Earlier today I asked CoP members, and other staff who are blogging with students if they had any students who fit Will Richardson's definition of a good student blog.
Later, I saw Clay Burrel's post at "Beyond-School.org" regarding one of his students who fit the bill as an excellent student blogger. It may be worth giving kids an exemplar of what student blogs can look like.
Tim K's response regarding his students attitude about blogging at school brings up an interesting point, "some suggested writing about movies they see outside class (definitely makes it seem less “schoolish,” which seems like a problem with blogging assignments in general). "
Do blogging assignments seem too "schoolish"? How can we make them more authentic, and less busywork? I'd love to hear your comments.
Later, I saw Clay Burrel's post at "Beyond-School.org" regarding one of his students who fit the bill as an excellent student blogger. It may be worth giving kids an exemplar of what student blogs can look like.
Tim K's response regarding his students attitude about blogging at school brings up an interesting point, "some suggested writing about movies they see outside class (definitely makes it seem less “schoolish,” which seems like a problem with blogging assignments in general). "
Do blogging assignments seem too "schoolish"? How can we make them more authentic, and less busywork? I'd love to hear your comments.
Comments
I'm a language arts teacher, and after experimenting with different approaches over the past year with several high school grade levels, currently take this position:
I want students to fall in love with writing and self-publishing. (And by "writing," I mean digital"communiciation," more accurately, via whatever multimedia expression communicates best for your individual intelligence: if your strength is speaking, I want podcasts; if it's acting or drama writing or filmmaking, I want movies; if it's photography, so be it; etc.)
If they're going to fall in love with regular "writing," to return to it voluntarily and become habituated to an expressive digital life, it's certainly not going to be so because I'm assigning them schooly homework. I don't want my students to become English professors. I want them to become self-directed communicators of whatever their passions and interests are.
And I trust in time. Let them go through the movie stage - and let's not forget that we can encourage quality film criticism if they want to stay in that stage.
I also can't forget that some students will never take to it. And by forcing them to all write about a schooly thing so that blood (more likely treacle) will come out of the unwilling, unwriterly turnips, I'm quite likely forcing those who do have an authentic writer in them away from their authentic writing desires.
Maybe I get Will wrong here, but he strikes me as wanting to find student bloggers who blog like he and other (edu)blogging adults do.
I think that's a worthy goal. I just feel that the first order of business, though, is detoxifying the acts of writing and thinking that schooliness has so poisoned for students in the last years of their school sentence.
By allowing them the freedom to write about whatever they want, in whatever medium piques their interest - while at the same time only requiring that they do so a couple or three times a week - I hope to help with that detox treatment.
At least then, colleges will get students whose writing has improved in fluency and voice and, in the best cases, ideas and logic, via the sheer act of regular writing.
And the professors can try to turn these writers into scholars.
Me? I don't read scholars. They're typically horrible writers.
The fact that kids came up with the idea from something they had seen in a completely diferent class showed the true power of integration!
I saw another application where kids were put into groups and then the group that came up with the best wiki received extra points.
I wonder if you could expand the vocabulary idea to include the problem solving thougth process?
I wonder what Edina LA teachers think of Clay's comments above?