Thing 2: Student Blogging & Writing

Blogging seems like such an OLD technology even though it has only been around for about two decades. When I perused this assignment and clicked through the resources, my mind immediately went, “been there, done THAT!” I was about to skip this module altogether when my brain went to a completely different warm and fuzzy memory about all of the good things that came to me from blogging - both personally & professionally. I blogged as a first year school librarian with a running commentary and reflections on daily life at school. I now look back and see how critical that process was to my own growth as a teacher and professional. It also provided me with some levity, and an outlet, to run with ideas. I was eventually solicited by School Library Journal to write an article with advice to other new School Librarians. It ran in the September 2006 issue, and I was published in the same issue as one of my heroes, Stephen Krashen.

I think, at its core, blogging is an extremely healthy exercise to practice writing and reflecting. It’s my opinion that all students that are learning to practice their writing and thinking skills would benefit greatly from attempting to blog.

From the resources listed in the module, two nontraditional tools seemed to catch my attention. In thinking about implementation & application for me at the middle school level I was very intrigued by Google Docs & Flipgrid.

First, in thinking about Google Docs, I see a ton of potential in students being able to compose their work in a simple word document/ text editor and then have the capability to share at different levels - either with peers, teachers, or publish to the WWW. On the surface, Google Docs might seem like a laughably pathetic and unsexy blogging tool, but I think there is a lot of power in its simplicity. As a School Librarian, I love how I could be invited into a teacher’s Google Classroom and add to the conversation about literature, information literacy or tech. Since my district is a Google for Education school, all students have access to the Google Tools suite. There are so many simple ways to have students microblog using Google Docs.

Secondly, my latest crush has been on the tool Flipgrid. This is a relatively new one to me, and I think it is considered to be more of a vlogging resource.  Nearly every device these days comes with a camera. What an amazing way for kids to use video to reflect on learning prompts - whether it's writing or any other critical thinking assignment! I’ve used Flipgrid once before and was impressed that it is fairly low tech. I had the most trouble keeping my recorded message under the teachers request of 90 seconds. In looking at the Flipgrid website, it looks like the video length range is from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. I had written a small list of bullet points to help guide me when it was time to speak in front of the camera, but even then it was WAY harder than I thought to record myself. It took at least 15 takes for me to capture something acceptable. I know students would probably be less analytical than I was in recording but I thought the entire process was valuable practice for how make a succinct statement and defend an opinion.

In closing, I still think that there is a lot of merit in having students as bloggers. They might pushback or dislike blogging exercises at first, but with electronic journaling, it’s easy to measure growth over time. It seems like this “old” technology is still around for a reason. I’m impressed with what’s still available and how the blogging space has matured over time.