10 Reasons for Student Blogging ~ written by Susan Lucille Davis
First of all, blogging is writing, 21
st-century style,
plain and simple. Blogging constitutes a massive genre. It comes in
many forms, addresses myriad topics, and can certainly range in quality.
For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best
venue for teaching student writing. As bloggers, young people develop
crucial skills with language, tone their critical thinking muscles, and
come to understand their relationship to the world.
1. Blogs are authentic.
If you are looking for ways to have students write that reach real
rather than “pretend” audiences, I can’t think of a better format than
blogging. That’s how I define authentic, and authenticity matters
because it feeds motivation by providing a sense of purpose for the
writing students do. (See Daniel Pink on
“Is a Sense of Purpose Really an Effective Motivator?”) When writing matters to students, and the quality of their work matters as a result, they raise the bar for their own learning.
Ask any writer of blogs how it feels to connect with his first
mystery readers about what matters to them. A real audience magnifies
the power of the listening, sympathetic teacher a hundredfold. “Yes!”
you think when that stranger wrestles – yay or nay — with your nascent
idea, “that’s the intellectual spark I’ve been longing for.”
2. Blogs allow students to give voice to their passions.
Blogs are an immensely versatile, energizing medium. Google
practically any topic and add the word “best blog” to your search, and
you no doubt will find quality writing on that subject. What you will
discover in the process is an underlying passion nursed by someone for
almost anything under the sun. Now, imagine putting that power in the
hands of students?
Jeff Dunn celebrates the passionate learning of students in “
30 Incredible Blogs Written by Students,” featuring posts about sports, pets, traveling and attending museums, raising money for charity, and a host of other topics.
In some ways, blogs are the new “show and tell,” allowing students to share their own very infectious love of learning.
3. Blogs invite feedback.
As students unleash their passions, they must learn to respond to and
learn from readers in the form of comments. Testing our ideas on others
is an important part of our growth. As a writing teacher, I’ve made
that case for years, yet when my students blog, I don’t have to argue it
so fervently. The responses argue for me.
The greater number of genuine readers students reach, the more they
feel accountable for their content and for the quality of their writing.
Because blogs assume a conversational stance to begin with, students
look forward to hearing from their readers, first, as acknowledgement of
their validity as writers and thinkers and, next, as sources of
valuable feedback and information. Students start to ask questions that
are more than rhetorical – and they value the responses, if offered
thoughtfully and sincerely, that they receive. (And, believe me, they
learn the difference pretty quickly.)
4. Blogs provide opportunities to engage in civil discourse.
With the unfortunate demise of the family dinner (kudos to the
holdouts), the classroom is the last place I know where students are
actually taught how to engage in a lively conversation that requires
listening respectfully as ideas bounce off one another like a volley in a
racquetball court.
Except for the blog post and its companion comments. Bloggers value
readers who comment, especially those who take issue with their ideas
and push their thinking. They relish the opportunity to pursue a point
with an eager reader. They are thankful for the readers who take the
time to engage with something they’ve chewed on for a bit. Bloggers
understand that they are building community through their discourse.
This nearly extinct skill at the heart of blogging is exactly what
students need to learn. And as more and more communication takes place
online, it is essential that students learn how to converse civilly in
public digital spaces.
5. Blogs recognize process.
By design, blogs shared
in medias res, recording the process
of how an idea or project develops over time. This emphasis on process
encourages reflection and re-thinking, doubling back on earlier posts
and feedback to watch how the process of learning unfolds.
As a result, student bloggers begin to see, literally, their own
writing as a process rather than something written to hand off to a
teacher or fulfill an assignment. Young writers can share a germ of an
idea and solicit feedback, develop that idea as a draft, and publish a
more polished result for readers who have been engaged in watching a
piece of writing grow.
6. Blogs provide opportunities for regular writing practice.
Blogs were never meant to be a one-shot deal, like an analytical
essay or book report. Blogs require a commitment to writing, to
learning, and to growth over the long haul.
Bloggers always expect to come back for another round. Blogs call to us to feed them, or we know they will die.
7. Blogging allows students to experiment with multiple media formats.
I know of no other medium that so seamlessly allows us to blend text,
image, sound, and video to communicate a message so thoroughly to so
wide an audience. As bloggers, students learn to consider the impact of
the artfully placed photograph or infographic versus the more mundane
but less intrusive hyperlink. Students weigh the tone and power of their
own words against the aggressive influence of a video or the more
subtle reinforcement of an audio insert. Students study the power of an
arresting image to set a delicate tone or to convey an abstract
concept. Essentially, blogs allow students to learn how to write with
every medium at their wriggling fingertips.
8. Blogging broadens students’ perspectives and connects them to the world.
The first dot from someone outside your home country that appears in your
Clustr Map
or in your host site’s analytics is a big moment. The world suddenly
opens up to you. Next, you might receive an email from someone
interested in collaborating on a project or someone who wants to share
the subtle differences in how she addresses your topic in her own
personal circumstances halfway across the globe.
Blogging for a world audience shifts a writer’s perspective about who
people are based on where they live. You connect personally with
readers, and consequently you build empathy. Your field of vision
widens, and your work broadens to reveal new ways of seeing. Your blog
connects you to humanity in ways you never expected.
9. Blogging teaches transparency.
Transparency is a tough one. We all talk a good game about being
transparent, but when it comes down to it, it’s a skill and a
disposition that are difficult to master. Transparency requires being
comfortable in your own skin; it requires being who you say you are; it
requires a healthy openness and an equally healthy sense of privacy
armed with a modicum of skepticism.
In a world where students create “fake” Facebook accounts to fool colleges into accepting them (see David Copeland,
“How High School Students Use Facebook to Fool College Admissions Officers”),
transparency is something that needs to be taught and reinforced with
the young people who will soon be entering the work force and shaping
our global culture. Being truly Internet savvy in today’s world means
learning how to be honest about who you are, professional in your
dealings with others, and willing to learn openly from mistakes as well
as from successes. These things are built into the culture of blogging,
and students can learn them best by participating in that culture.
10. Blogs can create opportunities for positive change.
Because of their power to bear witness, to connect, to encourage
conversation and build civil discourse, to alter world views, blogs have
an amazing potential for good. A wise person once told me about blogs,
they are about teaching and sharing – what could be better than that?
The aggregate power of our students and other learners to come
together to solve problems, meet one another on common ground, and build
capacities for good makes more optimistic than I have ever been in my
entire life – optimistic for my students and for humanity.
Reality Check
Lest you think I’ve spent too much time under a rock listening to the old Coca-cola commercial,
“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing…,”
or that I have totally shut my eyes to the hate sites, porn, and other
distasteful things in the blogging world, let me confess that I’m known
to my friends and loved ones as a pretty tough cookie. I’m no Pollyanna,
that’s for sure.
Yet, as I have written this post, I have realized that I am speaking
as much from my own experience as a passionate writer of several blogs
over the years as I am from my experience as a passionate teacher of
writing. Yet even as I acknowledge the unseemly, untidy, even
unexceptional side to blogging, I must also affirm its power over any
other way of writing I’ve adopted in the past. Its power to transform
me, as I have grown through blogging, has been tremendous. I see its
power to transform my students, who are building their place in the
world, as even greater.
