In the online world, the humble blog arrived relatively late to the party. The term ‘weblog’ only emerged in 1997 (WebDesigner Depot), but since then the growth of blogging has been little short of meteoric. There are now over 172 million active websites on the internet (Netcraft).  75 million of these are using WordPress, which makes it the world’s most popular blogging platform.

So what might these trends mean for us as educators? Of course many of us already subscribe to educational blogs for our own professional learning, others have trialled digital portfolios with advisor / mentor groups, and many of us regularly encourage students to write blogs within our classes. There are pockets of rich practice all over the campus. Given what we know about how students learn, perhaps it’s time to open up the conversation around how blogs might fit within our tool box of pedagogical strategies?

Take Service for example. In both my College service and GC I have been exploring with colleagues how and why we might want to develop a collective service blog with our student teams.

It has taken me a while to be convinced of the potential value of blogs for student learning. My initial concerns were probably fairly standard: getting students to write meaningful reflections can feel like such an uphill battle… how do I persuade all my students to write their own blog? .. and what would they write about anyway? ..and what if no one reads their blogs? .. or people read them and post nasty comments? How can I control the ‘content’?

I wonder if the most important question we ought to ask though, is around who the audience for student blogs should be. And in this respect, I’ve experienced something of a paradigm shift. Rather than seeing blogs as summative Reports for external readers  I now see them as formative Journals of Learning for students themselves. I used to think of blogs as megaphones to publicise one’s personal view and now I see them as collaborative tools to deepen collective understanding. So in a school context, blogs have for me become less about communication and more about metacognition (awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes). 

Once I started thinking about our service blog as a place to explore and record the learning taking place together. I realised that it actually doesn’t matter if anyone else reads what we write at all. (Though I still think plenty of people will be interested in our Africa GC blog: parents, CAS & UAC advisors, potential new members of the GC, our service partners in Tanzania).

Moving from Blog as megaphone to Blog as learning bridge

So a ‘service blog’ could be a space for students to chart their shared service learning for College, Local or Global service. John Dewey famously said: “We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on our experiences.” Properly scaffolded reflection helps students to shift from a mentality of ‘just’ doing service to building understandings around how to ensure their service is effective, and to engage with what role they might be able play in making the world a better place when they leave UWCSEA.  Perhaps blogs represent a way of both encouraging and recording this shift. In turn, this helps those of us leading service activities to know that the intended learning is happening, and to take action if it is not. In short, I think blogs might represent an effective way to assess the quality of service learning happening in the groups I support.

Not everyone likes the idea of making their thinking visible in this way, and I accept that this tool will not appeal to all our students, but the other advantage of course with blogs is that the space is a collaborative one. Unlike a personal journal, CAS manager reflection or simply the thoughts in your head, blogs offer opportunities for students to ‘interact with others in a variety of situations.’ (If you recognise the quote its because it’s one of our learning principles!) Those who are reluctant to write their own post can still read, discuss, and comment on others’. Students who like me were initially shy about ‘putting their thinking out there’  have an opportunity to develop this skill in a safe and supportive context.

If you needed any more reasons to consider giving blogging a go, look no further than the Digital and Information literacy curriculum (which by the way we are all collectively responsible for delivering!). Here are two standards and you can see how blogs might fit in the jigsaw.

So to conclude, I would argue that because blogs are a place where students can ‘actively process and reflect’, ‘apply metacognitive skills’, collaborate and ‘have ownership of their learning’ (4 of our learning principles!)  I think they thoroughly deserve a place at our pedagogical table! The good news is that UWCSEA has invested in a WordPress CampusPress account called Edublogs (specifically designed for schools) which allows us to easily create and run thousands of WordPress sites, and keep complete control over privacy, users and content.

How are you using blogs to enhance student learning? What concerns do you have? Please join the conversation!