Digital essay rationale: Bringing blogs into the mainstream

There are many different types of blogs but those currently in use in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme are so-called news blogs or informal writing tasks. Rarely are blogs used as a collaborative “student-to-student” tool intended to be shared and peer-edited. This post will firstly define and explore the learning benefits of educational blogs and secondly, suggest how Geocaching can be used as a learning tool which serves to integrate social and mobile technologies, provide access to a global Geocaching community and extend beyond the already considerable learning benefits of blogs to include collaborative and communicative learning.

What is the IB and how does blogging apply to its global context? 

Globalisation and increased mobility has resulted in diverse, multilingual school communities. Students attending international schools are particularly conscious that location and global mobility can result in a lack of connection, particularly now when the forced closure of schools due to Covid-19 has made cohesive social networks all the more important. (IB) schools develop internationally minded people and focus on developing inquiry from a number of perspectives.  The multimodal affordances of blogs allow students to utilise inquiry-based learning skills  in a digital environment to develop critical thinking and understanding across all subjects in the MYP curriculum.

Can blogs change the way we teach? 

Social and participatory media play a significant role in the lives of our students but in an educational context, the “network effect” is often poorly understood and utilised by teachers who may lack both the digital literacy skills and the pedagogical skills needed to make full use of new technologies (Conole, 2013). Teachers need to, “challenge hierarchies and traditional ways of producing knowledge” (Lunsford & Ede, 2012), revise their attitudes to informal learning and accept its place alongside the standardised format of academic writing.  Paper-based writing is often about formulaic writing which aims to tick the boxes of the marking rubric.  Informal writing does not necessarily equate with bad quality writing. Adding the element of peer-critique and an open web environment means that students may go the extra mile to craft well written and visually stimulating multimodal blogs that are a real asset to learning. Professor Andrea A. Lunsford, Professor of English at Stanford University and coauthor of Writing Together: Collaboration in Theory and Practice, says that teachers need to consider the disparity between “old literacy” and “new literacy” and decide what part of the old literacy is worth preserving.

In order to fully appreciate and benefit from Web 2.0 technologies, students need to share their work and collaborate with a global audience.  Collaborative learning facilitates socially constructed peer interaction and places the onus on the student to share knowledge in an authentic and meaningful way. This can occur on several levels, starting with the exchange of information for planning or monitoring purposes, to high level “pupil reflection on the learning process which includes elements of metacognition“ (Austin, 2010).

New learning literacies are not innate – they must be taught. Prensky’s “Digital Natives and Immigrants” theory, which presupposes the learning of digital skills at an early age, has been superseded by David White’s alternative model :”Visitors and Resident” which is “based on our motivation to engage”.

Much has been written about the need to keep students safe from the risks of open resource web environments and to this end, learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle, often selected as a platform in schools, serving to “build a fence around the students in the classroom, dividing them both from the web users outside the course and from each other”(Rorabaugh, 2012). In The Public Necessity of Student Blogging, Travis Holland criticises LMSs as being unfit for blogging because they are not open, public or networked.  Despite fears that the use of digital technologies could expose students to risk, careful management and teacher support enables students to learn good practice in relation to privacy and e-safety in the real world (Waller, 2017, p. 227). In Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms, author Will Richardson, together with teachers and students, make it clear that digital technology has changed the way we teach.

What is Blogging and why use blogs in an educational context?

This video provides a simple overview of blogs.

Blogging brings digital literacy into the classroom to support literacy learning across the curriculum, stimulate discussion and give students a voice Sawmiller (2010). Educators are now using digital technologies to establish interactive environments that facilitate the collaborative/interactive communication that typically takes place outside the classroom in the form of chats, Instagram or Youtube.  Howard Rheinhold states although students are highly proficient in social media skills, blogs help to develop interconnected social media literacies which enable students to “connect with their public voice” and “act with others in mind“.   When considering the affordances of blogs for digital literacy learning, there are several frequently asked questions.

Can blogs be used to across the curriculum to link literacy skills to non-language subjects?

Blogging encourages the development of reading and writing skills in all subject areas and these skills in turn encourage critical thinking, cognition and metacognition (Sawmiller, 2010).  Reading and writing in subjects, not typically associated with literacy skills, is often limited to a formal writing style in the form of lab reports and assessments.  Digital technologies offer students an opportunity to write about science, geography and math in an informal style.

Does blogging encourage reluctant writers?

Reluctant writers need meaningful and authentic writing tasks – writing to someone about something rather than completing an exercise to display comprehension or to satisfy the requirements of standardised testing.  Audience plays a big part in motivating the writer. If the teacher is the only one who reads what is written, or if the writing task is “rubric-driven”, the task becomes artificial and motivation suffers, thereby robbing students of the reflection and analytical thinking skills developed through writing (Magnifico, 2010). Inviting comments from readers stimulates collaboration and underlines the communicative purpose of blogging as well as developing writing skills (Lamb & Johnson, 2006).

Graham & Sandmel point out that despite efforts to scaffold the writing process, many students are still lacking in motivation. Teachers should take advantage of existing skillsets in the understanding of visual and multimodal digital literacies outside the classroom.  Multimodal writing, which has been defined as, “texts that engage verbal, visual, written, and other modes of meaning making” (Pandya, 2012 p. 181), motivates students in ways that traditional writing assignments do not.  Due to the increased level of authenticity, student ownership and relevance to a real-life situation, combining several mediums of student-generated communication, be they written, visual or verbal, motivates students to engage in writing (Darrington & Dousay, 2014). For teachers aiming to develop digital and traditional literacy skills conjointly, the advantages of writing in an electronic format are many. However, technical difficulties and the distractions of the digital multimodal environment may make some students take electronic writing tasks less seriously than conventional formats of submission, thereby defeating the purpose, which is to increase the motivation to write (Nair et al. 2013).

„There is evidence that user‐created content software in particular encourages deeper engagement with learning through the act of authoring, simply because the awareness of an audience, no matter how virtual or tentative, encourages more thoughtful construction of writing” (Jacobs, 2003) as illustrated by the diagram below.

Does blogging encourage reluctant readers?

Communication is not the only benefit of blogging. Building on foundational literacies, the new online literacies combine reading and writing skills and promote high order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Unlike printed text comprehension, an open information system presents the reader with hypertext, the electronic linking of text common on the Internet. The ability to constantly click from one subject to another presents the reader with additional challenges that require a process of self-directed text construction (Corio & Dobler, 2007) and puts the reader in control.  This greater sense of agency explains why reading electronic text is so attractive to readers. Readers are required to develop new reading strategies which enable them to navigate a hypertext reading situation, in which the reader engages in active interaction with the text, by creating their own understanding of the material.  One way to help students understand the complexities of hypertext is to write it themselves (Patterson, 2000).  John Slatin (Slatin, 1992) identified three different types of hypertext readers: the browser, the user, and the coauthor.  Coauthors use digital technology to contribute their own response to electronic text.  Blogging allows students to become „reader as collaborator “(Patterson, 2000). In 2009, Wes Fryer blogged about The Ethic of the Link, Hyperlinked Writing and Mainstream Media Link Hangups, and it would seem that hyperlinked writing is currently underused in IB writing tasks, this represents a lost opportunity to connect students to the plethora of information available online.

Can blogging be assessed? 

Blogging can be an exercise in free expression or, using a weblog assessment index (WAI), can be part of the formal assessment process.   Self or peer-assessment in the form of blogging and commenting rubrics provide an effective structure.

 

Which platform to choose?

A change in pedagogic practice toward more autonomous, diverse, open and connected learning is the philosophy behind the Personal Learning Environment (PLE). In Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network , Jonathan Mott describes an “open learning network” (OLN) which combines the best of LMS and PLE to include social networking sites, microblogging tools, and other Web 2.0 tools which offer flexibility, openness and adaptability and security. Edublogs is the number one site for education blogs and lets you create and manage teacher and student websites. Powered by WordPress,  Edublogs is a free, easily-customised, open source platform for teaching digital citizenship in an authentic context.

What is Geocaching and how can it be applied to education?

The official Geocache video shows you why this GPS-guided treasure hunt has become a global pastime for millions of Geocache players.

Originally a recreational activity, Geocaching has become a learning tool that combines the affordances of mobile and Web 2.0 technologies to develop creativity, collaboration and critical thinking and problem-solving. Unlike structured, formal learning environments, Geocaching lends itself to both planned, non-formal learning which includes self-motivated, multiple learning outcomes and to learning activities where no explicit learning outcomes are involved. Unconscious or incidental learning takes place during the process of deciphering clues or exploring the environment. An element of gamification is introduced with levelling (difficulty of clues, locations) and reward motivation.  Geocache blogs enable students to construct an interactive, collaborative personal learning environment by combining physical and virtual resources.  In addition, the authentic engagement in public writing to a diverse audience allows students to share information, knowledge and interests  while developing cross-curricular literacy skills.

Conclusion

Given that 85% of children’s waking hours are spent outside the school classroom, educators should consider how informal learning experiences can directly contribute to learning outcomes in school.  Geocaching and blogs offer many benefits for education.  Combining the thrill of the chase, healthy competition and natural curiosity with digital technology and student-generated content results in educational applications spanning all areas of the curriculum. Together, they promote sustained, interactive, collaborative and autonomous learning which motivates students to become better readers and writers and give students a voice in the global community.

 

 

References

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