Before I dive into a discussion about how I have used / plan to use blogs in my professional teaching career, I would like to share with you all how I have integrated blogging into my everyday life as a way to 1.) express myself as an individual, as well as 2.) enhance my learning about a variety of scholarly AND personal / leisurely interests. After all, before we can use blogs as effective tools to effectively help our students develop as writers, learners, future citizens, and so on, Richardson argues in his introductory chapter of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms that we must first practice what we preach:
“…as educators, we must tap into the potentials that these tools give us for learning. And that doesn’t just mean learning about our craft or technology of our curriculum. It means learning about whatever we are passionate about. For me, that’s figuring out how these shifts and how these tools change the nature of learning and what that implies for education. But it also means learning more about the Chicago Cubs, photography, and many other topics that hold my interest… The common thread, I believe, is that we make these connections in our own practice first so we can thoroughly understand the pedagogical implications for the classroom” (8).
In other words, just as it’s difficult to be an effective football coach if you don’t know the technical aspects of the game, theories on developing teamwork and leadership amongst players, and ways to motivate players to strive for success and fulfill certain goals, it would be equally difficult to effectively integrate blogging into your classes “game plan” if you have limited experience, or no experience at all, with what the medium is capable of. (My apologies for the corny sports analogy, but I believe it’s absolutely true). With that said, here are some brief examples of how I have already worked to “walk in my students’ shoes,” as Richardson puts it, with blogs.
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To start, toward the goal of keeping my own sanity as a busy grad student, I maintain a personal blog completely devoted to exploring one of my number one passions; music. Basically, this blog helps me support my learning / practicing of music as it is my goal to submit one original composition in the form of a video / audio upload each week. Immediately bellow is the link to the blog itself titled "Rick's Music," as well as an example of one of these video / audio uploads:
http://rickleefilipkowskimusic.blogspot.com/
Maintaining this blog accomplishes several personal goals that I have set for myself. First, it acts as a motivator for me to keep learning, practicing, and overall playing music in such an otherwise busy time of my life. Second, this blog helps me articulate “where” these songs came from, as well as “why” I decided to write them. For example, view the explanation of “Amy’s Song” (in a brief paragraph, I discuss the experience that led to the creation of this song; my first love):
"Back in high school, my very first girlfriend and love was a young girl by the name of Amy. Shortly after telling her I loved her, I wrote this song for her. After being together for more than 2 years, ranging across our senior year of high school and college, the relationship ended extremely haphazardly (what can you expect, we were both only 19 years old?). For years after the breakup, I was devastated, and couldn't even think of, let alone play this song. However, as I sit back and reflect, those were some of the greatest years of my life, and although we no longer speak, there will always be that place in my heart for Amy and her song" (Filipkowski).
In addition to being an expressive tool, this type of writing about my music allows me to reflect on it, as well as continue to reflect on and process the experiences that have led to the creation of the music itself. In other words, this blog helps me practice an overall process of “regular reflection” about not only my scholarly experiences, but personal / life experiences as well (Richardson, 44).
Lastly, the blog as an atmosphere further increases my engagement and motivation to continue to fulfill my musical passions as I know that my friends, family, and other random human beings give me regular feedback on my music, which in turn influences the rest of my creative process and how I approach my future musical compositions. In Richardson’s words:
“By publishing content to a wide audience, we say ‘these are my ideas, my understandings of the world.’ That is in itself empowering, and with it comes an expectation that our voices will be heard” (133).
As individuals listen to and post comments regarding my music, I am able to access a much larger network of musicians, music appreciators, and general “critics” that give me authentic feedback to further help me reflect upon and revise my musical process to further achieve the composition processes used by the pros in the “business.” In essence, the blog allows me to become an amateur performer and professional musician.
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Second (and I’ll not provide such a lengthy explanation here, I promise), I use / have used my personal blog as a tool to enhance my more scholarly learning. For example, if you poke around more on this very blog, you’ll discover a video that I uploaded of myself reciting the first ten lines of The Canterbury Tales in as authentic of Middle English as possible for an English class assignment:
One thing that I’d like to share with you is that it was not THE assignment to create a video recording of myself reading this. The actual assignment was that I needed to recite this passage as best as I could live, in front of the class, with many sets of eyes on me. To help me prepare, I recorded myself reciting the lines, watching and re watching them as practice. I also sent the link to many other of my friends, family, and classmates to get their feedback. Overall, the experience of watching myself perform, as well as reviewing the feedback on my performance (even the simple comments such as “Cool man! Nice pronunciation on those Rs!”), really helped me reflect, revise, and further refine my performance. In short, I don’t feel that the final, live performance would have went nearly as well had I not initially posted it to my blog and invited others to give me feedback.
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In my future professional teaching career, I plan to use blogs much the same as I have learned to use them myself; to give my students the opportunity not only to use digital writing technologies to reach academic goals, but also as a way to develop themselves as individuals and help them process their reservoir of growing, often confusing, life experiences (in an appropriate, safe way, of course).
On that note, I intend to encourage students to personalize their blogs as not only a reflection of a particular set of academic learning goals, but as a reflection of themselves as individuals who are curious about the world. Although I understand that this has it's safety implications, as well as assessment implications, I feel as though making this online "space" as vibrant and full of life as possible (as opposed to the traditional classroom often perceived as void of fun, life, and individuality), is a positive step in making it a meaningful place for all kinds of academic and personal learning.
Lastly, I do NOT want to fall into the "trap" as described by Beach et. al. in chapter one of Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools as they state:
"Given the importance of learning how digital writing tools achieve certain purposes, we need to consider how students perceive their uses as more than simply writing assignments for teachers - now on blogs or wikis rather than in word" (13).
However, as of just finishing week 1 of this class, and although I do have some ideas beginning to brew, I'm not necessarily sure what such innovative and "new" teaching "looks" like in the classroom!
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Although I consider myself as relatively experienced with, and dare I say “savvy” with the tools that we will be exploring throughout this course, I still have many, many questions including, but not limited to:
-The issue of the “digital divide” that certain individuals, schools, and even entire districts of teachers and learners face. In short, if the system can’t provide for our use of these tools as we will explore throughout this class, what CAN we do? In other words, although we might not be able to use these specific tools, what about the theory involving there general use are transferable to other pieces of our teaching and learning? To what degree is it our responsibility as teachers to “close” this gap? How, if possible, CAN we close this gap?
-ASSESSMENT, assessment, assessment! Although I completely agree with, and wish to understand more, the uses of these technologies in the classroom, how on earth do we assess our students’ develop via their use? To what degree are standard / current writing assessment paradigms useful in assessing digital writing? Or, because digital writing is a “new” / different type of writing exercising and requiring new / different types of literacies, do “new” means of assessments need to be created that are reflective of this different type of writing?
-Fun vs. Function.
"In this book, we argue that digital writing through use of blogs, wikis, online discussion, digital storytelling, podcasts, e-zines, digital scrapbooks, or e-portals can serve to engage students in writing" (Beach, 1)
Although I totally agree that these technologies engage, motivate, and get students excited about using them, how do we move this excitement beyond just being pumped about using the technology itself, to using the technology to foster some sort of learning?
-Not just using a blog, wiki, or other digital technology to do the same old crap. As described above, although I am beginning to get some ideas (e.g., exercises in perspective taking via role plays), I'm not sure what such assignments and implementation of these digital tools "looks" like on the ground floor in a classroom... Help! I'd like to see this!
-And much, much more!
Thanks for reading my first post everyone!
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