Internet Integration Research: Blogs Georgia Southern University

Arlene H. Dawson June 20, 2011

The Internet in Schools FRIT-7330 Dr. Elizabeth Downs

Todays classrooms are really making monumental changes. Teachers have more options for instruction and are integrating technology in numerous ways into the curriculum. The plethora of advancements in technology provides todays students with a wide variety of tools to aid their learning and to serve as tools for creating products and for creatively expressing themselves. One of the internet tools available for teachers and students is the blog. Has the blog aided students learning? What skills are being advanced through the use of blogs by teachers and students? Recent research is showing that blogs are aiding and improving learning and that specific skills are being enhanced through its use. Several recent research reports point to the beneficial aspects of blogging in education from elementary and secondary, through post-graduate situations. Reports are showcasing the variety and breadth of applications in various educational situations. Daniel Churchill reports in Educational Applications of Web 2.0: Using Blogs to Support Teaching and Learning (2009), that the use of blogs with post-graduate students reflected findings that support the idea as blogs as effective educational tools and that they contribute to improved learning environments. In the report, Thats Online Writing, not Boring School Writing: Writing with Blogs and the Talkback Project (2007), Shelbie Witte writes that, by combining writing with online technology, teachers can provide opportunities for students and future educators to develop their digital fluency while strengthening their traditional literacy skills. Techtalk: Web 2.0, Blogs, and Developmental Education (2008) by David C. Caverly, Sheila A. Nicholson, Jennifer

Battle, and Cori Atkins report on a study that reinforces how blogs can improve academic engagement, reading skills, and critical thinking. Elizabeth M. Frye, Woodrow Trathen, and David Koppenhaver report that, we use blogs as technological tools to publish and showcase authentic student work, and ultimately to develop students higher order thinking skills and creativity, in the study, Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing: Meeting Student (and Teacher) Learning Needs to Achieve Best Practice in the Twenty-First Century Social Studies Classroom(2010). Teachers are using blogging with elementary students to facilitate literary and computer learning in the classroom in the study, HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking by Lisa Zawilinski (2009). Rebecca Mullen and Linda Wedwick in Avoiding the Digital Abyss: Getting Started in the Classroom with You Tube, Digital Stories, and Blogs (2008), examines the three tools and highlights their appropriateness, ease of use, and integration into a rural middle school teachers classroom. The potential applications for blogging in education seem infinite. Through blogs, a teacher can create an ambience in which students feel themselves to be important parts of the classroom community and that their needs and opinions are recognized and addressed (Churchill, 2009, p.183). Teachers and students can create and participate in blogs in which information to parents about the classroom is disseminated; announcements and assignments can be posted; daily lesson reviews and homework are provided; extra supporting websites for assignments and projects are listed; discussion boards, collaboration among students takes place; instructor and peer feedback are posted; present portfolios of completed assignments and projects; respond to specific readings, current events, writing prompts, photos, and issues; and reflections by students and teachers can be shared. Blogs provide a place where we can witness and participate in knowledge being socially constructed through collaborative discourse (Frye et

al., 2010, p. 52). Literacy programs can be facilitated through the use of frameworks like HOT blogging in which higher order thinking skills are enhanced through the sharing of diverse perspectives and the exchange of information with one another and the teacher on the internet (Zawilinski, 2009 p.655). Caverly et al. (2008, p. 35) scaffold instruction for underprepared readers critical reading, thinking and writing through the use of blogs to facilitate their movement from social skills to more academic literacy skills. With the development of academic literacy skills as goals the students were more engaged in their school work and their reading, writing and thinking skills improved. The use of blogs or online conversations through blogs can affect the way that young people present themselves to the world. Blogs allow them to access a place to interact with digital media and each other and their teachers in a format in which they are comfortable and skilled. This facilitates the acquisition of certain skills, literacies, and allows them to become competent in new areas (Mullen & Wedwick, 2008, p. 69). I have experienced the use of blogs recently in my graduate level classes at Georgia Southern. In my collection and development class the professor had the students use a blog as a forum to make comments about several articles and student reactions to their readings. We also were required to select a book that had been banned in certain schools across the United States, read it, summarize it, and post comments about various aspects of the book on the classs Intellectual Freedom Blog. It was really a great way to experience the opinions and reactions of others to various controversial subjects. Churchill (2009, p. 181) observed that his post graduate students questionnaire data suggested that blogging facilitated and contributed to their learning. Students felt that blogging contributed most to their learning by allowing them to access and read the entries of others (students and instructors). Also, I established and kept a practicum log using BlogSpot as a requirement for my practicum. The blog tools were really easy to use and

provided a place for me to document and reflect on the different aspects of my practicum experience on a daily basis. It was a unique repository for my thoughts and activities that I could freely share with others. The merits and potentials of blogs are great for building upon what it means to be a citizen if the Web 2.0 world. Their ease of use and opportunities for engagement with others provide teachers and students with easy pathways to other members of the global digital society. Everyone has a voice when students blog. The quiet reluctant student is not overwhelmed by the more outgoing assertive student. The Talkback Project (Witte, 2007, p.84) illustrated the power of the use of blogs to facilitate student engagement in writing. Reluctant writing students were able to blossom through the use of blogs and technology and freely increased the amount and frequency of their writing. The blogs allowed the students to freely express themselves and to share their thinking and work with others. Blogs present an option for communicating immediately and directly with students, parents, and others in creative ways. Feedback can be offered from all parties to the blog. Blogs can serve as archival devices for student work and their thinking processes over time (Frye et al., 2010, p. 50). Blogs allow for ease of idea sharing and construction, provide meters that monitor a postings readership, and offer the potential to link beyond the blog to other sources of information (Caverly et al., 2008, p.34) Students can locate and share articles, videos, and websites with classmates and others easily through blogging. In the Caverly et al. (2008, p. 35) study, level of knowledge, interest in further learning, attitude toward academic development increased significantly among students. Some of the barriers to implementing blogging in education are: student access to technology at school and at home, filtering devices at schools, and privacy issues. Witte (2007, p. 84) found in the midst of the Talkback project that the classroom laboratory of computers that

she had used successfully in the beginning of the project was dismantled over the summer break, and the arrival of the thirty wireless laptops that were to replace them was delayed to mid-school year. She was forced to make do with the use of five classroom computers and a great deal of creative planning to provide access for all of the students. Many schools employ filtering devices that block many blogging websites. Research and experimentation with individual schools computer access programming is required by teachers to find the blog that can be freely accessed. Privacy issues are concerns of teachers, parents, and administrators. Students have to be trained to limit personal information. An effective internet policy has to be in place and students have to be educated and trained on the proper ways in which the internet and blogs are to be used. Teachers can prevent privacy issues by locating a blog where access can be blocked by people outside the class. Blog maintenance takes time, planning, experimentation, and practice. Teachers must find out what works best for their situations and students (Mullen & Wedwick, 2008, p.69). Blog usage in the classroom is an evolving idea and different methods of blogging integration into education, as a tool for enhancing student learning, is constantly changing. Most of the research is supportive of the tool as a means to effectively introduce learners to the worldwide web and to implement its tools into their daily learning journeys on the pathways to becoming global citizens. Blogs are devices that can be implemented by elementary, secondary, and higher education instructors as a means to help students manipulate and interact with one form of media with skill and comfort. Blogs are and will continue to be a great tool and resource for teachers who have effectively planned and developed lessons using blogs for their students. Students will find the use of blogs to be a means to use the digital skills that they already possess and to aid their development of higher-order thinking skills and literacy skills in reading, writing,

and other communicative arts. The use of blogs can be maximized as long as the educational stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, and administrator) view the tool as a beneficial mechanism of instruction, expression and communication.

Bibliography

Caverly, D. C., Nicholson, S. A., Battle, J., & Atkins, C. E. (2008). Techtalk: Web 2.0, blogs, and developmental education. Journal of Developmental Education, 32(1), 34-35. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Churchill, D. (2009). Educational applications of Web 2.0: Using blogs to support teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(1), 179-183. doi:10.1111/j.14678535.2008.00865.x. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Frye, E. M., Trathen, W., & Koppenhaver, D. A. (2010). Internet workshop and blog publishing: Meeting student (and teacher) learning needs to achieve best practice in the twenty-firstcentury social studies classroom. Social Studies, 101(2), 46-53. doi:10.1080/00377990903284070. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Mullen, R., & Wedwick, L. (2008). Avoiding the digital abyss: Getting started in the classroom with YouTube, digital stories, and blogs. Clearing House, 82(2), 66-69. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Witte, S. (2007). "That's online writing, not boring school writing": Writing with blogs and the Talkback Project. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(2), 92-96. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Zawilinski, L. (2009). HOT blogging: A framework for blogging to promote higher order thinking. Reading Teacher, 62(8), 650-661. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete.