Maybe we don’t need research on blogs after all
I’ve been thinking about what sort of research I might be interested in and keep coming back to blogs. Will Richardson’s post on finding some edublogging research reminded me I should think more about this. I’m not interested so much in whether or to what extent blogging improves student writing as I am in whether blogging improves learning. The basis for this stems from the idea that if metacognition and reflection on what is being learned is good for learning, then blogging is just a tool for doing that.
It might be interesting to take several classes and have some of the classes blog and some not. Perhaps the blogging classes would be divided into additional categories based on the amount of direction or instructions and the types of blogging tasks teachers give students. At the end of the year we could look at how students performed on their standardized tests. We might expect the bloggers to do better than the non-bloggers.
The more I think about this, however, the less interesting it gets. After all, am I really just talking about writing to learn, now blogging to learn? And if so, isn’t there enough research on WTL to prove its effectiveness? I realize that blogging brings a lot more to the table, but can’t we say that the blogging I’m interested in is basically WTL?
Another not-very-interesting thing is the use of standardized test scores to measure achievement. By standardized tests here I mean achievement-type tests–the kind you might have to pass to move on to the next grade or for your school to continue to receive federal dollars. I mean, if I’m interested in learning, do I really care about those results? I’m more interested in how students learn to learn, how they handle novel situations, how they evaluate information and make judgements about validity and truth. I’m pretty sure the end-of-year tests don’t measure those things. However, I can imagine an environment in which blogs are a central feature and where students are engaged in learning to do things in a discipline, such as learning psychology by doing psychology, or learning history by doing history.
Which brings me back to curriculum. If the goal is to pass the test, is there any hope that teachers will focus on teaching anything but what will be tested? Mile-wide, inch-deep.
I understand that politicians are interested in having numbers so they can say my education plan works or, I’m gonna be tough on those inefficient, under-performing schools by withholding money all the while ignoring the larger societal issues, but can’t we just claim, as is often said, that good teaching is good teaching, no matter what technology we use? And, if we already have evidence that these things work, then we shouldn’t have to justify doing the same thing with a different tool.
July 20th, 2007 - 3:09 pm
that’s an interesting question. i know i have bantered back and forth with our education blogger on our network. he tests out all kinds of technologies to see their value, or lack thereof. and i can definitely see how blogging can be just an entertainment venue. but there is also a lot of blogs out there that are really good. and i think the conversational nature of the blog is a huge upside in that learning. it’s akin to students talking about the subject matter that they are learning - reinforces them and makes them think. i would also add the geographic element to blogs. i can interact with someone in asia on a topic where my assumptions get challenged in a way that they wouldn’t here in the states. anyway, good post.