Overcoming the Fear of Blogs: Teaching Critical Skills, Learning About Your Learners

Educators who attended "Blogs: How Do They Fit Into Teaching?" had numerous questions for presenter Erica Brownstein about the risks of using blogs in the classroom, but she pointed out that "students are blogging anyway," and challenged the attendees: "What if you took that energy and brought it to your classroom?" Brownstein's copresenter, Lindsay Dexter, noted that blogs allow you to "learn something about your learners" that you might not through other tools and techniques.

As reported in the Washington Post after Brownstein's session, blogs are currently a popular topic in education, and her crowded and lively session showed educators' continuing interest. Along with two of her graduate students, Anne Callahan and Lindsay Dexter, Brownstein walked the attendees through all of the steps necessary to create and use blogs in the classroom, showing several blogs that are currently being used for instruction as examples.

Secure, Powerful, and Free Tools
As she did, Brownstein showed how educators can secure blogs to minimize risks and protect students. For example, Blogger, a free, Web-based tool, allows the blog administrator to limit access to authorized users, who are the only people allowed to contribute posts or comments to the blog.

In addition to their questions about security, attendees wanted to know how blogs can be used to support learning and teaching. To answer these questions, the presenters showed attendees blogs that are in use by teachers, explaining how and why they worked. Brownstein noted that all of the example blogs had been started and completed within the last school year, demonstrating how easy it is to create and develop a useful and robust blog.

How each blog supports learning depends on what the function of each is. Brownstein listed the three types of educational blogs:

• learning
• interacting
• reflecting

She encouraged attendees to not try to achieve too much each blog. Brownstein has found that a blog project can only support one of these objectives, although each could support subobjectives. However, all the types of blogs share common, powerful benefits, according to the presenters.

Building Community, Developing Critical Readers
Brownstein observed that "A blog is about the whole community and self-expression. It means embracing the world community." Dexter observed that some teachers are using blogs to connect younger and older students in "a buddy system through the blog," similar to reading buddy systems.

With guidance from their teachers, many students critique their peers' writing "which makes them critical readers," said Brownstein. Dexter also noted that in some schools, teachers in higher grades were reading the blogs of students in lower grades, and commenting on them. This has two benefits:

• affirming the students' connection to the whole school community
• providing teachers with advance information about upcoming students

Brownstein has observed that, in this supportive environment, "students take writing risks that they normally wouldn't take," extending their abilities as writers and critical thinkers. While she finds the writing skills practice that blogs provide important, as a science teacher, Brownstein tries to focus on the content, looking to see how students are interacting and making connections, leading to deeper understanding.

"You Don't Have To Be the Expert in the Room"
As they described the many potential benefits of blogs in the classroom, the presenters provided the Web addresses of many resources for teachers who want to explore this new technology. Brownstein reminded those attendees who were still unsure about how to use or secure blogs that often their best resource for more information is their students.

She reminded attendees, "You don't have to be the expert in the room." But, she continued, in light of the continued increase in cyberbullying, even for those who don't use blogs in their classrooms, "You must know about blogging. You must find out if your students are blogging." For those who suggested that perhaps it is better to keep blogs out of the classroom, Brownstein reminded them of the power of their positions, "The power is in your modeling for [your students]. . . . If they don't see the model, they don't know how to blog responsibly."

For those who still expressed trepidation, Brownstein encouraged them, "As a teacher, you must be a risk taker. The benefits outweigh the fear."

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Are you thinking about using blogs in your classroom, or are you already a seasoned blogger or blog-facilitator? Share your questions or experience.

Get more information about Learning in the Digital Age.

Comments

[William Spaulding]

During this school year I have used a conferencing tool (somewhat like a blog)that is available through the limited access site, nicenet.org . My objectives have been focused on interaction and reflection related to a rhetorical question that I pose to the class. Because I regularly use these type of discussions in the classroom the conference/blog is a natural transition for students from an oral to a written format. However there are significant differences between the oral discussion and the written conference or blog.

One difference is that students who are often reticent to contribute orally are often the most prolific partiipants in written conferencing.

Another difference is that the conference is more difficult to moderate in a real-time fashion since many students can be working on a posting at one time.

The next step for me may be to conduct an action research project to evaluate how much real time teacher interaction helps or hinders student participation and interaction in the electronic conference environment.

[Roberta M. Ziegler]

What level of education are we referring to? K-12? Community College? Developmental Reading? Universities?

[Corinne Garner]

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