Big IDEA

Writing: now with cherry flavoring!

23 February 2007

If you’re old enough to remember the taste of the original Vick’s Formula 44 cough syrup, you might know where I’m heading with this. Jill wonders whether blogging has lost its novelty because her students aren’t all that excited about blogging for class. I’m going to share my thoughts on this, with a few disclaimers:

1. I’m several years removed from the classroom
2. I have only ever attempted to use blogging in class once
3. My thoughts are in no way a judgement on Jill’s teaching

In a nutshell, blogging is writing, and not everyone likes to write. Period. Many of the top-rated edtech bloggers I don’t read are writers; that is, they seem to enjoy writing, and do quite a bit of it. I don’t mind writing, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself a writer. If you’ve ever browsed this blog, I usually share my thoughts only in passing as I’m more interested in the practical.

When I had my students blog for a class on emerging technologies, I set up a very simple “in the news” group blog (single blog, multiple authors). The purpose of the activity was to have them read technology news and write a blurb about an interesting story they read, and why they thought it was significant. There were few requirements. I only asked for a link to the original story, a summary, and why it was significant. They had to make one post per week, and comment on a couple of their classmates’ posts.

What ended up happening was that this became something of a friendly competition as students vied for the most interesting stories of the week. The first thing we did in class every week was take about 15 minutes to talk about their blog posts. Overall, it was a successful activity as the students did read and follow various technology news sites, and I know they read three to five full stories for every post they made.

Some top-shelf blogvangelists said that this wasn’t really blogging because it was a multi-author blog; to be a real blogging activity the blogger has to have ownership over the blog and make it his or her own. OK, so we weren’t doing real blogging, I can live with that.

But it got me thinking: did I really need a blog to accomplish my objectives? The answer was clearly “not really.” My objective was not to turn students into bloggers, it was for students to learn about new technologies and to gain the skills required to do so (we set up bloglines accounts to track tech news). We could have accomplished the same objective by writing on paper and sharing, or by short classroom presentations. The class blog was a tool that facilitated my learning objective. I could have used other technologies to accomplish the same thing–a discussion board, an email discussion list, a wiki.

My suspicion is that students are now viewing required class blogging as just another writing assignment. If they are not particularly interested in the topic, or writing, I’m not sure why we should expect blogging to be the added cherry flavoring that makes the medicine go down a little smoother. (For those of you too young to remember the taste of those first cherry flavored cough syrup formulas, this is sarcasm.)

I think blogging is a great option; it’s one way students can demonstrate learning, but it’s not the only way. Likewise, it’s a tool in your teaching toolbox, not the tool.