What is a Blog?

This is a reflective post which will be included in my Multi-Genre Research paper for my Teaching Writing course. The substance of the paper is the love of writing. In that general topic come a whole host of topics.

• What good does it do to instill a love of writing?


• If anxiety is a major obstacle, how does it do harm?


• What are ways to help students love writing?


• How has technology changed these issues?

A Multi-Genre paper means being creative; thus this post. What better way to express technology than to use it?

Now, how is technology changing teachers do on a daily basis? How is it changing the way we teach?

Immediacy:

How about the fact that I can post this online at a moment's notice and await comment? Oh wait- I don't have an audience.. never mind ;)



Well, my students will read my stuff won't they? I mean if they get their assignments from the site...






My students will be able to post and receive feedback from one another in short order, no this doesn't preclude their working together in person, but it can open up a different dialogue.






Case in point, A classmate of mine and I are going to review an educational title in front of class this coming Thursday (May 1st). We are passing partial work back and forth over email, either suggestions in the body of the message or as attachments; presentations or documents. What this means is that we can work together at a distance. Fantastic.

Which brings me to

Collaboration:

Writing is often collaborative; in the class or out in the real world. Now we have collaboration on a global scale! E.g. http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/ is a "visualization of edits to the English (and the German, French, Spanish) of"Wikipedia.(1) The global and constant nature of this collaboration means that any person with access and knowledge is suddenly a published author. Our students can become published authors.






Last week, I found out that a classmate of mine is working specifically with technology in teaching writing. She's using a blog post as an illustrative genre too! I wish we'd talked about this some weeks ago. Wouldn't it be nice to share our work? I can imagine the two of us having a conversation via posts and comments; a drawn out talk about podcasts and blogs and such, and a chance for us to argue and clarify what makes these technologies so attractive and powerful.

Sharing:

We all like telling stories, sharing ideas, and just letting others know what's up. Now here I am, posting something for my class and for sharing with my non-existant audience.






The Fischbowl.




"A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills. The opinions expressed here are the personal views of Karl Fisch - and various other teachers at Arapahoe - and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of Littleton Public Schools."

From the description of The Fischbowl



There are untold numbers of these blogs everywhere. From teaching to diary to news to law.






For instance there's Groklaw; a blog which encourages participation of its audience to clarify law and technology (especialy software); helping people to learn how the law works and even affecting the law itself.






So, if publishing and sharing are powerful enough to produce change, it makes sense to say that any passionate person can find an outlet and make that change given the resources. All of a sudden, it's possible for a student to write for something other than a grade.






Community publishing, self publishing, sharing, Creative Commons, and what else? Tons of course.

When I'm thinking of my potential students I'm seeing people who want to express something- anything that's important to them. People, including me and you, put our own selves on the page/post/podcast. This isn't relaying information, this is the meaning we make. This is voice (Spandel 128). (Spandel reference is for the paper itself- I'll have to stick the resource at the end of this post as well ) And that's what I want to see.

What is a blog? What is this blog? It's an extension of my voice. It's the bits of my head making their way out into the world for anyone else to see, comment on, add to, or change. I stuck e creative commons license on here because I know that on the off chance I write something valuable, someone else will be able to take it and run with it. Who knows what fantastic things could result?

It's a job of teachers to help our students find the voices that can let them express what's important.

The Earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. It is not even a typical place. No planet or star or galaxy can be typical, because the Cosmos is mostly empty. The only typical place is within the vast, cold, universal vacuum, the everlasting night of intergalactic space, a place so strange and desolate that, by comparison, planets and stars and galaxies seem achingly rare and lovely.
--Carl Sagan's Cosmos

(Spandel 24)

I get shivers reading that. I hear his actual voice coming through. The voice of a consumate scientist is just as beautiful and enthralling as any poet.

Here I've gotten off track. I'm supposed to be talking about technology and it's power to help students love writing instead of fear it. Or maybe that's it? A blog extends voice, or a podcast, or even a page on Myspace or FaceBook will do it.

I'm done- I'm not writing anymore now. I've got other voices to conjure up for other genres. It's been a blast, I'll post again someday.

1 http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/faq.html/ Retreived 4.25.2008 @1910