What's the Big Idea about Blogging?

Even this late in the game, I am seriously thinking about changing my topic for the paper in the Seminar in Writing class. Originally, my thoughts were to involve family literacy and early writing skills of children, but now I am thinking I should shift a little and move towards the idea of blogging within a family literacy program. (I'm still thinking and open for suggestions.)

I have had the unique opportunity to teach in a family literacy program, which has provided me with a chance to try out a variety of teaching methods. I have been trying to find ways to motivate my students to enjoy reading and writing (at least somewhat), not just to make them guinea pigs for my research. I just think (and research backs this up) that there is a definite need to break the cycle of illiteracy and not pass it on to families' future generations. I try to point out to students that reading and writing is everywhere and that all of us have to "deal with it" in some way EVERYDAY!! So, why not enjoy it, right? Well, not so much for students who have had negative experiences in school and come to class hoping to find a family literacy program different.

Recently, as you may know, I have tried blogging with my students, in order to change things up a bit-or at least that's how I saw it. We were reading a rather lengthy book and completing literature circle activities after every few chapters. Activities included things they said were more fun (and some even admitted a little more beneficial) especially compared to traditional book reports they have done in the past. My students completed various roles such as Artful Artist, Word Finder, Discussion Director, etc. that they selected themselves and completed the tasks as they saw fit. These were then shared the following class session and seemed to go quite well. In fact, to back up a bit, before we began to read this particular novel, I heard groans of "I HATE reading!!" turned to "This isn't so bad, I kind of like this. . ." (Hearing that they hated reading was hard for me to swallow since luckily I was born into a family that adored reading and it filled our house! However, many of my students now are not so fortunate and do not see it as a fun activity, but rather something they have to begrudgingly get through because someone (in authority) told them they must read this and be ready to discuss it or regurgitate (what the teacher is looking for) back on to a book report).

One week I decided to change things a bit after I watched the students texting in class and so eager to look up information on the Internet. I told the students that for this session of our literature circle we would be blogging about the book. I was shocked by the responses and the amount of resistance I received! I thought the students would be really enthusiastic to begin to combine what I thought was the best of both worlds-texting and using the computer. NOT SO MUCH!!! I am still trying to figure out what went wrong on that day, but I may have an idea.

I waited a couple of weeks again before I brought up the subject of blogging again. I asked colleagues and brainstormed possible reasons. When I tried it the next time, we were at the very end of our novel and went back to writing and/or drawing our responses on paper; we then transferred them to our blogs. I am not sure if they were thrilled, but the responses were a little more enthusiastic and there definitely wasn't any resistance. Mystery solved? I'm not sure! Perhaps, the first time was just a bad day?? Perhaps, the writing out ahead of time helped?? Did the students not want other people to see their writing?? Perhaps, they realized I wasn't there to tear apart their writing?? Maybe it wasn't so bad afterall, even though I was told it is so much different than Facebook because there the students are free to write whatever comes to mind. Here in the blogs, I was asking for the students to write on something about our book we were reading.

For me (and the students) this is still a work in progress!! But I do know this-the big idea for blogging (with my students) isn't the blogging itself, but to make writing fun for them and to just get students to write because the more you read and write, the better you'll read and write!!