The end of every school year presents a change of workflow for teachers. Many things are required to bring closure to the academic calendar. Record-keeping especially rears its ugly head with permanent records, portfolios, and report cards all needing some attention. Additionally, the teachers at my school this year have the added challenge of boxing up every item in our classrooms for the move to our new building. We need to vacate the building 2 days after the last student contact day to accommodate the demolition schedule since our old school is being torn down in early June. Life has been hectic.

My students have been blogging for about 5 weeks. I wish I’d been able to start them sooner, but technical difficulties and getting an account on the district’s development server took some time. I think that for the kids this may be the defining experience of their year with me. They are ready learners, soaking up everything I tell them about web authoring. Topics covered have included what is private information and what can be public ( a difficult area for anyone who is beginning to publish personal narratives online), how to appropriately comment to other bloggers, how to respond to comments, how to use the strong and em tags, proper mechanics (ie. spelling and punctuation), diplomacy, and the use of emoticons .

The issue of diplomacy came up with a request for feedback regarding the classroom research project we did with Joan Parker Webster from the University of Alaska. She suggested the kids write about the research project in their blogs. She gave them some things to think about in the form of a series of questions. I projected the questions on the screen at the front of the room and we talked about them. The kids began to type. Normally they can write about whatever they choose, but this day was a bit different. They had an assignment. A few students composed thoughtful responses. A few wrote lists without any context (like a poorly done school assignment). And a couple of students wrote terse reviews that were blunt and uncomplimentary.

I didn’t want to approve any of the responses that were poorly written until the kids supplied some context in the form of a topic sentence, at least. I also insisted that if they made a generalization they should support it with an example - like any good writer would. I didn’t want to approve what I considered the rude responses at all. But my reaction to the writing made me think about the issue of control over what was and was not going to be published. When I began the blogging project I imagined that I would approve content once it was acceptably correct in a mechanical sense, and if it did not contain information that might compromise the kids’ privacy. I didn’t imagine that I would also be teaching manners. But that just shows how shortsighted I was because I spend a good part of the rest of my day teaching kids how to be polite. Why shouldn’t I have to teach etiquette with the blogs, as well?

I’m not sure what the background is for most of my fourth graders where the internet is concerned. But it seems safe to say that at least some students are familiar with chat conventions such as “OMG” and “LOL”, and the smiley icons because I see that they are using them without any prompting from me. Most fourth-graders are entirely naive about the web. All of them are naive to some degree. It is important for us to begin teaching kids about internet usage in school because many are already using the net for personal communication with little or no guidance. Kids are already there. It’s time for us to formally acknowledge that online authorship is a fact of life for kids in 2005.

So here I am, the teacher, taking control of the students’ blogs, which means the blogs aren’t really theirs. The point is that even though school blogs are an expressive form, they are not and should not be considered a free space for kids to publish whatever they choose. We need to keep an eye on them and teach them the same kinds of writing lessons we would teach if they were writing conventional essays. And we also need to teach etiquette where social conventions apply. Socially enabled software makes these lessons critically important. The writing kids are doing when they are blogging is not just an exercise. It’s not simply to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject. It reaches a potential audience far beyond their awareness. It may have an effect on people we don’t necessarily intend. Just like taking kids on a field trip, we expect them to behave themselves in public. We have to manage their behavior as well as their writing. And for that reason we must guide them in the process of becoming competent with this powerful expressive form. As I mentioned before, they’ll be doing it with us, or without us. We need to teach them how.