Blogging about blogging

Richardson’s second chapter is about weblogs. He explains “two new blogs are created every second” He also tells us that teachers need to help their students understand what a blog is. He says blogging is not journaling. Blogging is a constructivist approach that “engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day’s events or feelings.” 

I know plenty of people who use blogs as journals. Yet, I think what Richardson is arguing here is, teachers should encourage students to use blogs in critical and analytic ways, not merely as personal diaries. This seems to go along with Richardson’s ideas that students may divulge more information about their private lives than may be appropriate for a school setting.

Richardson goes on to explain that blogs can teach students to think and read more critically and write more clearly. In the chapter of the book, Richardson provides many ways educators can use blogs, such as:

1. Class portals to communicate information
2.  An online filing cabinet for students and teachers to share work
3. E-portfolios
4. A collaborative space (students can collaborate with other students – both in the class and outside of the school – writers, professionals, etc.)
5.  School websites
6.  A live stream of the class (one of Richardson’s examples is a teacher who posts a live stream of his classroom, using Ustream - http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/ - I am going to have to check this out during the school day)
7. Online book clubs
8. Blogs to react to interesting questions, quotes, or images
9. A collaborative class newsletter
10. A space to collect and share research
11. There are many more ideas about blogging - let me know if you'd like more examples!

 A brief summary of Richardson's ideas on blogging can be found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5F_zcOJ3o). 

One interesting idea Richardson brings forth is a quote from Connecticut profession Donald Leu: “Online reading and writing are so closely connected that it is not possible to separate them; we read online as authors and we write online as readers.” I think this is an interesting point to make – the idea that online reading and writing are active processes. 

Is this because the online environment makes sharing information easy and immediate? With traditional printed texts, students may tend to read to absorb information, or to collect it for later use. But when we read online, we can immediately respond to it, agree or disagree with the author(s), share it with others, respond to comments from others, and reflect on our understanding. It seems to be more of a back-and-forth exchange of information. Richardson says that the traditional end point of printed writing is publication. In contrast, publication is the midpoint in online writing because of the social aspect – online writing is “returned to and reflected upon.” We write online to reach online readers who often engage in conversation with us.

I would argue that in the educational context, the instructor must facilitate and model this back-and-forth exchange. This is because I could easily see students posting to a blog in a superficial manner – posting just to get the points and not really synthesizing, analyzing, or having a deep conversation about their learning. I guess this is true of anything based in a school system, though; students need to understand the importance and relevance of the use of blogs.