While researching this idea, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my past use of student discussion boards and blogs.  In my classroom, using these tools has always been a flop.  Nevertheless, I realize that it is MY failing, not a failing on the part of my students.  I have done exactly that of which I accuse my students: By failing to prepare, I prepared to fail.  As Julie Meloni says in the blog Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom, “As with any assignment, students are likely to follow your lead with regards to valuing its overall importance.  If you forget the blog exists, so will they—and I wouldn’t particularly blame them."

So why have I allowed this to occur?  I think that time management is a serious issue.  I have viewed blogs as an additional assignment, rather than a way to bring writing that is more traditional into the 21st century.  Therefore, instead of replacing in-class writing assignments with blogs or discussion boards, I have just added them on and thus I begin to run out of time.

Another problem has been the method of evaluating the blogs.  How does one truly evaluate (and grade) what is a reflection of the beliefs and musings of another person?  I prefer short and simple evaluations when having to grade so many items.  The problem I have had is that the rubrics I have typically found are similar to the one found on THIS website:

Not to say that this is too complicated, but it does entail multiple steps with different points for each criteria.  Multiple steps for multiple blogs for multiple students plus math equals a LOT of time.  I admire this professor’s commitment, but since time management is my biggest issue, I feel that I would fall short.

However, another of the posts that I found on ProfHacker by Mark Sample talked about how he assigned and evaluated student blogs.  In the blog post A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs, Sample shares my concerns for time management, saying “But when you have 15 or 25 posts per week, per class, how do you grade them all?  How do you let students know what kind of work you value?--And what kind of work they should likewise value?  Assessing the enormous number of posts on the class blog is challenging, to say the least.” Consequently, his rubric is short and simple:

I like this rubric more than the previous example, but it does not address the language skills that I look for as a French and English/Language Arts teacher.  It also does not address the need for authentic and real interaction amongst students.  As stated by Konrad Glogowski in his blog entry Towards Reflective BlogTalk, "I find that for so many of my students [sic] blogging often becomes a race to publish, to write entries and receive comments.  (Most of them measure the success of their blog by the number of comments they receive, and the content of the comment is often not as important as the mere fact that it is there).  They rarely look critically at their own writing, preferring instead to judge their own work by the traffic that it attracts to their blog." This reflects the current social media trends, where we “like” a post on Facebook, or retweet something on Twitter, instead of actually commenting and engaging with the original poster.  It is through these interactions that real growth and learning occurs.

This lack has resulted in the following rubric:

Resources
Glogowski, K. (2008, Feb 04). Towards reflective BlogTalk [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2008/02/04/towards-reflective-blogtalk/

Meloni, J. (2009, Aug 13). Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/integrating-evaluatingmanaging-blogging-in-the-classroom/22626

Nixon, B. (2009, Apr). Public relations matters. Retrieved from http://publicrelationsmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/blog-rubric.pdf

Profhacker. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/

Sample, M. (2010, Sept 27). A rubric for evaluating student blogs [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-rubric-for-evaluating-student-blogs/27196

Why blog?

I was a kid that always wrote in her diary. Every night, before bed, I would open my diary, write Dear Diary, and then proceed to tell this un-judgmental friend all that I had thought throughout the day. I distinctly remember being in high school and a friend telling me that she started keeping her journal (of course her journal! We were too old and too cool to keep diaries anymore! They were journals!) on her computer.  I thought that was cool, but there were two issues:

1. I didn't have a computer.
   
2. I liked lying in bed as I wrote and getting everything that was circling my brain out of there before going to sleep. A computer seemed to defeat that purpose.
   

Fast-forward an unspecified number of years and we are now at a point in time when blogging has become mainstream.  I always thought that journaling and blogging were the same thing.  But instead of people confining their inner-most thoughts to a private paper journal that would be hidden away from the eyes of even the closest bosom-buddies, it would be posted for the world to see - friend, foe, and, unknown. Not so, according to Will Richardson. In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (2010), Richardson purports that true blogs engage others in "a process of thinking in words," not just that daily reckoning that occurred in my old-school diary.

SO it turns out that I was wrong. Apparently, I was supposed to blog as a way of reflecting upon my learning (both educational and life), and helping others to do the same. I was then supposed to go and read the blogs of other people (friend, foe, and unknown) AND comment on them so that they would know that I was reading them. This is baffling information for someone who got used to hiding her diary from her younger brother.

Luckily, I actually realized my misconception regarding blogs long ago. I began reading and even commenting on several (friend and unknown - no foes) about 8 years ago. Some are personal, some are professional, and others are a casual mix of both.  But they all share certain commonalities. While generally being professional in writing and editing, they are casual and informal in speech. In this aspect, they are similar to a diary. Even though the author has never actually met most of the readers, the tone is similar to that of a close friend at best, a casual acquaintance at worst. In addition, due to the interactive nature of a blog, the author tends to invite comment, even explicitly posting questions to which (s)he wants readers to respond.  As such, when readers see these questions, instead of thinking of them as rhetorical questions, the readers respond, and invite further comment. This is what Richardson means when he says that, "Blogs engage readers with ideas and questions and links. They ask readers to think and to respond. They demand interaction."

Finally, in the true spirit of a blog, I leave you with two questions:

1. Think back. Waaay back. When you first heard the word blog, what definition did you create and how did it differ from Richardson's definition?
   
2. What are your favorite blogs? Do you keep one? Why or why not?
   

My response: No, other than this blog, I do not keep one, although I often think that I should. My answer for why is simply time. I often find that now, outside of school (my job) and school (the classes that I teach), away from my friends, apart from my family, I prefer to spend whatever time I have left on the joys of relaxation and de-stressing.


RESOURCES
Richardson, W. (2010).  Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. (3rd ed.) [Kindle]. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

How many of us remember the classroom pictured here? In our experience, students sat quietly in their seats and took notes while the professor lectured. Occasionally, the professor might question students or solicit commentary from them. And yet even these interactions were more to prove that the professor was in charge and to keep students on their toes than to actually engage students in learning.

The purpose of Web 2.0 is to change that. By engaging learners with the content, rather than having students simply remember and understand content, we will create lifelong learners able to thrive in and beyond the 21st Century classroom. They will apply what they learn, analyze what they find, evaluate its purpose and accuracy, and create new knowledge and products. As a result, students learn from us and with us.  Teachers allow the students to teach the teachers and fellow classmates. Most importantly, students maintain a certain level of control over what they learn and how they demonstrate their knowledge.

With the advent of new technology, teachers must understand that they may have to lose a level of control in the classroom. The classroom becomes a place to discover new information, not to cover a chapter in a textbook. The teacher becomes a resource, but not the only resource. For some teachers, this can be panic-inducing. Indeed, if we fail to prepare students by detailing and explaining our expectations for the process, it will create total chaos. On the other hand, if we begin a class, or even a unit, by teaching our expectations for student behavior, engagement, learning, communication, and final products, we may be surprised at what students can do and create.

As seen in David Warlick's article  A Day in the Life of Web 2.0, people today are multi-taskers. Teachers listen to podcasts created by fellow educators while driving to school; parents read and contribute to Wikis created by members of the school community to inform and be informed about what is happening in the schools; students text each other to discuss new project ideas while researching information for the project.  The school presented by Warlick is an idealized one in which teachers are able to work collaboratively across disciplines because they share students. Such a situation is not always possible, but as is mentioned in the video Shift Happens / Did You Know? by Karl Fisch, we must prepare students for jobs that do not yet exist to solve problems that haven't yet been imagined.

Finally, teachers must change both their expectations and their processes in the classroom. As the Internet was not commercialized until 1995, many teachers today taught themselves how to use it. Our students teach themselves how to play new games or use new devices all the time. In contrast, the same students often appear to have lost the ability to use common sense when combining technology with a classroom environment. Why? I believe that it is because schools have separated technology from the classroom for far too long. It is up to us as teachers to TEACH them how and when to use all of the tools they have at their disposal, including digital tools. By doing so, we can teach them not just our content but also the skills necessary to thrive in a world changing more rapidly than can be recorded.


RESOURCES
Fisch, K. (2007, June 22). Did you know? [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/06/did-you-know-20.html

Warlick, D. (2006, October 15). A day in the life of web 2.0. Retrieved from http://sddial.k12.sd.us/events/laptop_institute/Files/monday/warlick_harnessing_the_new_shape_of_information.pdf