Edtech Treks: Squeaks, Squeals & Squawks

Another Voice Heard From
by Carol S. Holzberg

(Originally posted in class on Thursday, May 1, 2008, 07:57 PM)

Hi Everyone
The assignment for this week’s EdTech Leaders Web 2.0 forum requested that we discuss the benefits and challenges we anticipate from integrating streaming audio and video into our classroom, school, or district, then brainstorm the steps we might take to overcome these challenges. So I began working through the assigned readings and gathering my thoughts for a response. But in the interim another article crossed my path and I got distracted. So my first post in Form 5 isn’t about streaming audio/video. It’s about blogging. I want to share my thoughts about a blogging article I just read. I promise to reflect upon audio and video streaming before the end of the posting period.

Here goes:
As if we needed vindication and proof that our efforts to integrate Web 2.0 resources are indeed right on target, here is some information about a report that will (hopefully) make you purr with delight. It’s titled Blogging helps encourage teen writing and the subtitle reads: “Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers” published in eSchool News on April 30, 2008 (http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53663;_hbguid=e0da166a-2d66-434d-9c7c-01286ec3b126). You’ll need an eSchoolNews account to access it, but registration is free.

The headline and article grabbed me right from the get-go because it shouted:

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

So I used Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) to make it more accessible to me and also to highlight important ideas in the article. Diigo would let me share those highlights with you through any Web browser if I so choose, but I’ve not made my highlights public yet. So I used Diigo to extract all my private highlights to the computer clipboard (it has a highlighter to note important points) and now I’m posting those excerpts here (through a simple Paste).

Here are the article clips (quotes) I think are VERY important:

• Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers. [We knew that!]
• Survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project [this is where the data come from.]
• Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says. [students don't like to write, but if students blog for whatever reason, they tend to write more and in this case more = better because they practice, practice, practice]
• Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.
• Bradley A. Hammer, who teaches in Duke University’s writing program, says the kind of writing students do on blogs and other digital formats actually can be better than the writing style they learn in school, because it is better suited to true intellectual pursuit than is SAT-style writing. [this is key for me…it's a home run really!]
• “In real ways, blogging and other forms of virtual debate actually foster the very types of intellectual exchange, analysis, and argumentative writing that universities value,” [this Bradley dude] wrote in an op-ed piece last August.

So why do I think this is so signficant?
Teens write for a variety of reasons, the report notes:

as part of a school assignment, to stay in touch with friends, to share their artistic creations with others, or simply to record their thoughts. Teens say they’re more motivated to write when they can choose topics that are relevant to their lives and interests, and they report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the chance to write creatively. Teens also report that writing for an audience motivates them to write well and more frequently–and blogs are one way of providing this type of audience.

[Contrary to] conventional wisdom, the study also found that:

the digital generation is shunning computer use for most writing assignments. About two-thirds of teens say they typically do their school writing by hand. And for personal writing outside school, longhand is even more popular–the preferred form for nearly three-quarters of teens.

[This really threw me. I'm still not sure I understand the implications of this finding. I really don't understand how it is possible that students prefer to write longhand when they understand at a gut level how much easier it is to correct, edit, improve, and re-draft something that's already in electronic format. This suggests they write on paper when they are not at the computer, e.g., on the subway, at the lunch table, in a car, whatever. Or does it mean something else?]

Bottom line!
The gist of what the article suggests is that blogging can help your students become better writers. I know that blogging is not the ONLY way to help students become better writers. I for one don’t like to blog! But blogging may make sense for some students and because of that fact, I guess it’s up to us as technologists to provide a blogging option for students who will appreciate it.
Carol

P.S. THANKS JIM for letting me know about Diigo. It’s truly an amazing tool because if I read any online article at work, I can Diigo that article and have it available to me at home or wherever, with all the comments and annotations that I attached during my first reading.

P.P.S. One very important question!!!!! How do we grow the writing skills of students (or educators like me) who would prefer to become better writers in a less public arena than a blog?

Resources

• School News staff (2008). Blogging helps encourage teen writing. ESchoolNews (Wednesday, April 30, 2008) retrieved from Web May 1, 2008 from http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53663
• Lenhart, Amanda, Arafeh, Sousan, Smith, Aaron, et al. Writing, Technology and Teens (2008), retrieved from the Web on May 1, 2008 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Writing_Report_FINAL3.pdf