Maybe I missed something here, but what is the point, exactly? 901am reports on a story from the Chicago Tribune about how blogging will revolutionize education.
One Principal believes blogging is the future of education. And I tend to agree. The ability to quickly assess a students understanding of the course material is huge. And teachers can easily interact with students in the comments section and in the classroom forums. Likewise tools can be created in which to rate, and/or grade posts to help teach students where they need to improve. Built in spelling tools will help students create a solid understanding of grammar and excellence in performance.
That all sounds great, but how is that any different than asking children to get out their notebooks and begin writing? Can’t you grade and comment on those? Interestingly, on paper you can even underline things and comment in the margin along with using those little editing marks I was required to learn starting in the fifth grade. Commenting on a blog really only provides the ability to leave a general comment, without the advantage of pointing out specific strengths and weaknesses in the paper. Er, blog entry.
I bet the required word count is a little lower, too. Let’s teach our students to think in sound bytes, and express themselves in a good two paragraph blog entry. Short, eye-catching but not terribly deep. And just how does spell check create a solid understanding of grammar and excellence in performance? Isn’t that like claiming my calculator is giving me a solid foundation in arithmetic?
I have nothing against technology in education, and obviously have nothing against blogging. At the moment, however, I’m filing this in with that whole movement in education right now which seems determined to provide a minimal education in basic skills with the least amount of reasoning skills required of the students but is highly entertaining. And bears catchy phrases like the “21st Century Schools Project,” or the “Partnership for 21st Century Schools (pdf).”
We are training the 21st century mind. Check here to see what it looks like. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find something insightful, but probably not. (I take no responsibility for what you may encounter if you follow that link. It is Blogger’s random button.)
Related Tags: blog village, toplist, blogging
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I followed the link and got the blog of someone who describes themselves as a “48-year-old child”.
That is too funny. And almost too relevant. I got three blogs in a row that I couldn’t decipher. One was in another language and I couldn’t figure out what the other two were supposed to be about, although they were in English.
I got the Soul-Mate Calculator!
Educators are grasping at straws. There was a *study* recently that over 80% of teenage girls now communicate mostly via MySpace/Facebook. Many college students we work with now don’t use email, and no one has a blog. They use Facebook instead to communicate to one another. Blogs are already “out” among that age group.
Also, it seems funny to me that they would use spell checks, etc. with this “educational” blogging system. For years now, people communicate via email, text-messaging, Myspace, etc using all lowercase letters, no punctuation, misspellings, shorthand, etc. And Educrats think they will get teens to turn ship and start using proper English?
I do feel bad for the Educational system in some respects. What are they to do short of some type of Tough Love program starting in 1st grade. Like instead of a program to turn in your weapons, have a “Turn in Your X-Box program” or have a black out on Cable TV during the week. Make kids start diagraming sentences again. Memorize math facts….have parents actually get married when they have kids and stay married….for starters…
when I clicked the blog that came up had the latest entry entitled “the end of common sense”. How appropriate…
Oh, Kristie, your thoughts are so relevant to something I’m working on. I wish that I didn’t try to tackle so much at once, but I WILL get far enough into this book to offer some commentary.
That’s funny, Anna-Marie. I think “common sense” is no longer in vogue. Maybe because it is because we are so bent on trying to tear at the fabric which ties us together, leaving so little in common.
I disagree. I think that blogs can have a place in the classroom, although like any education tool, they can (and probably will) be overdone. A couple of comments:
how is that any different than asking children to get out their notebooks and begin writing? Can’t you grade and comment on those? Interestingly, on paper you can even underline things and comment in the margin along with using those little editing marks I was required to learn starting in the fifth grade. Commenting on a blog really only provides the ability to leave a general comment, without the advantage of pointing out specific strengths and weaknesses in the paper. Er, blog entry.
Actually, there are a number of new technologies that allow users to comment on individual paragraphs within a web text. Diigo for one. There are others…
Let’s teach our students to think in sound bytes, and express themselves in a good two paragraph blog entry. Short, eye-catching but not terribly deep.
I say let’s teach them to think in sound bytes as well as extended-length forms - and everything in between. Kids today will be exposed to texts with a variety of lengths, formats, biases, and purposes. We have to prepare them to live in a world of sound bytes as well as 700-page monographs. And who says blog posts should be limited to two paragraphs?
I would argue that the blog is an effective extension of the notebook because it can be shared. The notebook would typically be read by two people: the teacher and the student. Blogs can be shared and they can link to one another. When students blog, they are inviting a real audience of (potentially) millions of people to critique their work, respond, question, learn.
Also, as a teacher who used to haul 20-30 salt-and-pepper composition books home on the weekends to read, I have to admit that student blogging may save teachers millions in chiropractor bills!
I didn’t say that blogging didn’t have a place in education, but that I thought it was a bit much to say that this would “revolutionize” education.
The arguments for blogging in this particular piece to which I was responding sounded like arguments for traditional essays, not for blogging.
There are definite applications for such technology, but we need to be sure that the assignments we are giving students match the goals of the assignment.
Yes, kids will be exposed to information in sound bytes, but that is not an argument for them to be taught to do so. Instead, they need to be able to sort through the massive amounts of information they will be bombarded with and learn how to get more information in order to form a more informed opinion.
If you want to see more what I am talking about, Matt covers it well in his commentary.
I have quite a few comments on this over here.
Thank you, Barry. You raise very good arguments.