Blog is as Blog Does

I think a blog is what you make of it. Your content will really prescribe how it should be viewed. There are some blogs out there that are designed to get certain information out to many people. That blogger might never have had an audience for his or her expertise or opinion if not for the blogging format hence the public blog. I have a friend of mine who is 27 who recently went through chemo for lymphoma. She blogged about her experience mainly to cut down on 50 phone calls a day. It is still the idea of one person’s thought reaching many. In this case, the many is family and friends. Her audience is much smaller and much more personal and so she opted for a private blog. In English class, we always tell students to think about the audience they are writing for before ever setting pen to paper and a blog is similar. A blogger needs to decide who they are trying to reach and so I see both private and public blogs as appropriate for different intentions.

I think student blogs can be looked at in the same way. What is the purpose? In an English class, it is really important to give students the chance to just write. There is always the fear of the red pen which is partially why I have started to grade in green. The point really is when are students given the opportunity to write what they want, write for enjoyment, or to write to express themselves without fear of being torn apart? Yes, grammar and sentence structure are important but formal writing will never improve of students always have a sense of anxiety when it comes to getting that paper back. Student blogs are also a great reflection tool for both teachers and students. Students are given the opportunity to monitor their own learning while teachers are able to check in and see if students achieved the objective of the lesson and if not what will need to happen moving forward.

I think that student blogs should be a mix of what I have already mentioned with the informal and some prompts or structured responses all students will respond to that might be evaluated. I think it is also important for students to go back to earlier work and see how they write or how they have changed over time. Revising and editing is always a battle and this might be a nice opportunity to do that in a different way.

 I am concerned about the amount of material we will be putting out there. In order to monitor the expected bad behavior, how am I going to read all these posts? If I can’t, will the blog really be serving its purpose for my students?