely proud that people downloaded my work.

In high school, I took to writing a bit more. I wrote poetry, a few chapters of a book and some prose. Along with some other students, we started the New Trier Writer’s Group. We read our work to each other and then critiqued it. This was the first time that I got feedback from anyone besides my teacher. I couldn’t get enough of it. Never missed a metting of that club.

In college I co-edited one of the first e-zines, This Post Modern World (catchy name, eh?). We sent it out via email, had a subscription base of about 50 people, and the best part about it was that people could email us back and give us feedback about what was published.

I created my first web page in college too. And my second, and my third. None of them ever lasted. Know why? Because they were a royal pain to maintain and update. Anytime you wanted to post something new, you had to edit it again in HTML. Even once editors were created, you still had to edit the files, rearrange things, and then upload it all. It wasn’t fun. And that’s been the state of the web for many years.

The web has been evolving over the last few years and most of us haven’t even noticed. Weblogs, Wikis, moblogs and other such inventions have made the web accessible to anyone regardless of their technical expertise. HTML is still helpful, but it’s no longer a required skill. Absolutely anyone can have a place on the web to publish their own work, thoughts, comments, ideas, musings and rants. Even better, blogs offer up the piece that I personally longed for, for so many years: feedback. If someone is inspired by your writing, they can comment back to you. Other people can read their comments and join in the discussion. If they feel REALLY inspired, they can copy some of your writing and quote you in their own blog. If they add something called a ‘trackback’, you’ll be alerted when they do it. Just imagine if whenever someone is repeating something you said in the real world, you got a little message letting you know someone is quoting you. How cool would that be?

The point is, our students and teachers already have a voice. Now we have the ability to allow them to be heard. We have the technology to be as restrictive as we need to be. We all know that we have a duty to keep our children safe. But we also have a duty to prepare them for the world that they are groing up in.

Anne Davis puts it rather well.

This is an area where we need to speak out more forcefully. We need to be clearer on educational use of blogs. Of coruse, we have to oversee the content and teach students to use their voices responsibly. In most cases our use of weblogs is not blogging per se. While we might like to think that true blogging can occur in our schools, I don’t think it can yet but what CAN happen is that we set the stage for students to truly realize the power of the written word. Their voice can make a difference. Weblogs give us a way to give them a writing voice that is unique and it is unlike other writing opportunities we have at our fingertips. They get to see how a learning community can develop outside of our classroom walls. They get to be an active, engaged member of that community. They have a say.