When thinking about the question, "how have I/could I use blogs in my everyday life?" at first I thought, I am not a blogger. It didn't take me long to realize, however, that I indeed am a blogger and have been actively doing so for the past three years. In January of 2007 my second child was born prematurely. Instead of bringing home a baby after a few short days in the hospital, our family was thrown into the world of the unknown. We spent weeks at the bedside of our son as he struggled for life in a Level 3 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit two hours from our home. In our time of greatest need, we received hundreds of calls and emails, everyone wanting to know what was happening, how we were doing and what people could do to help. One of the NICU nurses told us about CaringBridge, a website which helps connect families of chronically ill patients with other family and friends through the use of journal updates and a guestbook feature. Suddenly Caringbridge became our lifeline to the outside world. Essentially I blogged twice a day, sharing our victories and setbacks with anyone who read our journal. Blogging for my husband and I became a sanity-saver. After we were able to bring our son home we continued to blog about his daily activities, ongoing medical treatments and milestones. We found so much comfort and support from the more than 6,000 hits on our blog.
Professionally I have never kept a blog, but I always thought it would be interesting to read the blog of a first year teacher, or any teacher for that matter because sometimes, when I share stories about real life in the trenches of middle school, people are amazed at what really goes on in classrooms today. I have, however, required that my students blog. Four years ago I created a Moodle site, on which I required students to blog about books we were reading, units which we were studying, and some students were inspired to just blog for the sake of blogging. It was a useful tool for me as an educator because I was able to monitor and respond to my students' work in a convenient manner. I could read blogs anywhere I had computer access and was able to do away with my box of journals that I had otherwise been lugging home every Friday afternoon. Additionally, the ability to type rather than write was very motivating for some students because they either didn't like the physical act of writing, or because they liked using technology so much that the act of using the computer made the work more exciting. For me, I was also able to respond in a more timely manner to students, seeking clarification or further explanation.
In the teacher prep course I have been teaching for a university in my city, I have always thought that blogging would have been an amazing tool to use with my early practicum students. I would have loved to have students blog at least once a week about their experiences in middle and high school classrooms and require that they reflect on things that happened and ask questions about things that were new or interesting to them. For my class, however, the technology never fell into place, and so far this is still something I'd like to do in the future, if the opportunity arises.
As a PhD student at the U I have been required to create and keep a blog on several occasions. In most cases the blogs have been personal, ie. each student has his/her own blog and we post weekly and then are expected to read others' posts as well. In one class we used, what I would consider a class blog, if there is such a thing. Each week we had to log on to one blog that was created by our professor and we all contributed to the topic being discussed. It wasn't really a discussion board because many times there were not responses given to what was written. We were just expected to write, and read all the posts each week.
I believe the the use of digital writing tools have the potential to enhance teaching in many ways. As I mentioned, when I used blogs in my classroom with my middle school students, I was able to give more timely feedback. Students enjoyed writing on a computer more than they seemed to enjoy writing things by hand (which some kids seem to find nothing short of laborious). Students also had access to the writing of other students (though this was still carefully controlled in our building) and could learn from their peers. On the flip side, I do feel that for some students digital writing can be a hinderance. One thing that made the use of blogs and wikis and the like difficult for me as a teacher was access to the technology. I taught in a school of 1200 students. We had three computer labs which, between the three totaled 65 working computers (on a good day). Scheduling a computer lab was nearly impossible and usually involved begging, compromise and prayers to the computer Gods that once in a lab, the computers actually worked. Though 80% of my students had computers at home, that still left another 20% that didn't so access at school was limited and access at home for many students was not available. So, though some students had easy access to our Moodle site, many students simply didn't have the opportunity to use a computer to get online and participate. Another hinderance for me was that some parents did not feel comfortable at all with the use of Moodle and other technology tools because they feared for the privacy of their child's work. As a parent of children I can respect their fears, and though our district wen to great lengths to protect our students, things still happened, kids got bad emails from other students in other districts who someone gained access to our sites and some parents refused to have their kids use blogging or Moodle at all. Finally, I think accessibility is an issue for some people, particularly those with disabilities. Though many sites are accessible (for example, for the blind), not everything is 100% user friendly all the time. This can be frustrating for students and for me as a teacher. I have a visual impairment myself and rely a lot on a screen reader to accomplish tasks online. When I get on a site that prohibits me from doing my work independently, it takes the fun out of the task. I hate to create frustration for students by requiring them to use something that is not accessible.
What I'd like to learn... I know I have a lot to learn. I need to know much more about wikis. I tried to use one with my students but because we were all logged on at once usually during a class period, the simultaneous posting didn't work and so I stopped using the wiki. I'd really like to know more about how this can be a useful tool in a classroom and how to do the tagging and bookmarking associated with wikis. Also, I use YouTube as a teacher frequently and we have used our video camera to capture family moments but I've always left the editing and posting up to my husband. I would like to become familiar with how to create a video and post it, so that others can enjoy it too. This could be so helpful in delivering instructional material by creating a podcast for others to watch. Of course I'd also just like to know how to do it so that I can actually share videos of my kids instead of just watching them on the camera. I also would like to hear others' ideas about how to make the use of technology possible in a classroom in which availability of such technology is limited. How can we get video cameras in the hands of kids, how can blogging happen more often, when resources are so limited? As an English teacher I think it would be amazing to do some digital story telling or do something with performance poetry and get this on video to be shared with others but in my school, because of what we had to work with, this was never a possibility. I think there are so many possibilities, I can't wait to learn about everything that is out there!
