It has taken me a long time, since August really, to get my kids online, blogging, and connected. Now that we are finally ready to go, I am learning how difficult it can be to get middle school students to actively and thoughtfully write on a regular basis. I have started by making my students post the majority of their homework assignments on their blogs as a way to make it easier for me to read their work and comment directly. I also hope that this communal pot of homework will allow them to see what their peers are working on. We are discovering, however, that posting homework assignments is not blogging. It is, as one student put it, filing.
So the question is- How can I begin to motivate students to see that their writing is a way to connect to a world outside our classroom? We were looking at some student blogs from Paul Allison’s wiki, and the comment many of my students made was that it was boring to read other students homework assignments. I took this opportunity to remind them that this filing of homework assignments is exactly what many of us were doing. So are their blogs just as boring? They didn’t seem to like that.
I have begun to ask them to take notes in class and reflect on what they learned that day on their blogs, but this is still a very insular way of reflecting and communicating.
Perhaps we could have arrange a group of MS teachers to come up with some questions for our students to answer collectively, hoping that they will use their blogs as a way to compare thoughts. Even better would be if the kids themselves could come up with questions and problems to answer/solve. This exercise need not be a project, but a simple batch of prompts that a group of classrooms could share.
I am confusing myself so let me give an example. Either through twitter or on any given class blog we would pose a weekly or monthly prompt- What is the most important thing you learned this week and why do you want to share it with a larger audience? Or, what is one issue, global or personal, that you would like to help solve? After reading the prompts, all of our students would answer the question on their own blogs, and we would have a day where each classroom would read and comment on another class’s posts. Perhaps this will lead to a more organic exchange once they begin to build relationships.
What do you think? How can we find a way to connect several MS classroom that are blogging, not for a formal project, but just as a means to build networks?
Jabiz-
I’m certainly not an expert in the area of student blogging, but I do have a few ideas. Next year I’m hoping that all of our 7th and 8th grade students will maintain a blog that they’ll use for all of their classes. For starters, I’m sure teachers will most likely use the student blogs as a place for students to write assignments. But as we mature with our use of student blogs, I’m hoping we can evolve this into a platform for exchanging ideas and collaborating with people all over the globe (just like you’re trying to do).
I think it would be boring to read student homework assignments too. But I think it would be interesting to read student blogs as they dialog about things like the US Election, the War in Iraq, the current situation in Darfur, thoughts on a book they’re reading, reflections on an interesting YouTube video, personal interests, etc. And it would be interesting for students to be engaged in dialog with students all over the globe on these topics so their thinking can be challenged and stretched a bit. But it is going to take us a while to get to the point where we can do this, because I know for starters it will be a tool for students to do assignments and homework.
I would be interested in participating in some type of network project that helps student bloggers connect with other student bloggers around the globe.
Thanks,
Matt Montagne
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA
Perhaps we could have arrange a group of MS teachers to come up with some questions for our students to answer collectively, hoping that they will use their blogs as a way to compare thoughts. Even better would be if the kids themselves could come up with questions and problems to answer/solve. This exercise need not be a project, but a simple batch of prompts that a group of classrooms could share.
This is a great idea Jabiz. Again, it’s the simplicity I like most. If anything, it could be an exercise in asking good questions.
Here’s an idea: Have students write blog posts where they come up with a few questions. The questions could be about anything. Just a few questions they have at that moment. Wonder what they would come up with?
How about tackling a local or nation issue? Have students give their opinions about it and tell why they feel that way. The MS kids I’ve been have been pretty opinionated! 🙂 Or start off with a statement and have students react to it in their blogs. Tell whether they agree or disagree with it and why. Sometimes if I don’t narrow topics down for the kids they get overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.
Having been in middle school only a couple of years ago, I am sure that your students have something to say.
Why not give them a free write?
When I was in 8th grade I spent hours on the internet looking for bootleg footage and video of old Led Zeppelin gigs (so much so I can’t really listen to Zeppelin anymore). In the days before Youtube, this was hard and involved a lot trading via snail mail.
If your students have an online hobby like I did, maybe they will be excited for a free write where they can freely use Youtube videos, links and pictures to talk about whatever they want.
Whether I would have admitted it or not, I think I would have liked that.
This is the million dollar question isn’t it? An idea: three years ago, when I first began blogging with kids, I worked with a teacher in Texas who posted “hot” questions. Kids from many different schools used to go to this blog and leave their comments on his posts. While maintaining their own blogs is the best option and building a critical mass is a much better option, this is one simple way to do things.
Kids need to find connections. I used to post a set of links on our classroom blog and give the kids time to cruise through the blogs of each new class that we connected with. I would give them time in class and require them to leave several comments for others (as a way to connect and as a way to practice commenting) which they would have to email to me so I could see the comments they were leaving. Over the time they spent with kids from multiple classes, they would have to subscribe to X number of blogs (you choose the number) and I required that they had at least 50% of their subscriptions were from somewhere else. They would use their RSS accounts and then read. Occasionally (1 or 2X / term) I would interview each kid in my class about who was in their network and why. What have they learned from them? Why are they keeping them? etc. It was quite a good system. A long comment, I hope you can get something from it. Clarence