So if a small bunch of teachers running around screaming blogs to a largely uninitiated audience is edblogging 1.0, and a suddenly bigger bunch of teachers blogging their own journeys and implementing the tools with their students is edblogging 2.0, then I think Ken Smith (who I’ll say again has been doing some of the best blogging out there of late) might just have the premise for edblogging 3.0:
But most of the benefit of the education blogging community is hidden away in the teaching of the individuals and the widely dispersed writing of their students. The results, therefore, are not very clear. Dention is partially right about the difficulty of building something — something institutional, say — through blogs. The edublogger community probably hasn’t done it with students, as far as I know. We have aggregated the work of teacher-bloggers, but I don’t know of anything enduring beyond a course that focuses on publishing student work. A critic might wonder if our community can only talk the talk — will we find a way to let students truly practice what we preach?
And this is precisely what Barbara is writing about today too…the endurability (?) of student blogging:
My EL170, Introduction to Creative Writing Course just wrapped up the semester (well, formally–that is; we plan to meet one more time to read and screen finished projects), and it was, I think, about as good as it gets for a teacher, and a pretty remarkable first blogging experience for them. If ever a class had a chance of moving the blogging community out of the classroom and into their lives at semester’s end, this would be the one. Of course there’s the distraction of summer, and the fact that 80% of them are going abroad next year. Will this community and its vehicle call loudly enough to keep them blogging collaboratively? Will the creative writing focus morph into something altogether different?
I’ll say again that the chances of blog adoption as a consequence of coursework is more likely in college where the blog can be a way of connecting students and ideas when they’re not in class. And I know not every student was born to be a blogger. But, I would argue that every student, every person was born to be a contributor, whether that’s via blog or wiki or podcast or whatever. We need to create a culture of contribution in our schools where our students’ work is non only celebrated but put to use in meaningful ways. Don’t just e-value-ate what they do but provide ways for what they do to have long lasting value.
Edblogging 3.0 should move us toward ways that will encourage students to weave these tools seamlessly into their educations and their lives. A lot of kids are already doing it outside the classroom. Wouldn’t it be great if they started in the classroom as well?
If there is one insight to come out of cognitive linguistics over the past twenty-five years, it is Lakoff and Johnson’s theory that the core of thought is metaphoric. We don’t just use metaphor as a critical and analytic term and tool. We are metaphoric in our brains. “Classroom” implies an enclosure, a bottle of sorts, a boundary that encloses. What happens when technology breaks the bottle? You have a blogwikiflickrfurlicious open space full of connections. Edblogging 3.0 is the birth of new metaphors for new experience. I oversimplify, but I think we edbloggers hold both metaphors (classroom and connected-open space) in our hearts simultaneously. We live in both worlds, yet we know one of them is a dead man walking.
Absolutely great comment Terry. I’m glad you’re back and blogging.