I haven’t used blogs with my students for a good year (because of the class and courses that I am currently teaching - have been getting my head round wikis instead), which is such a shame as over that time my learning has curved upwards and I know that I would want to do blogs with students differently. So this is a frustrated teacher/blogger reflecting on what I would do now.
I really liked grammaramble’s recent comments about blogs, which she linked to Jeff who talks about the need for blogs to be seen as conversations.
The problem with blogs is that it is not about writing, it is about a conversation.
“If you think of blogs as conversation vehicles, then it becomes easier to understand how blogs can be very powerful in education and the classroom. Too often, educators use blogs as a replacement for journals, when really what blogs should do is extend conversations from within the classroom to a wider audience. Those conversations should then be brought back into the classroom for further discussion. The word ‘blog’ might be short for Web Log, but the power of blogs is not in the writing, it is in the thoughts, the comments, and the conversation that they can start, sustain, and take into a million different directions.”
My students in the past (the ones who took to blogging like ducks to water and are still blogging a year down the track) treat blogs as conversation. The journallers are much more reticent and only write when class time is given or the bare minimum expected!
I would put a lot of effort now into developing the class conversations, allowing time in class to read and comment and also making sure that blog posts were referred to in the class. I would spend time helping students find blogs that they are interested in on topics which push their buttons and make them WANT to talk. I would put energy into getting others to read our blogs, through links in dekita and the like.
The bit of research that I did in 2005 with my students’ blogging suggested that it was a powerful way for them to discover their individual ‘voices’ but I would like to develop those voices to help them have conversations.
I also think that blogs are useful to demo that you are reading other people and to give links and this is something that I didn’t explore sufficiently with my classes in the past. The reason is probably that I hesitate to make them read more when their English was at a lower level. However, with a new blogging class I would like to start with linking and move on to focus on the critical reading and commenting aspect of conversation-blogging.
I also liked Nancy’s list of 7 virtues of blogging. A nice starting point for new bloggers, with advice about being brave, generous, motivating, patient, humble, grateful and showing respect. She got them from Kathy Sierra, whose visuals I always enjoy.
Just realised that this post has me referring to someone who refers to someone else not once, but twice! Rather than conversation, this is perhaps a version of ‘And then she said that he said…’ No doubt there is a term that has already been coined to express this…
Nothing like having to give a presentation for making you knuckle down and actually think. In preparing for what I intend to deliver at CLESOL on Web 2.0, the first part (talking about Web 2.0 and what it is) is easy - in fact, the hard part is keeping it reduced to a reasonable and understandable level.
When we were little, my mother taught us to play mahjong - probably a very inauthentic Chinese version - I don’t know where she learnt to play! But I loved between games when we ‘twittered the sparrows’ - shuffling the tiles together to make a clicking noise. 
enjoyed the sessions that I managed to get to.
I am learning that when you come across something useful you note down the reference straight away. The other day I read a comment on a blog posting that said something like ‘Technology is not just a tool. Technology opens doors’. Apologies to whoever said that - but I liked the metaphor of the open door.
