James Farmer’s two blog posts about how to and how not to use blogs in education summarize this paper. His thesis is that

in order to effectively utilize blogs in an educational context, their inherent communication dynamics must be examined and pedagogical and environmental strategies and constructs used which reflect and utilize them effectively.

I agree entirely. The right tool for the job is always better than making-do. As an elementary school teacher who used blogs with fourth graders last year for the final 6 weeks of the school year, I have some observations to offer.

  • My students (most of them) had fun publishing to the web.
  • Many students who didn’t see much point in writing for class assignments were highly motivated to write.
  • B2evolution provided excellent management options for group blogging, as well as an aggregator blog for each installation.
  • Kids need minimal help with the technology, and lots of oversight with the social conventions of blogging.
  • Much of what the kids wrote in their blogs would not be considered blogging according to conventional understandings about weblogs.
  • In order for kids to understand what blogs are they need to read dozens of blogs, but most blogs are not geared toward kids.
  • Students especially enjoyed receiving comments, which several students and a few interested adults provided.

Much of the online discussion about blogging in educational settings is being conducted by secondary-level educators, and I wonder if there is not a worthwhile distinction to be made about the ages of the students who we are working with when we talk about pedagogy and blogging. We recognize developmental needs in all curricular areas and there is no reason to think that media literacy is an exception. Mainly, younger kids have a very different notion about private vs. public information. I know this is an issue for all students, but younger kids have a harder time recognizing personal boundaries. A kindergartener, for instance, would be far more likely to tell her classmates that her mother is in jail than would a 5th grader, for instance. The amount of teacher oversight required of the post content, writing mechanics, and comment content, not to mention the fact that students had little choice in site layout/design of their blogs, amounted to what was essentially a content management scheme. James disapproves of group blogs. He says

You can try and fit blogs into other systems such as Moodle, Drupal or Tiki but you’re not going to do well because the entire centralised philosophy of these systems is utterly opposed to that of successful blogging platforms.

This resonates with me because I did recognize that my students were not ready to take full advantage of their blogs as an individualistic publication medium. However, I think that there is a place for Drupal, wikis and other group publishing systems if your needs are compatible with what those applications are designed to do. For young, beginning writers, I’m inclined to explore other options besides blogging platforms in the coming school year. Elementary students enjoy writing for their peers, but they need a lot of help with revision. Blog posts do not lend themselves to revision. I think that a Drupal configuration (without a blog module) or a simple wiki with a broad mission outline might be better for elementary-aged kids than a weblog. Using a blog as a CMS is awkward and in many ways not intellectually honest. If I do decide to use a CMS or a wiki for my class, I will do so without suffering any illusions that my students are blogging. I don’t see how that can be a mistake. The tools should serve the goals. Too many times, teachers get it backward and let their pedagogy be defined by the tools that seem glamorous or come readily to hand.

Finally, I would like to suggest that it may prove fruitful for teachers to begin compiling something like a developmental continuum for the appropriate implementation of socially enabled software. There’s a lot to think about here.