Blog, blogged, blogging, to blog, blogger
Bud the Teacher put up a postthe other day that caught my eye. It’s basically a reflection about Will’s commentary on a post that Bud had made (wow, talk about blogs being a conversation in slow motion, eh?).
From Bud:
There is a “blog,” a noun, which is what this space is called. It’s composed of my links, my posts, the silly picture of me playing the guitar in the corner, etc. The blog is the management tool that I’m thinking about and have previously discussed.
There’s also “blogging” the verb, which is where I think Will’s mind is, and mine’s still catching up. Blogging is that set of skills that he talks about.
From Will:
blogs allow me to create content in ways I could not before, not just post what I could create otherwise in a different form. And in the essence of that creation I use and learn all of those skills that will serve me in my lifelong learning that were (I think) much more difficult for me to learn before: close reading, critical thinking about information, clear and concise writing for a real audience, editing, and reflection, all of it understanding that whatever truth I may put forth will continue to be negotiated by readers and more reading. This, by the very nature of the process, develops reading, writing, information, collaboration and computing literacies, literacies which I think most of us would agree are going to be crucial in navigating what’s ahead.
It’s a fascinating topic. Blog the noun, vs. blogging the verb. They are very different things. Thinking about blogging as the set of ’21st Century Skills’ that students must know to create and maintain a blog puts a very different spin on it. The reality is that this really needs to be considered closely, as these skills should probably be included into curriculum standards. Blogs are one way to teach these skills, they aren’t the only way. But they do need to be represented and built into the curriculum.
Hrrrm… Methinks this requires more thought. What are the important skills for a student to know in order to be an effective, quality blogger? What skills does a student need to know when they graduate lower school, middle school or secondary school? Finally, what is the intersection of those two sets?
One last question to mull over: Do blogs offer up a new way to teach the same skills we’ve already been targeting, or do they represent a new skill set that we need to be incorporating?
- Voices
- NECC: Lessons learned from classroom blogging.
- Your blog or your job. You have 30 seconds to decide.
- The art of Learning to Learn
- BLC06: Literacy remixed
Bud Hunt
3/2/2005
Wow. You ask a huge question at the end of your post here, Steve. My gut answer is yes and no — Blogging as I am beginning to understand it asks a writer to take ideas and weave them together — a little of this, a little of that, add some critical analysis and you’ve got a good piece of writing. That’s no different than any other writing that I ask my students to do. I want them to think critically.
But blogging, because it involves hypertext and the entire Internet to draw from, adds a layer. Students linking and cross linking can get, well, complicated. as you say, a blog can help to make clear a “conversation occuring in slow motion,” which is precisely what a good piece of writing is — it speaks to the pieces that came before and it hints at those to come.
There’s lots here that I, like you, have to think about.
[...] Blog, blogged, blogging, to blog, blogger (Steve Dembo) [...]
[...] supposed to do last week. Required reading for this week is some older posts from Richardson and Dembo, both of whom I read (when I am reading). The posts introduce the idea of conjugating the word [...]
| Ruth's Ruckus
5/23/2008
[...] supposed to do last week. Required reading for this week is some older posts from Richardson and Dembo, both of whom I read (when I am reading). The posts introduce the idea of conjugating the word [...]
[...] Bud the Teacher had a post this morning that I keep going back to. In it he refers to a post by Steve at Teach42 about blogging. Steve asks the question One last question to mull over: Do blogs offer up a new way [...]
Michael Walker
12/2/2008
Steve,
I was going through the “30 Days to Being a Better Blogger” while preparing for a presentation on Blogging at the TIES conference next week when I saw this post in the “Best of Teach42″ scroll.
I agree with Bud’s analysis that it is a little bit of both. I think that by integrating blogging into the reading/reflecting/writing process it transforms the skills and processes we have been teaching by creating an authentic audience, and developing 21st Century skills through hyperlinking and visual literacy. Last year, we had a high school student blog about a poem she read in class. Later that week, she told the teacher that she received a comment to her post…from the poet! This could not have happened if she had simply turned her assignment in to the teacher. This is the transformational layer that Bud refers to, and why blogging provides the potential a richer experience for students.
Michael Walker´s most recent blog post.. 2008 Edublogs Nominee
tommy atkins
4/14/2009
i am really glad to have read and i now feel a lot more comfortable with the “blog”, i think the limits are endless
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
Loading ...
7 Comments