Blogging to Learn
July 30, 2008 by Marielle
I must admit, I was initially a bit befuddled by the blog-o-mania that has hit society with the sudden, formidable force of a tsunami. Why, I thought, would anyone want to journal publicly? And why, I mused, would anyone want to read the online musings of random strangers? The answers eluded me until I stopped fighting the tide, took the plunge, and let the wave carry me wherever it might.
I find that such overwhelming mass appeal usually points to something interesting about human behavior. Since I am generally a proponent of the theory that experience is the best teacher, I figured I should make a genuine attempt to see what the fuss was all about from the inside. And so I began writing this blog, reading and commenting on blogs of others with related interests, and corresponding with other education bloggers through online educator networks. While I had been using various Web 2.0 media in the context of teaching and learning for years, until recently, I had not yet committed to maintaining a professional blog and actively trying to penetrate the blogosphere, which, of course, is no small commitment.
Thus, I have begun to discover answers to my persistent pre-blogging questions. One good reason I have found to journal publicly is that writing helps to clarify my thinking, especially if I am writing for an audience beyond myself. This is not a new idea, of course; it runs through the literature on writing development and instruction, and good teachers have been capitalizing on it for years. But blogs offer some new affordances that provide significant leverage, and it is not inconsequential that such leverage can be felt by experienced as well as novice writers. For example, I can enjoy the benefits of writing to further my own thinking, while also potentially sharing that writing with others who might be interested in communicating with me, which can further my thinking even more, thereby smoothly fusing the cognitive and social benefits of writing.
This writing, which lives on the web and is therefore accessible to anyone at any time, can travel through a network of people at lightning speed, which keeps the collective thought processes in motion, engaging people who might never otherwise be engaged if it were not for the mighty web lifting the constraints of time and space. I am the manager of my own dynamic text, which means that I can revise it as I choose without interfering with its distribution; others can bookmark it, embed links to it within their own posts, or send it to others within their own networks, while I continue to maintain creative control over it. Linking to blog posts within discussion forums (and vice-versa) combines the advantages of both media. Time to reflect between interactions can deepen in-conversation thinking and allow room to confirm that we are saying what we mean.
Even if no one ever reads it, writing for a potential (real) audience makes the writing and the thinking behind it better than it would be if I were not planning for it to be read by others. (This well-known, but still vastly under-utilized tactic always worked well in teaching writing to my sixth graders long before blogs were a gleam in society’s eye, but blogs make it so much more practical.) The blog structure and conventions encourage bursts of writing that are short enough to feel manageable (for readers as well as writers), but long enough to be substantive and coherent. Successful writers generally agree that writing regularly is one of the keys to their success, as frequent practice improves anyone’s game. Periodic publication also helps to broaden one’s audience, especially in a medium that is so conducive to widespread dissemination. RSS feeds, trackbacks and pingbacks help to keep authors and their audiences connected. The fact that we are always writing in hypermedia means that the possibilities for directly linking our thinking to that of others are infinite.
Through blogging, we are able to establish dynamic identities as authors within online communities of practice that ideally complement rather than replace those offline. We are not necessarily writing for everyone, but everyone has access to our writing if we so choose, and thus we may find and engage audiences and conversation partners through channels previously unavailable to us. Strategic blogging can dramatically increase one’s chances of actually being heard, which is naturally one of the great thrills of the human experience at any stage. Authorship is empowering, and it helps us shape our identities, both internally and externally.
Where I went wrong in my pre-blogging thinking was in asking why anyone might be interested in the musings of random strangers. The key is that bloggers’ audiences and conversation partners are not random strangers; rather they are a self-selecting subset of people who share interests and might never encounter each other without the internet. We need not read every blog that is written, but if we find even a few kindred spirits with whom we can stretch our thinking, our minds and worlds are expanded.
These potential benefits do not void the challenges we currently face in managing information and communication on the Read/Write Web, but they make them worth tackling. For example, I am finding it difficult to keep track of everything I have written in conversation with others through discussion forums or other people’s blogs, and it can be overwhelming to try to stay on top of all the writing of potential interest that is being organically generated each day. Many of my comments go unanswered, so I cannot tell if I have communicated anything to anyone. Often I am not sure of the best cybervenue for responding to someone…in a blog comment, in a discussion forum within a particular network, or in a new blog post. We are collectively still sorting out both the optimal functionality and the rhetorical conventions of these new media, and, thus, we are not always playing by the same rules, which can cause communication interference. Blogging is very time-consuming, but at present, I feel that it is extending my learning and informing my teaching and my research enough to make the time and effort worthwhile.
Somewhat ironically, my previous post, entitled So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet), speaks to some of these challenges, while also demonstrating some of the benefits. For instance, across the world, Paul Beaufait responded to my post in two different blog posts of his own, So Little Reciprocity? and Balance, on all fours, as well as bookmarking it in Diigo and discussing it in a forum within an educator network called Blended Learning and Instruction, where I believe he first encountered the post through an embedded link. Both the contents and the mere existence of his responses informed my thinking about this post and its subject matter in general. Thus, as with any movement as organic and potent as Web 2.0, the benefits and challenges are two sides of the same coin.
So, at the risk of falling into the tiresome trap of blogging about blogging (or meta-blogging, one might say), I am using this opportunity to think through some ideas in writing, share them with any who might be interested, and potentially initiate (or continue) some constructive dialogue about them. The authorship drive is a strong one, and blogs clearly offer an inviting outlet for it. Before blogging myself, I could not fully appreciate the interactive writing experience that emerges from this particular set of affordances. The affordances of blogging have much in common with the affordances of participating in discussion forums and wikis, but they also differ. We cannot fully optimize these media in teaching writing without authentic experiences of authorship. And reflections on my own experience suggest that, in the context of effective instruction, blogging can potentially put a whole new spin on “writing to learn” at its best.
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“The key,” you explain, “is that bloggers’ audiences and conversation partners are … a self-selecting subset of people who share interests and might never encounter each other without the internet” (Blogging to Learn, ¶7, 2008.07.30). That the encounters we have are as inspiring and manifest as they are suggests that self-directed readership and self-motivated authorship are more powerful than wicked cool aggregation and inter-connectivity technologies that can be downright buggy or fluky at times. What I’m wondering now is whether what you call the Unsung Hero… (Authorship 2.0, 2008.06.18) is as compatible with with writing to learn, learning to write, writing to connect, or learning to connect as blogs are.
Thanks, Paul, for your comment, and for the ongoing, engaging conversation. As I’m sure you can tell (even from the title of this blog), I completely concur with your well-articulated argument for the power of “self-directed readership and self-motivated authorship.” I do believe that threaded discussions have an important, if less glamorous role to play in authorship and all of the variations on “writing to learn” that you mention. That’s certainly true in my own experience. I don’t think that blogs and discussion forums are interchangeable, but rather I think they serve different aspects of the writing process and complement each other well. In fact, I think much of the power of these tools comes from using them together. Thus far, I have received many more responses to my ideas in online discussions than directly through this blog. Often the writing I do in conversation (e.g., in discussion forums) helps me to sharpen my ideas, which I then shape into more fully formed published pieces (e.g., blog posts), which I hope will elicit more responses, through comments or discussion forums or even direct correspondence via educator networks. Since I wrote the “So Many Nodes” post, the discussion in Classroom 2.0 that I mentioned (”Teaching Writing with Web 2.0 Media“) has continued to flourish. I think you might find it interesting, too…
Your “meta-blogging” blog wasn’t a tiresome trap but rather an inspiring gem of a blog post. I am going to share your well-written thoughts with my faculty. Cheers!
Thanks so much for the feedback, Erik. I’m glad that my public musing has also proven useful to others (thereby reinforcing some of the embedded points…)
Yup, again (from other unnamed venues or posts), if Edublog users are logged in (and pre-approved) for comments, the interface for commenting is less demanding than if not.
Meta-blogging is reflecting on what blogging is all about. It should never be tiresome, if blogging, written reflection of meta-cognition (the whys, hows, and wherefore’s) of blogging is not.
That you refer to forum posts as conversation (a dirty word in my vernacular), and choose to make blog posts into “more fully formed published pieces” seems like posting against the grain, at least as far as blogs may evolve.
The ringing in my ears suggests that blogs and commentary are all about conversations, when most forums degrade into noise; with tens, to hundreds, to thousands of ill-threaded comments; or silence. If not collected, condensed, and consolidated in wikis (or other venues), aren’t forum posts a lot of hot air?
Since I apparently cannot edit my previous comment, post posting, it seems I cannot add a backlink in reference to my quotation of Marielle (comment two on this thread). If this direct encoding works, in a comment on first go, maybe a backlink will appear. Othewise, once it’s posted, again I’ll have no recourse, except perhaps to delete this comment entirely.
Yup, again, direct encoding of links in comments on this blog was unsuccessful. The parenthetical reference to “comment two on this thread” in comment six on this thread should have been display text for a hypertext link back to the original comment. Edublogs or blog settings, defeated carefully hand-encoded links.
Nope, moreover, I don’t get an option to delete the comment with the failed attempt to backllink. Maybe that’s why most folks don’t bother to link pro-actively to relevant posts or sites.
Without editing options on comments, I cannot even add or delete a comma, much less correct or remove a misspelled or repeated repeated word in them. If you don’t do that for me, I look like a (calculating) fool; if you do that for me, authenticity is in question. Where do you stand?
Paul, it looks to me as though the link in comment 6 to comment 2 is working fine. As for editing or deleting your comments, I defer to your wishes. If there is something you’d like me to fix for you, I’d be glad to do it. If you tell me exactly what you’d like me to do, I don’t think that authenticity is in question. Having said that, I fully agree that the software is quite compromised in not giving comment authors the ability to edit or delete their own comments, but that is a specific software design issue, not necessarily a given for the blog medium in general.
It’s interesting that you consider “conversation” to be a “dirty word,” that you consider forum posts to be “a lot of hot air,” and that you consider me to be “posting against the grain” when I treat my blog as a publication of sorts. I guess I differ with you on all counts. I think you might be conflating medium with discourse unnecessarily. In my view, it’s not only possible but advisable to separate them. Conversations can be superficial or deep, regardless of medium. Blog posts can be casual or thoughtful, depending on the author’s intentions (or teacher’s expectations). It all depends on the discourse norms that are established at the outset of any communication and cultivated throughout. We have agency in shaping our discourses. While there might be observable patterns in organic uses of various communication media, we can play an active role in reshaping them if we so choose, at least in our own communications and those we facilitate in the classroom.
Have you checked out the discussion forum I’ve referenced? I don’t find it to be full of hot air at all. In fact, I’ve found all of the Classroom 2.0 discussion forums in which I’ve participated to be thought-provoking and constructive.
I think we can blog for different purposes and audiences and thus use different discourses. As with print media, the medium does not dictate the rhetoric we use – our audiences and purposes do. For example, some magazines employ a more academic discourse, while others adopt a much more colloquial one. Certain media (and more specifically, certain tools) may lend themselves to certain communication functions, but there is a two-way interaction at play. We can search for (or develop) the types of blogging tools that best suit our particular communication needs. While some independent bloggers may write in an informal style, I would expect a New York Times blogger to consider his or her posts to be published works. I believe that as educators, we should be proactive in helping students develop multiple discourses to suit the various communication contexts they will encounter.
Marielle, thanks for checking the link in comment six and pointing out that it now connects to comment two. I probably would have gone on burrowing, and ignored time-delayed database updates which established the connection after all.
The chances of accurately encoding a direct link like that by hand on first go are so low that I was longing for software affordances like push-button linking when I wrote comment five, as well as to the general ability to edit and delete comments that you mention in comment nine. I realize that I’ve come to expect powerful and easy to use writing tools not only for polishing published posts, but also for tweaking day-to-day conversations, and one-off commentary in both public and private settings. It is kind of sad to imagine an old fogey like me visioning leaps and bounds ahead of software designers.
That admixtures of media and discourse conventions can be either observable and predictable or volatile may encourage human agency in attempting to shape them. In spite of the relative novelty of the media we’re using–unlike, for instance, offset printing by major publishing houses, or newpapers of the ilk you note conforming blog publication to pre-existing print conventions–perhaps we both expect norms to evolve gradually, rather than be established at the onset of communication. That is, authors and audiences may implicitly or explicitly create the norms that they prefer, in a fashion rather unlike what teachers may demand in virtual classrooms.
Yes, I have checked out the Classroom 2.0 discussion you mentioned in comment two (2008.08.07). I guess one of the disadvantages of such a large virtual venues is discussion leaders and participants hardly ever notice when someone slips in or out. That particular discussion was exactly what I had in mind when I mentioned consolidation in wikis or other venues (comment five, 2008.08.14). I was reminded of it when I read through the discussion Susan Manning stater in Learning Times: Re: How are you getting people to share knowledge? (2008.07.25, ff., http://tinyurl.com/getting-people-to-share) today. Without getting too hot under the collar about searching, threading, and viewing affordances and options in situ on Nings and other community sites, I guess whether discussion there is constructive depends upon what you and other active participants make of it, or do after it.