Former Marine, Current Student, Future Teacher, but always a Dad!

Are blogs really where its at in education now!?! Can blogs be done in a way that is counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish? Do teachers jump on the latest technology teaching craze (blogging in this case) without thinking how it can be used effectively to support the curriculum? Do students feel as though blogging is just as big of a hassle as any other type of writing they are assigned? 

These are the questions I would ask if I was approaching this subject from a negative viewpoint. I am not approaching this subject in that way though. I want to look at it from all viewpoints. I want to display the good, the bad, and the ugly if need be. Most of what we hear or read about blogs in education are glowing reviews or stories of how they have breathed new life into the classroom but not all blog experiences are like this are they? I wanted input from an instructor (not a student because we are fickle) who has experience teaching with blogs and has a different point of view from what we hear most of the time.  Kara M. Dawson articulates some of the problems she has encountered in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In some courses, I use a single blog on which all students are expected to post comments. In other classes, I require students to create individual blogs and to visit their fellow students’ blogs through RSS feeds. Typically I expect students to write at least one posting a week and to comment on several others’ blogs. Sometimes I require students to post on a particular topic, and sometimes I leave it open-ended. Whatever the approach, I found last semester that many students fell victim to blog overload.

I began to feel overloaded, too. Don’t get me wrong. I love blogs. I have my RSS feeds set to a number of blogs that help me stay current on personal and professional interests. But the key difference is that I am not forced to read any of those blogs. None of them were created because of someone else’s course requirement.

Frankly, the blog postings I required my students to write were just not very interesting. Those students are bright, insightful, frequently opinionated, and, as a whole, a pleasure to be around. Their blogs were not.

With few exceptions, the blogs would sit inactive until about 24 hours before our face-to-face class meetings (or 24 hours before the assignments are due in my online class) when a flurry of posts and comments would erupt. Then, I would spend an excessive amount of time reading and commenting in the hours before class. Some students did the same while others didn’t bother to comment at all. Effective teaching and learning? I think not.

This gives you a different view of what the typically hear from professors using blogs in their classroom. Given that view, how successfully will a high school teacher, who is not doing their homework, implement blogs into the curriculum. In my opinion no matter what the method, plan, or tactic you are using to introduce subject matter, if it is ill conceived, thought out, or planned itwill fail. Let me preface all the rest of my posts by saying that I believe blogs can work in the classroom. The problem I am starting to see in my reading is maybe just maybe some teachers see this as a way to lessen their work load. I’m not sure if this is the case but hopefully I will have an answer to that question along with many others as I investigate this topic. 

Chronicle Careers: 1/30/2007: Blog Overload

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Blog Overload
By Kara M. Dawson
January 30, 2007