Blogs are reshaping our environment. They are
beginning to emerge in large numbers in the educational field and offer great
potential to transform learning and teaching. It is about new literacies
appropriate for this time. The quote below comes from Don Leu, to be published
soon in a book by the International Reading Association (http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/newlit.html) I feel it is a very
appropriate focus as relates to the new literacies and blogging for educators.
Donald Leu of
“The new
literacies include the skills, strategies, and insights necessary to
successfully exploit the rapidly changing information and communication technologies
that continuously emerge in our world. A more precise definition of the new
literacies may never be possible to achieve since their most important
characteristic is that they regularly change; as new technologies for
information and communication continually appear, new literacies emerge (Bruce,
1997; Leu, in press a; Reinking, 1998). Moreover, these changes often take
place faster than we are able to completely evaluate them. Regular change is a
defining characteristic of the new literacies.
This simple
observation has profound consequences for literacy and literacy education. The
continuously changing technologies of literacy mean that we must help children
learn how to learn new technologies of literacy. In fact, the ability to learn
continuously changing technologies for literacy may be a more critical target
than learning any particular technology of literacy itself.”
There are many skills
and concepts that need to be addressed to effectively help teachers learn to
use blogs throughout their curriculum to foster these new literacies. It is not
just a matter of transferring classroom writing into digital spaces. Teachers
need to address writing for a public audience, how to cite and link and why,
how to use the comment tool in pedagogical ways, how to read web materials more
efficiently as well as explore other ways to consider pedagogical uses of
blogs. Blogging requires us to teach students to critically engage media.
Students need instruction on how to become efficient navigators in these digital
spaces where they will be obtaining a majority of their information.
Blogging is
educationally sound for teaching students because:
- Blogs provide a space for sharing opinions and
learning in order to grow communities of discourse and knowledge — a space
where students and teachers can learn from each other.
- Blogs help learners to see knowledge as
interconnected as opposed to a set of discrete facts.
- Blogs can give students a totally new perspective
on the meaning of voice. As students explore their own learning and
thinking and their distinctive voices emerge. Student voices are essential
to the conversations we need to have about learning.
- Blogs foster ownership and choice. They help lead
us away from students trying to find what the teacher wants in terms of an
answer.
- The worldwide audience provides recognition for
students that can be quite profound. Students feel more compelled to write
when they believe many others may read and respond. It gives them
motivation to excel. Students need to be taught skills to foster a
contributing audience on their blog.
- The archive feature of blogging records ongoing
learning. It facilitates reflection and evaluation. One student told me
that he could easily find his thoughts on a matter and he could see how
his thinking had changed and why.
- The opportunity for collective and collaborative
learning is enormous. Students have the opportunity to read their
classmates’ blogs and those of others. This is not possible in a regular
classroom setting.
- Blogging provides the possibility of connecting
with experts on the topic students are writing.
- The interactive nature of blogging creates
enthusiasm for writing and communication.
- Blogging engages students in conversation and
learning.
- Blogging encourages global conversations about
learning–conversations not previously possible in our classrooms.
- Blogging provides the opportunity for our
students to learn to write for life-long learning.
- Blogging affords us the opportunity to teach
responsible public writing. Students can learn about the power of the
published word and the responsibilities involved with public writing.