'Why let our students blog?'—and more, including an e-book angle

The Gradgrind approach to reading—too much emphasis on drill-and-kill and the like—got a well-deserved knock in in a study questioning the effectiveness of Reading First, one of the Bush Administration’s favorite K-12 programs.

Ironically a new Pew study plays up the benefits of teen blogging, which some of the d-and-k zealots might dismiss as frivolous.

Meanwhile, down in Nelson, New Zealand, a teacher named Rachel Boyd has come up with a lively little video show that cogently sums up blogging’s benefits for elementary schoolers.

So what’s the e-book angle? What better medium for book reports than blogs, where student can share their ideas and prose with an audience—a big boost for young egos? On top of that, students can link to their source material on the Web. Let’s just hope that the IDPF can get book-related linking right—so that someday students can effortlessly link from their blogs to specific passages within books. If publishers really want books to survive as a medium, then they’d better stop bellyaching about competition from the Web and pester the IDPF to aggressively update the ePUB standard.

A few caveats from a nonteacher, me

Let me throw in a few caveats. When students blog, how often do they get diplomatic critiques from teachers, who could encourage them to develop their ideas? Some writing samples I saw from Boyd’s students tended to be a bit thin even for the early grades. I’d have encouraged them to expand their little paragraphs.

“Why,” I’d have asked, “did you write that? Why don’t you put in a few more sentences to back up your main points?” The old journalistic formula of who, what, where, when, why and how, might help. Simply put, I want blogging used to make education more demanding, not less, and I suspect that many students would actually prefer such an approach—and feel flattered that Teacher actually took an interest in their creative work. Of course, there’s a little problem: the crummy student-teacher ratio in so many schools in the States and elsewhere. May the tech expenditures not displace the human ones!

The benefits to teens, as depicted in a formal study

Despite the above concerns, blog advocates would seem to be on the right track. As summed up in eSchool News, the Pew study explored “explores the links between the formal writing that teens do for school and the informal, electronic communication they exchange through eMail and text messaging.

“Teens who communicate frequently with their friends, and those who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones, do not write more often for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens, according to the study, released April 24. Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says.

“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…

“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.”

Applicable to younger students as well?

Undoubtedly, as I see it, most of this would also apply to younger students, such as Rachel Boyd’s.

Oh, and one last observation: Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew, said the students’ school assignments typically were just a page long or less. Mightn’t blogging encourage kids to writer longer and at a deeper level—on things they cared about. E-books certainly can help, by making it more economical to provide teenagers and others with a wide-ranging of books matching their needs and interests.

(Blog-related video via Ray Schroeder at the University of Illinois. Reading First study via ASCD SmartBrief.)