Some Reflections About Blogging and Learning

I had heard about a new way to publish in Internet, called “blogs”, but I had never paid attention to any one. I read my first blog last April 2006, because I was searching information related to Los Angeles High Schools Walkouts. At that moment, I discovered that many people were using blogs to share ideas and to argue about many issues related with those students’ walkouts. I read “Blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and others powerful web tools for classrooms,” written by Will Richardson in August of the same year. Three month later, I created my first blog that I called “Instructional Technology with Heart”. In conclusion, I ended being a “digital immigrant”, to start being a “digital native” in less than six months.

My first perception about blogs was that they were very interesting digital places to share information, but at the same time, I felt that they were very difficult to read. Some blogs that I visited published many articles, and many people posted their comments. At that moment, I was ignorant about how blogs worked and their communicational possibilities. Therefore, I quickly lost my interest about blogs or any news about this technology.

Dr. Pearl Chen invited me to read Richardson’s book, and I accepted her invitation. Immediately, I found the book and started to read it. I have to confess that, at the beginning, I was predisposed against the author and his ideas about how to transform teaching. During my reading, however, I was changing my attitude and becoming to enjoy each of the chapters, especially the chapters related with blogs. I understood that blogs are easy to create, easy to update, an easy to publish. In other words, blogs are an easy and powerful tool for teachers.

Teachers can use blogs to created reading-writing collaborative spaces. Blogs’ users have to read and to write because blogs demand interaction among users. The collaboration among students is a great opportunity for students to improve their reflection and analytical skills. Furthermore, the constant relation with peers, teachers and others adults will help students to develop more sophisticated writing skills.

Usually teachers are the main audience for the paper written by their students. In this way, hundreds of good stories and essays do not go beyond the classroom. Blogs open the classroom door to the world and create a new audience. Now, parents, relatives, tutors, and many other people can read and give their feedback to the papers posted by the blog’s owner. This new pedagogical scenery opens the opportunity to promote different learning styles. Therefore, blogs become an important educational tool to develop metacognitive analysis and connective writing.

Using blogs, teachers could encourage their students to use learner strategies, especially metacognitive strategies. Students could use these strategies for “planning for learning, monitoring one’s own comprehension and production, and evaluating how well one has achieved a learning objective” (Chamot & O'Malley, 1994: 60) (1). Blogs let to the students time to read the responses posted on their blogs by others. Consequently, they have time to analyze, to plan and to articulate deeper thought before typing their messages.

Blog users are also creating a new writing genre which is defined as ”connective writing” by Will Richardson. He says, “Connective writing is a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demand clarity and congruency in its construction, that is done by a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed.” This idea changes my attitude against the author. After reading this definition, I understand how powerful is a blog as an educational tool. Traditionally, the writing process at the school is more akin to a monologue. Students write but nobody reads and gives feedback about their literary creations. Using blogs, students would establish continued and interesting conversations with other people. Furthermore, they will value the importance of writing as a process generator of knowledge.

Finally, you can observe that in less than six months I jumped from a skeptic position about blogs’ benefits to an enthusiastic promoter of this new tool. Today, I am working as the computer lab coordinator at Highland Elementary School in Monterrey, and I am planning some classes to introduce blogs to fourth and fifth grade teachers. I will paraphrase an Anthony De Melo’s thought to make a conclusion about what I have learned during the last six moths. I will not talk with fourth and fifth grade teachers about how wonderful blogs are. Instead, I will invite them to make their own blogs and they will discover their own paths. I hope to write a new post in six moths to report to you about how this revolutionary tool changes the writing style of our students and teachers.