tk00: BP03_20091201_EduUses4Blogs (The Machine is US/ing Us)

“From the first words ever spoken to the last time you told a lie, stories have been told throughout history. These analog stories are sometimes factual, sometimes exaggerations, sometimes imagination, but are always creations from the mind of the storyteller. In some respects, these analog accounts are the history of mankind recorded in text (and perhaps images) on scrolls, parchment, paper, and even cave walls.

With the advent of technology in the 20^th century, mankind has developed another method for relaying storytelling to more people, more often, but not any less exaggerated, or built from imagination, than the analog methods of the past. The World Wide Web, the Internet, mobile messages, and more, have provided the digital storyteller with a number of avenues to spread the word to the “parchment” of the computer screen, the “scrolls” of the Internet, the “cave walls” of our home theater system, and the slips of “paper” in text messaging.

Digital has taken the world from ink and paper to picture elements in some formats that didn’t exist even a decade ago. Stories, however, have remained pretty much the same as exaggerations, fictions, skewed facts, outright lies, imaginations, and truths, still filling the minds of humanity with the dialogs or propaganda of the teller or podcaster or blogger.” (Kowalewski, 2009)

The blog and the blogger have become the town criers of our time. Some blogs are factual and some are not. As these storytellers proclaim our history in the present tense and record their sagas for all to see and hear, we, as digital citizens, can comment on all their words of wisdom.

We have come a long way in communication, but have a long way to go in education. Many schools do not allow students to post or comment on blogs and some school boards do not allow staff members to participate in this Web 2.0 communication either. How do we proceed? We must educate the educators, so everyone can benefit. While I understand the need for privacy, especially younger students, I also understand the need for communication. What is the answer? Again, we must educate the educators in order for them to educate the community.

A Blog is an online journal (a weblog), a webpage, that allows users to post content and get feedback via comments. New developments in plug-ins like Widgets, give Bloggers fun options for sharing their world with their audience. Teacher Blogs range from journals to course management tools. Student Blogs in English classes are often spaces for literary reflection, but they could be anything the student and teacher can envision.

True bloggers don't only write blogs, they read them, comment on them, and therefore participate in a community of ideas.

Interactive; comments and RSS feeds
Ownership; your own space, making your own decisions about contenct and design, or "agency" as Janet Murray calls it
Authentic audience
Transformative: write a blog post as a reaction to another blog post and get comments that you can also react to
- What can I learn from you & what can you learn from me?
  - The teacher is no longer the only source of information; she is not responsible for making all the connections.
- Blogs can push reading, writing, and thinking up the taxonomy; students are synthesizing and evaluating!
Blogs in Plain English (a cool video that explains it "all") see below