blogsnobbery?

So there I was last fall, idealistic and righteous and inspired by the best. I was going to have my students do “real” blogging, the kind where they take off on their own and find themselves writing everyday and transforming their lives. I wrote this in a draft post that I never posted:

I am thinking a lot about learning and technology, as usual. The Core blogs have been slow to take off with my students and I have been trying to figure out why. I guess I should say first what I mean by “take off.” I had 2 goals for them: that the blogs would be a place where they write informally so as to better understand these hard books we read AND that they would read each others’ blogs and so increase the community, facilitating in-class discussion. And then I had a third, secret ninja goal: I hoped they would get creative, use visuals, explore the internet… Instead, they only started really writing at all when I finally agreed to quantify a “grade” for posting–something I am absolutely against. I made it part of their class participation grade and advised that 3-4 short posts/week would be “A-Level.” They seem to read each others but don’t comment very often. And a few of them are linking to the occasional video on the internet.

At that point in the semester, all I could see was that it wasn’t working. By the end of the semester when the students wrote about which blog posts were good illustrations of “learning happening” I felt better about the blogs. I also really liked the class covnersation we had when they said “how do we know when learning happened?” A good question for us all! So they showed me their connections being made, and their struggles and, most impressively, times when they changed their minds. They also wrote about things they read on other students blogs that helped them see things differently, to understand more fully how 2 people could read the same passage and come up with equally logical but differing interpretations.

I always love reading blog reflection portfolios: )

But then I read their end of semester requests for how we would change the class next semester (it is a 2 semester class). Most of them said the blogging requirements were too high and that they wished more things from the blogs had been brought up in class. It was a hard pill for me to swallow at first. I wrote in the class blog:

Blogs: you seem to want to post less frequently and/or to bring the blog writings into class more. I think this means that not all of you found the blogs to be as useful for personal reflections on the texts and for making connections on your own. No–I think that is not accurate. I think maybe what you mean is that the blogging felt like a lot of work, and you didn’t see how it counted much in the grade. (Although–it did, as part of that blog paper which really helped the grades of many people–have your opinions changed about that since you did the reflection paper?)
Many of you said that you would like to perhaps have 3 required blog entries per week, due 24 hours or so before class, and that would then be used in class. It does seem to me that the writing is a useful way for people to get prepared for class. YOu could write about the topic that is your group’s topic, but then some of that nice freedom to explore on your own is lost…hmmmm…

But then I had to ask myself: Am I just being a blogsnob? Do I have some preconceived notion of what “good blogging” is, and is it keeping me from using this web 2.0 phenomenon to its full potential for this class? Um, yeah. I think I was.

I did some more thinking, this time about what the biggest challenges of this class are: long, hard to read texts, preparing well for class discussion, development of an intellectual community that matters to the students. And then I listened to them. Here is what I came up with (from the class syllabus):
“…This semester, you can use your blog as a way to prepare for class. Post at least twice a week on any of the 3 readings for the week. You should post by Wednesday’s class time each week. You can post more than 2x.

Post of the Week (POW) award: You will also be reading the blogs of your classmates. Each week you should leave a comment in one of your fellow students’ blogs, telling WHY you want to nominate this particular post. I’ll count the votes on Friday, and we will feature this post in class. Winning POW awards will give you more points toward your Community Contributions grade…”

So–we’ll just see where this leads. I am framing the blogs more as a blogging community where they share their thoughts-in-progress with each other. It is only a subtle difference, but I think it could be profound. It places more emphasis on reading and responding to other blogs. It also gives them a way to respond, since many of them said they just didn’t know how to “write on someone else’s blog.” And I think the effect of getting positive feedback from their peers will have a great effect on the community. It also is a way to reward excellence of many different kinds. I am excited about this!

But to get to this place, I had to give up my notion of the genius blog writer, giving expression to her most profound thoughts and pusing the limits of what Blogger could do! The students remind me that they are just that: students. Blogging is new to them. Even if I want to pretend that they are doing it for themselves, on their own, they aren’t! They are doing it for our class. And now I see that that’s ok. In fact, it is great. They want to use the blogs to the service of the class, not the other way around. Once again, the students are the teachers…