Language Arts Journal of Michigan Volume 21 Article 8 Issue 2 Seeking Best Practice
2005 Best Practice Blogging: Connecting What We Know to What's Next Robert Rozema Grand Valley State University
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Recommended Citation Rozema, Robert (2005) "Best Practice Blogging: Connecting What We Know to What's Next," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 21: Iss. 2, Article 8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1196
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Language Arts Journal of Michigan by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. unconventional spellings, and e-Iogisms, may Best Practice Blogging: nevertheless provide an inroad into adolescent Connecting What We literacy. Educators at every level, and particularly Know to What's Next those at colleges and universities, have recognized and begun taking advantage of this opportunity. In Robert Rozema the last few years, classroom blogs, or edublogs, Grand Valley State University have become an increasingly popular tool, providing many of the benefits of classroom web sites, while Sometime in the next week or so, ask your being far easier to create and maintain. Services like students if they blog. Or better still, ask how many Schoolblogs allow educators to design classroom of them blogged this morning. Chances are, at least blogs (for multiple student users) and take part in a one or two of your undergraduates, high school flourishing online community. And there are seniors, or even seventh-graders will raise a hand: hundreds of commercial blogging services, many according to a recent survey conducted by Perseus offering advanced features for no cost. More Development Corporation, over half ofthe adventurous teachers have installed blogging approximately 10 million blogs in the blogosphere applications like Movable Type or Manilla on their are created by teenagers ("The Blogging Iceberg"). school's server. The rise of edublogging has also You may even need a teenager to explain just what spurred the development of online support resources: blogging and the blogosphere mean. the Educational Bloggers' Network, sponsored in A blog, or web log, is a web site that features part by the Bay Area Writing Project, helps teachers regularly updated, chronologically ordered posts, a at all levels in accessing and using blogs for writing sort of online diary accessible to anyone with an and reading instruction across the disciplines. Internet connection. Beyond this most salient Exemplary K-16 edublogs are archived at the characteristic, blogs vary widely in purpose, format, EdBlogger Praxis, a valuable blog that also keeps and readership. A blog might be a personal diary track of the latest in edublog news. Similarly helpful read by a handful of friends, a journalistic news filter blogs about edublogging include Weblogg-ed, with enough clout to shape (and scare) the CogDogBlog, Pedablogue, and Jerz s Literacy Blog. mainstream media, a soapbox for a political Within the English language arts, a growing candidate, a corporate marketing tool, a celebrity number of teachers and teacher educators are confessional, or a wartime correspondence from Iraq. aligning blogging with the practice and theory of Most blogs allow visitors to leave comments, literacy instruction, and particularly writing sometimes logging hundreds of responses per day. instruction. In a recent issue of English Journal, for In the past three years, blogging has come example, Greg Weiler contends that blogs encourage into its own, its leap from geekdom into the both individual and collaborative writing in multiple mainstream boosted by enormously popular and formats, including the personal journal, classroom user-friendly services like Google's Blogger, now bulletin board, and electronic portfolio (73). Will host to over I million blogs. The popularity of Richardson, whose Weblogg-ed offers the most blogging, particularly among adolescents, may refute sophisticated and ardent advocacy of edublogging, those cultural critics intent on blaming the electronic has shown how blogs can improve discussion, both media for the perceived decline in literacy skills. in and out of the classroom ("Weblogs in the English Every day, hundreds of thousands of school-aged Classroom" 39). Sarah Kajder et al. connect six key kids are writing-voluntarily-on their personal web characteristics ofblogs--economy, archiving, logs. Such blogs, typically focused on social issues feedback, multimedia, immediacy, and active and characterized by truncated syntax,
Fall/Winter 2005 29 participation-to instructional activities suitable for program at Grand Valley State University, as well as the English language arts classroom (33). student blogs from a ninth-grade English class in a More theoretical considerations ofblogging Grand Rapids high schooL are also emerging. Panel discussions and presentations about blogging are regular features at 1. All children can and should blog. the Conference on College Composition and In the populist publishing world of the Web, Communication and the Computers and Writing the blog may be the most democratic form of all. Conferences. In these venues, blogging is woven With minimal expertise, very little time, and no into scholarly discourse on rhetoric and composition money, anyone can create and maintain a web log. studies. This includes, as the New York Times recently The richest theoretical treatment ofblogging, reported, elementary-aged children: second-graders fittingly, may be the online essay collection Into the in Maryland school used a classroom blog to write Blogosphere. Published by the University of about their field trip to a Native American farm; Minnesota, Into the Blogosphere explores the third-graders in the same district blogged about a rhetoric, community, and culture ofweb logs. Here, statewide book award (Selingo G7). Primary school Charles Lowe and Terra Williams examine the examples like these are still rare, but as more rhetorical effects ofonline publishing, arguing that teachers learn just how easy blogging is, these "[public] web logs can facilitate a collaborative, numbers will increase. By lowering the bar on social process ofmeaning making"; Kevin Brooks, expertise, the blog may help to bridge the new digital Cindy Nichols, and Sybil Priebe find print divide--the knowledge gap between haves and have antecedents for three dominant types of weblogs nots that has emerged even as hardware equity has the journal, the notebook, and the filter-and improved. In short, even students without extensive contend that familiarity with print-based genres Internet experience (and their numbers are growing influences student motivation in maintaining fewer each year), should be able to set up and weblogs; and Christine Boese, arguing within a maintain a blog. My own classes are populated with Freirian framework, problematizes the "knowledge students, both traditional and non-traditional, who revolution" that is optimistically envisioned by have never heard ofblogging when I introduce it on media-independent bloggers. These and other Into the first day of the semester. Ten minutes later, these the Blogsophere contributions represent the students are delightedly posting their first entry. The developing body ofblog scholarship. inaugural message reads: What may be most useful to K-16 English I never would have imagined someone language arts teachers who are considering blogging would create a writing tool called blog. I is a set of guidelines, enriched by emerging blog never would have imagined myself being a research and rooted in what we know about effective part of this new phenomenon. I realize this is writing instruction. What we know about teaching new to me because blogs have been in writing, without oversimplifying, is succinctly stated existence for quite sometime now. There are in the best practice principles established by even blog awards. As of today I am a Zemelmen et aL These principles can also provide a blogger. template for using weblogs in the writing classroom. In addition to attracting both the young and What then, is best practice in blogging? The the inexperienced, the "new phenomenon" of answers provided here are drawn from my own blogging may also hold a special appeal for girls, experience as a writing teacher, teacher educator, and who have long been more ambivalent toward for the past two semesters, edublogger. I also rely on technology than boys. According to the Perseus excerpts from the blogs kept by my students, pre survey, girls or young women create 56 percent of service teachers in the secondary English Education new blogs; 67 percent ofthe blogs at LiveJournal are
30 Language Arts Journal of Michigan maintained by female bloggers ("LiveJournal a guy trip and fall down right in front of me, Statistics"). Such evidence suggests that all children these are the things that I think about when can blog, regardless of age, experience, or gender. I'm writing. On my Xanga blog, which is Whether all children should blog remains this linked to all of my friends, I write all the article's burden of proof. random and trivial things that inspire me and make my day. ... When I write about 2. Teachers must help students find real purposes classrooms, and teaching practices, and to blog. blog's effectiveness, I feel like I'm holding As many war blogs, military blogs, and back. I think people just project what they're political blogs demonstrate, a blog can provide a supposed to be. My goal is to infuse as much platform for purposeful writing. A blogger may of myself into the educational blogs as I do purport to offer an alternative view on a politics into my Xanga blog. (DailyKos), critique the mainstream media (lnstapundit), or supply specialized information to a One way for teachers and teacher educators particular audience (Slashdot). In each of these to counter the potential purposelessness of cases, the purpose of the blog coincides with the edublogging is to consider how students might write point ofview of its writer. Baghdad Burning, for within existing blog example, is written by a young Iraqui woman whose genres. In her seminal unique perspective on military operations informs Weblog Handbook Bringing the blog the central purpose of her blog: to inform the world (2002), Rebecca Blood into the classroom what the war is really like. defines three dominant does run the risk of Bringing the blog into the classroom does blog genres: the diluting its purpose: run the risk of diluting its purpose: the blog can personal journal, the the blog can easily easily devolve into just another writing assignment notebook, and the filter. devolve into just for school. As Colin Lankshear and Michael Knobel The personal journal, another writing warn, "the blogging world and the world of the most popular blog assignment for classroom writing pedagogy are almost neatly genre today, records school. reversed. Bloggers begin from a felt sense ofpurpose personal incidents from and take it from there, or else simply stop blogging. the life of the writer. Writing pedagogy usually does not presume purpose, When it does include links, the links serve as but somehow hopes to prepare learners for being accessories, pointing to favorite web sites or the effective writers in contexts where they do encounter blogs of friends. In blogspeak, personal journals are serious purpose." My composition methods course sometimes considered sticky, since their truncated requires students to blog about weekly readings, a and often idiosyncratic entries attempt to retain purpose some found to be artificial. One week, I readers rather than redirect them, via links, to other asked students to respond to the following prompt: web sites or blogs. The second major genre, the "Does it feel phony to write about class-related notebook blog, is a hybrid of personal observations topics on a blog? One student wrote: and comments on the external world. The chief I like blogging more than Blackboard so far, purpose of a notebook blog is to record ideas rather because it is more personal, more open. But, than daily events: notebook entries are typically even when I write in my blog, I feel a little longer and more carefully considered than journal phony writing about only classroom things. entries, and notebooks frequently link to sites with Although nobody cares that I got a 97% on corroborating evidence. My own blog, focused on my Spanish test this morning, was stalked the exploration ofteaching, technology, and English through the parking lot for my spot, and had language arts, can be categorized as a notebook.
Fall/Winter 2005 31 The final blog geme is the filter. As the name I will say that blogging offers writing in its suggests, the filter provides a gateway to the web purest form allowing students to see in it through carefully selected links, typically organized what they want to get. It can be a personal around a single subject. The filter has less authorial diary offering personal fears and triumphs, voice than the journal or notebook: its links may be yet it can also be a megaphone for opinions accompanied by short descriptions or no heard and not so heard. commentary at all. When the web was young and comparatively small, filters maintained by web If students were able to blog throughout the enthusiasts pointed out the best the web had to offer. day, they might enjoy a multitude of ideas The filter in this original sense is all but extinct, stimulated by teachers with which to write though the practice of accumulating and annotating about. Many of those ideas would naturally online resources remains germane to blogging. spring from classroom discussions; others Today, media-savvy bloggers have expanded the idea might be through teacher/student of the filter by using their blogs to point to online conferencing. The possibilities are endless. articles from major news sources, often interspersing clips from the articles with commentary or critique. 3. Students need to take ownership and The blogger behind Daily Kos, for example, responsibility of their blogs. routinely samples articles from the Washington Post Because bloggers publish to a potentially or the New York Times, usually to take issue with the large audience, many take a great deal of pride in coverage of a particular event. Authors of such blogs their products. Such pride is evident in the way often subscribe to "feeds" from online media bloggers personalize their weblogs, uploading sources, using free software such as RSS Reader or pictures of themselves and their families, linking to an online news aggregator to parse hundreds of news interesting non-academic sites, publishing lists of headlines in one convenient location. their favorite movies, books, and music, and As Brooks et ai. note, these three dominant modifying the layout design. While such content blog genres remediate forms that exist in print, may dilute the academic purpose of the edublog, as namely the print journal, the notebook, and the in the case of a ninth-grader who used his blog to notecard. As English language arts teachers and upload pictures of his favorite shoes and cars but teacher educators, we can help our students find real neglected to finish his writing assignments, purposes to blog if we keep these print-based personalized material can also enrich the edublog, predecessors in mind. Our students might use providing a backdrop for the writing that occurs journal blogs to respond to literature, share there. "One ofthe coolest parts of about blogging," experiences from student teaching, or write poetry; a student of mine told me in a recent classroom notebook blogs to brainstorm ideas, record thoughts, conversation, "is that I can personalize it by and point to informative sites; and filter blogs to choosing from different designs and looks." annotate and critique online resources. A single blog Teachers who use blogs in the classroom should not might even blend all three genres. Imagine, for discourage these small acts of ownership, unless example, an assignment that asked students to blog students post offensive material or endanger about a school issue. A student blog about bullying themselves with the content they include. might contain a mixture of personal anecdotes, More importantly, teachers should promote comments provided by sympathetic readers, ownership by encouraging students to update their informed critiques of online articles about bullying, blogs on a regular basis, even if this means allowing and links to other related resources, both print and for non-school content. Cyberspace is littered with electronic. Many of my students offered their own blogs that are rarely updated or even completely imaginative suggestions for purposeful blogging: abandoned. In fact, over two-thirds of new blogs are
32 Language Arts Journal of Michigan deserted shortly after startup ("The Blogging "Since a blog is ever-changing like the writing Iceberg"). Requiring a minimum number ofposts or process," wrote one, "students will be able to words per week is one way to counter this trend, continually update what they have written time after though ideally students should want to write more on time allowing a continuing effort toward perfection." their own. My students must meet minimum weekly Others were more cautious, however, basing and semester requirements, but we also discuss how their objections on the actual blogs they had read. "I frequent updates are the sine qua non feature of the don't think that blogs are often revised or drafted," blog, or at least any blog that hopes to retain its one student observed on her own blog, "or really a readership. In theory, the more students write, the planned type of writing at all. They are more like a more responsibility they will take for their blogs. journal, where drafting seems a bit ridiculous." The genre does seem to resist extensive revision and 4. Effective blogging involve the writing process. editing, emphasizing instant communication over As research has illustrated, digital tools craft. Among bloggers, revision of a published post support the recursive nature of writing, chiefly by is considered taboo--when they do revise, they allowing for fluid revision throughout the writing strikeout rather than erase previous material, so process. Our students, to whom the word processor readers may still read the original post. Of course, is as transparent a technology as the pen or pencil, publishing updates of previous entries is acceptable have become adept at single-document revision and even routine, but consideration of audience drafting, revising, and editing the same digital text deters bloggers from posting multiple versions ofthe until it meets their satisfaction. Indeed, advocates of same story. The best way to align blogging with a more compartmentalized writing process process pedagogy, then, may be to use it early in the sometimes lament that students resist producing writing process, when getting ideas down and separate prewriting, rough drafts, revisions, and final receiving content-oriented feedback from peers and drafts. Blogs and other editable online writing the teacher is highly valuable. platforms complicate this picture. In many ways, a blog is ideally suited for 5. Teachers can help students get started blogging. process-based pedagogy: its journal-like format The last decade has seen an explosion of allows for brainstorming, prewriting, and all sorts of technology resources at the K-12 level. Funding tangential explorations; the comment feature from federal and state governments, along with facilitates constructive feedback from writing private corporations, has done much to close the teachers and peers; and the real-world audience digital divide between wealthy and impoverished makes publishing a reality, to the delight of many schools, at least in terms of computer hardware. The students who proudly display blogs to parents and increasing availability of technology resources has friends. The reverse chronological structure would shifted the way we think about the digital divide, also seem to encourage critical reflection, giving putting a new premium on teacher expertise. Today, students an opportunity to reconsider their previous more teachers ask, "How and why do I use entries at a later time. More generally, blogging gets technology?" as they struggle to learn and integrate at a core idea of process pedagogy: writing more new applications that seem to change overnight. makes writing better. Or, as Peter Elbow puts it, One of the most attractive elements ofblogging is "What looks inefficient-a rambling process with that it lowers the bar on teacher expertise. Blogging lots ofwriting and lots of throwing away-is really demands no familiarity with coding language or web efficient since it's the best way you can work up to design software like Dreamweaver, and getting what you really want to say and how to say it" (15 started requires only an Internet connection and 16). Seeing these connections, a few of my students about ten minutes' time. Most commercial services were quick to align blogging with process pedagogy. have helpful wizards that guide new users through
Fall/Winter 2005 33 the setup process and introduce key features. Even only. But blogging gives students a chance to write so, less experienced technology users can learn from for a real audience of peers, parents, teachers, and their students, who are generally willing to show even the global web community. This audience novices the ropes. In short, teachers can quickly differs from the audience provided by a threaded become proficient bloggers, without in-service discussion, a common feature of course management training or specialty software. This means that systems like Blackboard and Web CT. Such course instead of focusing on technical skills, teachers can management systems are gated communities, in the start their own students blogging almost language of Lowe and Williams, artificial rhetorical immediately. spaces that compel students write to the instructor instead of each other or a larger community. The 6. Grammar and mechanics are best learned in weblog, in contrast, offers a more authentic the context of actual writing. audience. "As two teachers who have used weblogs Technology is a favorite target for in our classrooms for the past two years," Lowe and champions ofusage, spelling, and punctuation. Kids Williams write, "we have found that by extending these days, goes the argument, cannot spell correctly, the discourse to a large community outside of the write complete sentences, or spot grammatical errors classroom, our student bloggers regularly confront because the technology they use encourages sloppy "real" rhetorical situations in a very social, habits. As proof of the downward spiral, proponents supportive setting." of this view often point to examples like "BRB" (be This is not to say that edublogs must be right back), "CU" (see you) or other e-Iogisms. published to the web at large. Many teachers make English teachers are horrified-perhaps rightly so- use of the password-protection option offered by to find these coinages smack in the middle of an most commercial services, effectively restricting essay on Thoreau or Shakespeare. But the reality blog access to class members alone. Still, even when may be that digital writing has its own grammar, password-protected, a blog likely provides a more with rules more informal than the print. Is there a authentic audience than a threaded discussion within "digital grammar" that teachers could use to bridge a course management system. Students in my to mainstream grammar? When is e-lingo teaching assisting seminar, for example, keep blogs appropriate? When does consideration for the about their classroom experiences. For reasons of audience demand conventional spelling, punctuation, confidentiality, these blogs are readable solely by me and usage? Exploring these and other questions and the members of the class. Nevertheless, my through blogging seems more productive than students are acutely aware of their audience: "By lamenting the widespread demise of writing skills. having access to other blogs I've learned from others and felt like a member of a sympathetic and 7. Students need real audiences and a classroom encouraging community," wrote one student. context of shared learning. Another added that "Nothing feels better than Perhaps the most compelling sharing sad personal feelings about student work and recommendation for blogging is the real-world finding your colleagues sharing in the same hurt and audience it provides. The question of audience is confusion." No doubt, the shared experience of fundamental to writing, and for most of us, teacher assisting helped to solidify my students' fundamental to our writing classrooms, where we sense of audience. But I also believe that blogging insist that students define their voices, weigh their allowed the "sympathetic and caring community" to purposes, and temper their diction according to the develop more readily than it would within a demands of their audience. Admittedly, this Blackboard threaded discussion, perhaps in part audience is more often hypothetical than real, with because my own role as instructor was the bulk of student writing destined for our eyes "demystified," as one student wrote.
34 Language Arts Journal of Michigan To be safe, teachers should obtain stipulates that student blogs must be connected to administrative and parental approval prior to both classmates and the web at large through publishing student blogs on the web, and should comments and outbound links. Thus far, students warn students not to post their email address, home have struggled the most with this requirement, address, or telephone number. Such cautions should perhaps because they still conceptualize the blog as a be contextualized within the broader truth that in all personal journal rather than a record of ideas, as likelihood, a student blog will be read by a small Brooks et al. suggest. It may also be that circle of classmates, family members, friends, and no commenting on other classmates' blogs is more one else. The popularity of any given blog is difficult and less rewarding than participating in a measured by the number of inbound links pointing to threaded discussion, as one composition instructor it from other sites. Online indexes like Technorati noted on the KairosNews Weblog: "Yes, I can rank the most popular blogs on the web by counting require that they respond to another person's blog, the number of links they have accrued. In his but one student said that, compared to a discussion analysis ofTechnorati and other indexes, Clay forum, leaving responses to blogs felt more like Shirky found that blog readership parallels other leaving a note for someone who is out." patterns of power distribution: that is, just as 20 Whatever the challenges-and for a more percent of a given population owns 80 percent of its complete discussion ofthem, see the KairosNews wealth, the top 50 blogs receive over 50 percent of Weblog-it is clear that blogging provides a unique all inbounds links--currency, for bloggers. The opportunity for writing instruction, making online great majority of poor bloggers-those millions with publishing easier than ever before, giving students few inbound links-have tiny audiences of three and new purposes and genres, promoting ownership of four readers. Most teachers can rest assured, if not writing, providing a new platform for process complacently, that their particular corner of the oriented pedagogy, and offering real-world blogosphere will not attract much global attention. audiences. My own readership consists almost solely ofmy By reflecting on what we already know students, despite my best efforts to alert the about best practice writing instruction, we can blogosphere of my presence. integrate this new technology into our composition classrooms, if not seamlessly, then at least with a 8. Effective teachers use evaluation strong sense of purpose and a keen critical eye. constructively and efficiently. Because blogs come in so many shapes and Works Cited Arnzen, Michael. Pedablogue: A Personal Inquiry sizes, they can be difficult to evaluate. One key step into the Scholarship ofTeaching. Accessed for teachers and students is to explore other June 2005.
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