Punished by Prosperity

At the beginning, when we first started blogging as a class, I wondered if anyone would be listening, would anyone be out there, would we have an audience?

Now it seems we are almost "punished" by prosperity.

We have had an amazing year to this point. Since the Blogging 101 article first came out in October, we have had an incredible boost with interviews, newspaper articles, our blogs being featured on the MSN homepage and a host of readers internationally who continue to reach to our blogs.

I had a few teachers get in touch with me at the beginning. Those few brave souls wanting to understand this technology better and wanting to get kids together in similar spaces. Since then we've had a number of teachers get in touch with us, wanting us to help their classes get started. We've been asked as a class to contribute to a number of projects, comment on others blogs, and we've been asked for advice for others who are beginning.

Now we need to blog constantly. We could work each day for extended periods of time on our own blogs and the blogs of others; just at the time that as a class we are going through the junior high doldrums of blogging. I am not complaining by any stretch. I have been in contact with a brave contingent of educators who are testing the waters on their own, trying, as we are, to learn the best ways to use these new technologies in classrooms. I realized the other day, when I posted Blogging Bogdown how fortunate we have been. I was able to show my students four or five other classes that we have inspired to get blogging. I was able to talk to them about teachers who are getting there, who are trying to convince administrators to let them blog and who are using their words as an argument for change.

Blogging has changed our sense of audience, who we write with, and who we write for, but it has also opened the floodgates of contacts, and the gates of opportunity and possibility for our class. I have had teachers email me and ask that my kids write with their kids and then they have seemed insulted when I let my kids choose blogs they wish to write on, when I don't insist that all kids write in all spaces all of the time.

One major lesson I have learned about blogging with kids is that authentic purposes and spaces to write makes the difference between a successful experience and not. Kids demand choices when working in these ways, and given the opportunity to write for a global audience, they will find spaces that match their interests and their style. I do definitely appreciate the number of classes that are blogging, and the teachers that have made contact with me, but we are still learning to understand that when we work in ways like this, we are giving kids opportunities for choice.

When we set up RSS feeds for our kids, and give them choices about the networks they will form, the information they are interested in, and the writers whose style they appreciate, we need to learn that the information spheres they have access to are as wide as our own. No one tells us who we must read (outside of suggestion), and no one tells us where we must write. Blogging gives kids choices, and we must support them in their choices if this is the type of learning environment we hope to structure for them.

The students in my class have formed networks on their own. Their RSS feeds fill with the blogs of other students in our class, the blogs of other student writers from across Western Canada, the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia; but we have much room for improvement. We need to learn how these networks form and how to capitalize on them for learning purposes. We must learn how to pull kids together in learning networks for short periods of time and then pull other groups of kids together in flexible groupings at other times for other purposes. We need to form networks of classrooms who are willing to come and go, who are willing to work together for short periods of time and then drop off, when projects are completed, moving on to other groups for other purposes.

If we want to work in these ways, we must push ourselves further towards authenticity, towards flexibility, towards understanding what learning means in this new world.

technorati tags: learning, networks, blogging

Comments

[Bronwyn G]

Hello, Mr Fisher!

It would be great to see your kids blogging again under the revamped way.

Tim Frederickson talks about choice when he is doing his language arts work with high school students in inner-city New York. I guess your problems are not so different.

Fair enough that you don't make your kids write in all spaces all the time. Whenever I want to work with a class, like I have worked with Brune's class, I try to write comments to everything. Some have more comment-potential than others. However because I want to encourage new writers and young writers to embrace this frontier, I try to be fair and decent to everyone. I like Classblogmeister because that way I can see everybody and what they've been up to and how they've been developing over time, and I have written some fairly flat ones recently. Sometimes it does seem that I spend more time correcting spelling and grammar (I'm your traditional Truss 'stickler' of Eats Shoots Leaves fame) than I do appreciating other aspects of writing and fresh voices. I do think this is inspiring. After three or four months it can be easy to get bored, especially when you have not the outside perspective on your own development.

It would be fascinating for a researcher to study how classroom blogging networks form and become so much more than that.