By Fred Haas, HHS Teacher
Getting students blogging has been a rising tide in education for a few years now, sometimes with greater hype than substance. Yet a blog should not be someplace on the web for students to simply post essays, completely in MLA format, that they would otherwise submit on paper. Blogs are so much more than that, and the potential power of student blogs can be profound.
While not all student work should be made public, much of it can be and the benefits are many. Most fundamentally, student blogs present an opportunity to showcase work that seeks, demands, even needs a wider audience. Blogs open that work to those both inside and beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Introducing blogs in the classroom liberates student work from being for teachers’ eyes only; that alone has a range of powerful implications.
As a teacher, I have been continually amazed at how few opportunities students have had to look at each other’s work, without the looming spectre of cheating. Using blogs as a platform for sharing student work, instantly invites students to not only produce with a wider audience in mind, it also creates an opportunity to amplify the feedback that they receive on the work.
With minimal preparation, it is easy to get students reading and responding to each other’s work with greater engagement and ease than ever before. Student reviewing and responding to each other’s work in a productive way can become a matter of course, not a novelty. Outside experts, other educators, the community at large gain a window into the dynamic and ever-changing world of student work. They too can review and respond.
Think of the joy a student experiences when they read a comment on their own blog left by another of their teachers, past or present, or better still another student, thoughtful and caring adult, even a professional in a respective field, any of these from the student’s own community or another country.
What’s more, the dimensions of student work that can be produced expands considerably. Blogs are so much more than the realm of printed text only, they are full-blown multimedia content management systems, capable of showcasing a range of expression. While still the coin of the academic realm, printed text no longer need be the only viable means of student expression of learning. In the digital world of blogs, all kinds of mediums of expression can be introduced and used with increased effect.
At Hopkinton High School, printed text, still photography, audio, video and more all populate the student’s palette of learning tools. Blogs can (and should) become part of an evolving portfolio of student projects as well as a narrative of their experiences, learning, knowledge making, and wayfinding. An individual student’s blog is in the process of becoming a living document of their journey.
Harnessing the potential that exists in a single place for students to document the journeys in multiple courses and the potential of student blogs begins to blossom, reaping benefits that lie beyond our current view.
For blogs are not merely a publishing vehicle, although they can certainly be that. At their best, blogs are places and spaces for lengthier, sustained expression. Arguably more important, blogs are a marker in a much larger public conversation. The comment features alone afford that kind of interaction and feedback. In fact, it is their capacity to facilitate conversations that continues to make blogs endure.
The potential power for student blogs is still yet to be completely realized. Yet, at HHS we are beginning to recognize new possibilities.
