Aug 24 2008
Reflection on Jeff Utecht’s “Sustained Blogging”
Over the past year I have been working with teachers on the initial idea of blogs, for themselves and then for their students. Teachers who take our district technology courses have to set up an edublog and they have to enter the conversation by responding to others during the course. The first resistance is, “Why a blog?” We have had an email system for about six years, why not just write to each other by email? During the course it is wonderful to watch the process as teachers are thrilled by the comments that others leave on their blogs and the ways that interaction adds and even changes the relationships they have with colleagues. Some have sustained their personal/professional blogging practices, more often they become readers of blogs at first and hang back a bit on the writing.
Last year I had my first elementary classroom teachers setting up classroom blogs. I was surprised that it was at 2nd and 3rd grades and I wondered how well they would be able to “sustain” the blogs beyond the initial buzz. The teachers were careful in setting them up, added student artwork, brought drafts of student entries to the lab and wrote letters explaining blogs as part of the classroom reading and writing instruction. I was so impressed by the way they brought their skills of good teaching to the process of the blogs. One of the blogs can be viewed here: http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=135362.
Today I talked to a teacher who has been a pioneer in other aspects of assimilating technology into her classroom, but has not been able to see a way to sustain blogging, thus has not started it. This summer she began to interact with a group of teacher/writers who had found each other through an online course and agreed to give each other feedback. This collaboration has been unlike anything she has experienced in 18 years in her school setting and has helped her feel empowered to try some new things in new ways. Her network of teachers has naturally included conversations about blogs and this year she is able to conceptualize a way to build writing and reflecting about science observations into a blog format. I shared with her the quotes from classroom teachers that Jeff posted on his wiki page and I know she will now be part of the collegial conversation about the possibilities of 4th graders learning through blogs.
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