Teach42

An article on SchoolBlogs.com referenced a great argument regarding why someone might want to use Weblogs in schools. The original article can be found on The FordLog, and is quite a lengthy post. Definitely worth the read. Some of the highlights for me though were:

Christina was in the process of researching her weblog-based project on the Rainforests when she received a message via her weblog’s built-in discussion board from someone who was trekking through forests in Costa Rica. He gave her a firsthand account to work with. Students in my class also posted advice and comments about the project. I could also guide her thoughts and direction using the discussion feature. The weblog software did not magically make the project perfect. It was still written by a ten-year old. It was a ten year-old though, who had genuinely collaborated with her peers as well as others across the globe.

How cool is that? It’s authentic. It’s REAL. It has value above and beyond a simple classroom assignment. What a fantastic incentive for continuing to share your research! It’s not just about publishing, it’s about collaborating, getting feedback, simply sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world.

Writing for a real audience not only encourages students to become habitual writers, but also to take seriously the responsibility of writing to the web. Involvement with weblogs helps students realize that they are adding to the rag-tag body of knowledge that makes up the Internet. Search engines index weblog content and even when a project produced as a weblog is finished, it is still accessed many hundreds of times each year by people looking for information using search engines. Every book review completed by a student on their personal weblog adds to the body of online knowledge of that work. Pupils are always amazed to see, via their referrers log, that their writing has been pointed to by a search engine as a potential answer to someone’s question.

Blogs provide students the opportunity to become the expert for other people ‘out there’. Their ideas have value. Their worth extends beyond a letter grade. Someone besides their teacher and parents may find their work valuable.

dults and children, whether we like it or not, are destined to have a presence on the Web in years to come. The sooner they are prepared for that eventuality, the better. Weblogging offers students a real context in which these crucial life-skills can be developed.

This hits on what Alan November has been preaching about for so long. This is the reality of what these children are growing up in. They won’t remember life before cell phones. They won’t remember vinyl, 8 tracks or life before MP3’s. Nor will they remember when the internet was a solitary experience. Social hardware and software are connecting people in ways that never existed before. Instant and text messaging are primary forms of communication. Blogs are becoming commonplace. This is the world we need to prepare them for.

The simple nature of weblogging means that it can immediately make an impact. Teachers start to think about how they can use weblog to complement their own subject expertise and start to explore ways of using the internet for themselves. Skills that are often hidden behind a closed classroom door become visible online for others to benefit from. It helps foster a climate of collaboration.

In the past, there was always a technological barrier barring people from taking ownership of the web. That’s no longer the case. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, can share the experiences of their classroom with the rest of the world with little to no effort. They can request feedback, provide insight into their own successes and failures, even collaborate with teachers they’ve never had any personal contact with. And the same goes for students. It only begs the question, why wouldn’t you want to share?

A not-so-silent publishing revolution is taking place in cyberspace that could positively impact our schools and classrooms in the near future. Weblogging is taking publishing to the web out of the exclusive control of the high priesthood of technical experts and powerful corporate entities and putting it into the hands of the masses. Individuals are being empowered with an online voice and afforded a potentially vast audience for their thoughts, opinions and information.

’nuff said.

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