Blogging 101--Web logs go to school

As a middle-school teacher, Clarence Fisher is used to spending some time each evening grading papers and reviewing lesson plans. But this year he's got an additional after-school task: updating his students' blogs.

Fisher set up online personal journals--Web logs or blogs--this fall for each of his students at Joseph H. Kerr School in the Canadian town of Snow Lake, Manitoba. His combined seventh- and eighth-grade class generates about a dozen entries a day on topics ranging from classroom assignments to weekend plans, which Fisher reviews before posting online.

Schoolhouse blogs

As blogging enters the classroom and takes its place alongside reading, writing and 'rithmetic, adult Web surfers have the chance to relive the trials and tribulations of the wonder years.

Students in Clarence Fisher's combined seventh- and eighth-grade class at Joseph H. Kerr School in Snow Lake, Manitoba, and in Hillary Meeler's fifth grade class at J.H. House Elementary in the Atlanta suburb of Conyers serve up entries that can amuse, charm and captivate with their simplicity and candidness. Click here to read some excerpts.

He's more than glad to do it. Like other teachers bringing blogging into the classroom, he thinks the online journals will spark students' enthusiasm for computers, writing and opining.

"They're learning the technical skills, but they're also learning that they have a voice online," he said. "They may be from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but they're writing online, people are commenting on it, and they're learning that they have a voice."

Fisher is among a small but growing number of teachers and professors experimenting with classroom blogs. The exact number is hard to pin down but it's well into the thousands, said Will Richardson, author of "An Educator's Guide to Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Cool New Web Tools that are Transforming the Classroom," which is set for publication next year.

Richardson is also supervisor of instructional technology and communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, N.J., where at least 10 percent of the teachers have worked blogging into their lesson plan. It's taken a while for the concept to catch on, though. Hunterdon began its first classroom blog about four years ago.

"I think that blogs have a bad reputation," Richardson said. "People think of them as online journals or diaries, but they are much more than that. They are learning tools."

Take Hillary Meeler's group of fifth-graders at J.H. House Elementary in the Atlanta suburb of Conyers. Every Thursday morning, the students spend two hours writing about current events on their blogs. Meeler, an instructional technology specialist, asks them to choose topics from CNN's student news program and use writing skills they're learning in English class.

The kids love having an audience, she said. Parents, teachers, students and sometimes complete strangers from as far away as Brazil will respond to the blogs with comments. And depending on the tools they're using, student bloggers can track how many times people have clicked on their entries. In an effort to build a following, they often clean up their grammar, stretch their vocabulary and generally write more creatively, Meeler said. "They take a lot of pride in it," she said. "They have to write a title that gets attention, or people won't leave comments or come back."

The students seem to have no shortage of material for their blogs, tapping their daily lives, the news and the blogosphere for inspiration. Some, including Jay Nieves, even write poetry.

The sophomore at East Side Community High School in New York City began blogging last year and now does it almost every day in his New Journalism class. He said he's hooked and will probably keep blogging after he graduates. "It's part of my life," Nieves said.

Jose Bernal, a senior at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco, blogs for his American Democracy class. He's one of about 60 students participating in a blog with a neighboring high school. Bernal is especially keen on reading and commenting on other

[anspn]

SchoolParentNet

Very nice article....you may also find what we are doing interesting...

SchoolParentNet is an online social network for PreK-12 parents. Parents get connected with other parents from their child's class, grade, school and district. Many online tools (such as forums and blogs) are used by parents to communicate and interact with each other - learn more by taking a Tour (http://www.schoolparentnet.com/tour.htm). Our company's mission is to foster strong supportive local parent communities and to get parents more involved with the school.

Our website market-launch was timed to coincide with the start of the new school year. We have parents users signed-up from across the nation: 15+ states and 150+ schools so far. What is really interesting is that we have some classroom moms engaged and writing blogs - using these to communicate with class parents, organize parties etc (for example they list the items needed for a party and parents from the class are adding comments to their blogs and signing-up for different items/tasks - the blog therefore becomes an online sign-up sheet).

If you are a parent, you can start the registration process by going to our home page (www.schoolparentnet.com) and clicking on Register Now.

[Earl Benser]

Education needs to get serious...

Blogs are NOT a valid school subject. Blogs are a sloppy
communications technique, rarely containing anything really
worth while, and rank just one notch above text messaging on
cell phones. We've got kids who can't add, can't read, and can't
write in real sentences, and wouldn't know a verb if it bit them.
There's where the real education effort needs to be placed. Sure,
that's not 'fun', and kids do want to play rather than learn, and
teachers seem to go out of their way to avoid being actual
teachers.

Sorry folks, but US kids need real help, not junk like this teacher
is peddling. As noted, "... Fisher is among a small but growing
number of teachers and professors experimenting with
classroom blogs...." And maybe that defines the real situation.
The kids are experiments in arcane educational techniques by
educators more interested in notoriety than success, and where
failure is basically irrelevant.

But that's okay. I make good money teaching 10th graders the
math they should have learned in 2nd grade. And I have an
associate who teaches basic reading skills to these same kids. Of
course, you have to accommodate sport schedules, and vacation
schedules, and school trip schedules, and 'too busy parent'
schedules, and every other conflict people can dream up.

And people wonder why the US is getting stomped in
education???????

[smcgui5]

Is this what it comes down to?

I have to agree with the last post. We really need to start getting back to basics with education. There's nothing wrong with teaching a computer litercay class, however, where do we draw the line? We are in a definite information age, but we also need to understand that the information relies heavily people to create it. Those people who help deliver this information to the public, are brilliant mathmeticians, who can speak, read, write, and comprehend basic language structure. How do we expect kids tro learn if we plop them down in front of a PC and tell them to have fun?

Oh dear...

There are plenty of valid school subjects. The ability to communicate effectively, to organise your thoughts, to interest other people in what you say and so on. Writing weblogs is an extremely good way of doing this.

The comment 'blogs are a sloppy communications technique' really says a great deal - clearly Benser has only looked at a small number of them and made his mind up, then firmly closed it. I get a great deal of extraordinarily useful information from weblogs; they are not just diaries. Most, in fact all of the weblogs that I read are written by very intelligent people who have points to make, and they do so very well. It is because they are good at this that I read them - it's a very positive form of feedback, since I comment on what they've said, and information is shared back and forth.

I agree entirely that children need to be able to read and write correctly, and in order to do this they actually need to do that - sit and write. They also need to read what other people have written, and using weblogs as a tool is an excellent way of doing that. To merely deride them as a waste of time or 'junk' simply indicates that the author really hasn't studied the subject properly if at all. I wonder if he also thinks that writing a diary is 'junk' and a waste of time? I presume that he must, since the only real difference is that one is handwritten and the other is typed.

This is a very sad little piece with very little merit to it, other than to attempt to slam a teacher for trying something different. If we never try different things we are destined to remain where we are.

I also note that the author teachers mathematics. This is probably just as well, since his piece is littered with grammatical errors (you don't start a sentence with 'and' and it's very juvenile to repeat question marks to try and make a point), so perhaps he would be better spending his time learning to use good written English - perhaps he might start by writing a weblog? Which is, as an amusing aside, how I found this piece in the first instance!

What makes me doubtful...

In the abstract I don't see much anything wrong with the idea of using Blogs, as a tool. In theory it covers several bases. Typing, spelling, grammar, and even reading comprehension if the students are supposed to be commenting on something. If the teachers using the Blogs are actually holding the submissions to some kind of standard then I don't really have a problem with the idea.

The article is not clear on that. Which is a little depressing. Mr. Fisher 'reviews' Blogs before approving them, but the only examples of rejected submissions were blatant. Also, how do these submissions work? There is not much skill required to fill in a form and submit it. I wouldn't call it "technical skill". Really what it boils down to is that sort of instruction is far beyond the scope of an English course.

[Stargirl]

What I think

I think it's a good idea to get kids to blog. They can still learn their grammar from blogs. Just because they are typing doesn't mean theey'll change it into slang. They will probably spell everything properly so everyone can understand. Blgging is a good idea for people to tell their feelings and what they think of school. This will also give them time to have fun with computers and learn more about them. Their typing skills will get betetr too. This isn't like the old days when we just used pencil and paper or chalkboards we have technology so we mine as well use it.

[ack_750]

Not a subject for a governing body

I feel that this issue is about the same as congress looking into
steroids in baseball. It is of no concern or buisness to any school
public or private how their students choose to spend their free
time. At school is one thing but at home is the parents
responsibility to police... oh wait a minute I forgot parents have no
responsibility any more for their children in the US, that is the
government or daycare's responsibility.

[sroper]

Blogs Work

I was just curious...
Did anyone take the time to read any of the student blogs discussed?
I work at the elementary school featured in the article and can attest to the fact that our students benefit immensely from blogging. Their writing improves dramatically throughout the year. It is amazing to watch these 5th graders blossom as writers, especially considering that English is not the primary language of the majority of our students.

[sonthird]

I would agree that blogs have a bad reputation in the educational setting. Educators often view them as merely a chat room. Students are able to use blogs as an online journal or writing tool that allows them to interact with students from around the world. My school district has a strict policy against the use of blogs in the classroom. In fact, we are currently blocked from accessing most of these sites. I find this to be sad, especially since research has shown that technology motivates and empowers students to capture the skills that they are learning. Blogs would enable us to teach the conventions of writing, while enabling students to craft their own personal narratives. Students would be able to recognize the importance of writing clearly and applying the concepts that we have learned, so that others are able to easily read and interpret what they have written. I believe that blogging has endless possiblities related to instruction, I only wish that my district would embrace them!