Travel Diaries of a Web 2.0 Newbie

This blog is written as part of Thing 4: some of it is in note form; some of it more fluid, just depending on my mood at the time of writing.

Powerpoint Reform: a first chapter

• Writing – very well written. Good to see quality doesn’t slip just because the medium changes. I find blog writings to be very opinionated, which is to be expected if it is a means of personal expression
• Reading – shorter articles; broken up into small paragraphs – this style makes it easy to stick to one thought per post and so it makes it easy for the reader to follow your train of thought. Blog articles are good to read in small chunks i.e. you don’t have to set aside a large block of time in order to go through a blog (extremely useful when you have disrputive small kids around at home!)
  How easy would it be to develop a more complex argument in this type of format? This might make the post too long – and, linked to this, how are peoples’ attention spans when reading online compared to sitting down and reading a novel? Just curious.
• Commenting – only a few of the comments add any new ideas or information on the original post. A lot seemed to be the, ”I have the same idea.” or “I did the same thing.” which is probably nice for the original poster, but makes for dull reading. Perhaps a check box along the lines of, ”Please tick this if you found this post helpful.” would save the rest of us reading this type of comments, while still showing the usefulness of the post. Some of the comments, I find myself unable to comment on: ”Bullets are hot! They pretty much rule!” Perhaps it’s some form of intellectual snobbery on my part, but I’m not sure if I want to spend my time trawling through such well thought-out and eloquently stated concepts as this.

Teaching brevity

This post, along with others at Students 2.0, have almost completely convinced me about whether or not a blog is an appropriate medium for the expression of complex and developed ideas. The eloquence and passion of these posts is very impressive and is a level to which I would urge my students to aspire. If blogging and other Web 2.0 tools encourage and give students the confidence to express themselves in this manner then it can only be good.
It has also made me realise that, if I am expecting to set up some sort of blog that students read, the standard of my writing has to be exemplary of the level to which I would want them to reach. However, would this mean that the blog loses some of its conversational nature, which may make students less at ease with it?

It may just be the limited number of blogs and comments that I have been reading, but I get the impression (perhaps mistaken) that the comments tend to be written by people who agree with the original posting and those that differ from the original post’s viewpoint are fewer in number. I’ve discovered over the years that I have, unknowingly, been trained to criticise other people’s ideas and viewpoints: this probably stems from working in research, where part of doing your job is to find fault with others’ results, analyses and conclusions. So I would be a little unnerved to post an opinion on my blog and then find out that no-one who had commented (assuming that there were comments there – if there were none, then that would spark off a whole other set of worries!) had disagreed or pointed out flaws in my thinking. Either what I have posted is the obvious and absolute truth (unlikely!) or readers that disagreed weren’t concerned enough to leave a comment, which doesn’t encourage us to develop, refine or even correct our views.

Ripe environment

As well as finding this a very challenging article, I found the comments on this post to be helpful and add to my understanding of the post’s original ideas. For example, the issue of being able to ”connect more than two dots together” I thought was very important, but I had to ask, ”Where do I get the time to do this, along with everything else I have to do just to keep up with the teaching timetable?” – the comment by Diane Hammond challenged me on this point:

”Is time really the issue? There will never be enough time to accomplish everything you want, and if something is really important to you, you will re-arrange things to make time.”

(I apologise if there is a way of linking you directly to the comment from here, but I haven’t found out that much yet.)

The question raised by Diane Laufenberg about the tension between trying the create a ripe environment while fulfilling government mandates and the demands of a curriculum was well answered by the original poster. This showed me the importance of going back over your blog and interacting further with the people who have commented. I can see how this could help you refine and develop a number of different ideas, from different posts, all at the same time.

The final point in the Thing about ”(How) can blogging facilitate learning?”, is one with which I am still struggling. The blog Rationale for educational blogging made me realise that there is potentially a large benefit to students in helping them mature and develop, in general terms e.g. the third reason on the blog mentions,

”as students explore their own learning and thinking and their distinctive voices emerge.”

Personally, I would love to see a student/s break free from their peer group and from conforming to norms and, instead, to realise that they are an individual with thoughts, opinions and viewpoints that they can express and that deserve to be heard.

The fifth reason also struck a chord with me:

”The worldwide audience provides recognition for students that can be quite profound. Students feel more compelled to write when they believe many others may read and respond. It gives them motivation to excel.”

I would hope that when they realise that any work they do in the form of a blog will be on display to the world, and not just some teacher who has a class full of similar work to mark and only a limited time in which to do so, that students will be motivated to excel and push themselves beyond what they might typically achieve.

The SP-817 Math Blog had some nice ideas of how students could contribute via a blog, but I’m not sure who would get the benefit from this format: do the whole class learn through it, or does the person who puts the blog together benefit, while to the rest of the class it is just another resource to read through?

In terms of ”(How) can blogging facilitate learning?” in my particular subject area (Biology), I’m afraid I’m going to opt out of answering that one for now. It will have to wait until I have had more of a chance to find a bigger sample of educational Biology blogs.