Apathetic Student Bloggers
Caution: This is going to be a rather long rambling!
As a classroom teacher I have been concerned for a while about the ‘power’ of blogging with my students. While they all initially embraced the idea of blogs and were quick to set up their own, the initial enthusiasm seems to have ‘worn off’. I have found myself almost ‘forcing’ them to make a blog post in order to keep the initial momentum going. With my other hat on, lead teacher for developing E-Learning in my school, I have to wonder how I can convince other teachers about blogging if my own class are somewhat apathetic about them!
After reading Anthony’s first post, Putting My Feet In, on his blog Teacher Paradigm, I again questioned the use of blogs by my students. Anthony says:
“I began to learn more and more about these tools called wikis and blogs. As I learned more about them and their potential to motivate and further engage students in their learning, I knew that I had to make them a part of my teaching repertoire. These after all are the tools my students are using outside of my classroom today, and these are the same tools that will remain a large part of their personal lives and professional future. I figure that if I want to remain relevant as a teacher to my students, I had better learn these technologies, be prepared to revolutionize my teaching methods, and evolve my current teaching philosophies and beliefs about student learning.”
This really called into question what was happening with my students – they are not not really using these tools outside the classroom.
Then I read a reply by Joanna, who seemed to echo my sentiments:
“I’m a teacher librarian at a year 7 – 10 school in Melbourne (not Florida). I actually wonder whether kids DO use blogs in their own time, as you say in your post. My son, 14 yo, doesn’t although he knows I do. I’m starting my first student blog at school, getting my feet wet too, learning as I go, but is it me imposing another thing on students?”
That is exactly what I feel I am doing, imposing something else on my students! Anthony’s reply to this was interesting,
“I wouldn’t say that we as teachers are “imposing” another thing on our students as much as I would say that we are better “customizing” our teaching style to fit our learners. Our kids spend so much of their time outside of school being involved in social networks such as MySpace and Facebook that I think few of them are going to have as difficult a time adjusting to the use of blogs like we teachers might. Remember how we use to laugh at our parents for not being able to set the timer on the VCR? It seemed like such an easy and simple thing to figure out as a kid, but to my mother, you might as well have asked her to design a rocket that could go to the moon.”
Is coercing students to use blogs really the way to go? I have tried ‘customising’ my teaching style to fit my students but the ‘blogging’ aspect just hasn’t been a success. Yes, the students are really keen to have ‘hands on, meaningful, interactive experiences’ with a range of Web 2.0 tools and love integrating a variety of multimedia tools in classwork but getting them to use their blogs as a natural form of expression seems to be a long way off.
Feeling a bit of a failure with this whole blog thing, last week I asked my students why it was such a chore to add posts themselves. Most were quite vocal saying that they would rather use Bebo as that is where they chat with their friends about things. They did qualify their thoughts, saying that what they put on Bebo they would be happy putting on their school blogs but they found Bebo suited them better.
They also commented that nobody but other class members reads their blogs anyway. (Is our ‘isolation’ from the main blogging world part of this?) I think that this may be the crux of the problem. We have tried leaving comments on other student blogs (overseas) which for two students has resulted in a basic comment dialogue between them, and Chris Harbeck has left comments on most blogs. In fact Chris has become a sort of mentor for a couple of students in the class! Thanks Chris.
But, if students are going to continue blogging they have a need to know that their ‘work’ is being read by people other than their classmates.
To conclude my ramblings I have two questions:
1.How do I get students using blogs as a natural expression of their thoughts, concerns etc? As an aside I need to mention that these students are all very capable written communicators but it is not always their favourite form of expression!
2. If this happens, how can we widen our ‘reading community’?
BTW, One interesting outcome of all this is that three students have spent this weekend leaving quite thoughtful comments on others blogs and have also blogged about news items which concern them – all this of their own doing.
Maybe I just need to continue persevering and bribing them to create posts and hopefully this will be rewarded with greater personal interest from the students.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I think the big thing is the comments- find another class with a similar age level in somewhere exotic- away from where you are geographically and ask them to give your student posters feedback- but you have to give them feedback as well. It works both ways.
Link to a few other classes and make lots of comments on their blogs and encourage them to reciprocate.
And we keep a hit counter so we know there are lots of people looking even if they aren’t commenting. We have a lot of ‘lurkers’ and just reached 10,000 hits in one year so someone is watching us!!!
July 30th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Thanks for the comments Allanah.
I’m actually wondering if it is the age group. I’ve read lots of blogs written by younger students who are really excited with the whole concept of blogging. Unfortunately 12 – 13 year olds aren’t quite as easily persuaded into this world of what appears to them, more work.
We have left comments on a number of Canadian, Australian and American student blogs but again there don’t appear to be the numbers of student bloggers in this age group as there are with younger, and older students.
We will keep trying and hoping!!!
July 31st, 2007 at 5:04 am
Hi Lynne,
I kind of understand how your kids are feeling. I blog (with very limited readership) and am part of social networks where you can have a type of blog entry and it is trying to communicate in so many different ways that can leave me feeling a little burdened by the effort to keep up with it all. There are now social networking sites for teachers to use with their classrooms that look interesting and may be the way to go rather than each having blogs (is this with blogmeister?) You can find the social network sites on my wiki that you mentioned a couple of posts ago.
Would it be better to have the kids grouped and set up blogs according to their interests rather than individual blogs? When we blog, it is about something we are passionate about.
I’m not sure – just musing out loud really.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Audience is key. The minute the students see that there is an audience the blogs become meaningful. One way I was able to shoe the power of commenting and creating an audience to my students was to devote class time to finding other blogs by students and leaving comments behind. We started in our own city then spanned the globe looking for similar classes teaching the same materials as ours. I then made commenting on other blogs part of their classroom assignments or “their scribeposts” Students do know the value of audience. Most of mine have Facebook accounts and are constantly updating them and asking friends what they think. This is the same with blogging.
My school year is winding up. We start in 5 weeks and it will take even longer to get the blogs up and running. For you to find student commentors now look in your hemisphere. See who is out there blogging and using these tools. Take your students there and show them the power of comments and being an audience. Then they will receive the comments and their enthusiasm will increase.
Thanks for the post. You are doing great work. Keep it up.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Thanks for the comments Susie and Chris
Susie – Interestingly, since my moan both here and to my kids their interest in their blogs has once again been stimulated. I do think think some of the disinterest is a Year 7 & 8 thing – more interested`in other things (games online etc) and no natural interest in writing of any form!
Chris – Today we have tried searching for student blogs but with very little luck. While there are some student bloggers in NZ, most are at a younger primary level and the same seems to be true of Australia. We may just have to wait for classes in the Northern Hemisphere to get back to school!
However I’m not giving up and will continue to pursue this (student blogs)with my class.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:09 am
Wow Lynne, I have only just found you, through your student Hamish and through Clay Burell. I am so glad you put your students on the Support Blogging wiki as I was having the same problem as you. And what a piece of writing your student Jayden did! I think I’m going to really like the interactions with your class. It’s good to blog about our difficulties as well as our successes. Thanks for posting about this.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Jo
Thanks for your comments and support of my students and what they/we are trying to do. And a big thanks to you, Hamish for reaching out into the edublogging world and continuing to extend your contacts.
BTW I’ m still not sure where to reply to blog comments – here, by email or on the other person’s blog?
August 11th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
[...] say and in particular this pdf caught my eye, an extract from that pdf is below. In addition what Lynne Crowe has to say on one of her recent posts ties in with my [...]
August 11th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Lynne,
Thanks for your comment on the resources page of my blog. I will keep adding to and reviewing the tools and resources that I find. One day I will put it into some kind of order! I have just written a long and rambling post about blogging and I see a link has come through. Your comments on my ramblings would be most welcome. My feeling about student apathy about anything is one of ownership and relevance, this I believe is the key to sustainability. Utopian perhaps, but something to strive for! Keep up the good work and you are locked into my netvibes account now so I can follow yout posts.
August 12th, 2007 at 5:56 am
I have encountered the same issues as you Lynne. I am the eLearning Integration Teacher at a primary school in Brisbane, Australia. My students a very ICT savvy. I know they use their home computers quite a bit, and I know they are Internet literate. I’ve created safe, online communication areas for them in our Moodle environment. I’ve given each student their own blog space, and I’ve created heaps of forums to encourage online discussions. The uptake has been slow. Like Chris said earlier, I think it boils down to audience. Our Moodle environment is password-protected and limited to students at my school. Perhaps they would be more excited about participating if they knew they had a wider audience. This, of course, would open up a minefield with parents who would protest against their students communicating with strangers online. Is there a simple solution?
August 13th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Hi iTeacher
Maybe you need to think about opening up your students interaction with others outside your school. I think the blog environment is safe especially if students keep to all the online safety guideleines and you moderate all comments before they are seen by students. While I don’t moderate my students comments I do have an RSS feed to all their blog comments and in 99% of cases I actually see their comments first. So far we have had no inappropriate comments and if we did/do I would use this as a teaching example.
For me, it is part of our job to educate students insensible use of the Internet. I don’t think banning certain tools / sites helps teach students Internet safety.
Maybe you need to have a parents meeting and use some of the information provided by well known bloggers who are anti filtering content for students.
I’ve checked out your blog and added you to my list of reads. Thanks for visiting and giving me some new insights to read.