In spring 2007, when I first used blogs with my students, it felt practically like an accident. Before that semester, a blog in my mind was either a venue for self-absorbed cyber addicts needing to vent or a highly elite emerging news media form best suited for cultural editorializing. It had never occurred to me that it could be used as a tool for reflecting on academic research or a medium for peer critique.
As I said, I first implemented the use of blogs in spring 2007, as a way for students to document their progress through a highly student-directed project called "The Plague of Circumstance" - an investigation of how some countries and cultures are more susceptible to disease exposure than others as a result of historical, political or economic factors. Because this project was so individualized in its execution, my previous partner Janel Holcomb and I decided that the blogs would be a good way for us to accomplish two things: first, to allow students to become assets for each other's research by requiring them to list and annotate all their sources; and second, to allow us as teachers to observe the direction and progress of each student's studies. One student put it this way in her post "The Truths That All Teachers Know" (http://diseaseproject.blogspot.com/):
"So, this blog idea is both ingenious and evil. As I understand it, the idea is to make sure that students are actually, you know, doing their research. Generally the idea is that the teacher pretends that the students are taking the entire time given to complete the assignment, even though everyone knows that the assignment will get started maybe around 10:00 the night before it's due.After reading this and other similar sentiments expressed on students' blogs, Janel and I knew that we had hit on something. Not only was their writing pleasantly candid, it was hinting at the potential for a sort of online community to form amongst our students. As this student mentions, she had already read others' blogs and been motivated by their work. And while the explicit audience was still only the two of us teachers, there was a greater audience being implied under the surface. We picked up on these elements and were quick to tap into them with our students later on.
Of course, I myself am not guilty of this...In fact, I am so responsible, that I'm posting on the weekend after the blog was assigned (This is only because I saw that other 'responsible' students like Joe and Gabby had posted on their blogs and I wanted to seem as awesome as them).
So Truth #1 is that students procrastinate. Truth #2 is that most students use Wikipedia, despite it's bad rep for unreliable information. So I've decided that in the spirit of honesty I will first post the information that is found on Wikipedia. Now, have no fear teachers, I will not rely on this information. I will merely use it as a starting point..."
Another element we observed is the increased confidence in the work produced by our shy students. In our rapidly evolving integration of technology into practically every aspect of our lives, it's clear that there are some students who are quite a bit more comfortable interacting with one another online than they are doing so in person - an observation that is both useful and terrifying (the implications for the future of society are staggering, but far beyond the scope of this post). For those students, a blog is liberating for its publicity yet privacy, extroversion yet anonymity. They can have the confidence they are afraid to exhibit in person, and they can say what they think with the safety of knowing that if it comes out wrong there's always an "undo." In other words, the affective filter is very low in a blog.
Because the blogs were essentially an experiment for me, the students and I had begun posting blindly, with only the idea that research sources should be cited and annotated, as one might do while amassing a traditional bibliography. There had been no formal rubric and very few explicit guidelines. At first, of course, that meant that the students' posts were hit-or-miss. One way that I further developed the effectiveness of the blogs was to pick out exemplary posts to share with the class. We would read the posts together and tease out what elements made them successful, keeping a list as we went of all the things they could replicate later. A really exciting part of this process was that we were able to look at the work of students who typically might have struggled in more traditional research and writing tasks, because the unfamiliarity of the territory gave them an equal footing and an equal opportunity for success. Using their work as a model for their peers helped them to feel valued in our community.
Since that project, I have continued to use blogs in a variety of ways - as project logs, as reflective journals, and as news reporting, to name a few. However, the greatest benefit of blogs has so far eluded my students and me: their ability to attract a potentially unlimited, global audience. The kinds of tasks for which my students have used them are not of the type that would interest someone outside of the context of our class, so in order to unlock their wider appeal I will need to revise my thinking about the kind of writing students might include.
One way I've already begun thinking about doing this is to use examples of professional blogs with large readerships - of the kind that, these days, has the power to make or break box office sales, celebrity charity causes, or even political campaigns. For students to see that a blog can be more than a journal or more than a homework assignment will help them to find value in the effort required to do it well.
Another, more humble way in which I'm trying to revise my thinking about blogs is to use my own blogging as a model for my students. Up until now, I have had a blog that I used purely for posting homework assignments or writing guidelines (see http://spencerpforsich.blogspot.com), but this one is a new endeavor with new objectives. It would be useful for my students to see that I am also using this medium for honest, reflective thinking. In my case, that thinking is about the issues that relate to my work as a teacher, which is a good corollary to the thinking students document in their blogs about the issues that relate to their work. Maybe if they see that even professionals struggle and stumble through ideas in writing then their own struggles and stumbles will feel more justified. Or at the very least, less artificial.
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