Using Blogs in Life and in Teaching

I have just set up my blog using Blogger. Now, how might I use it in my everyday life? I’m not really sure. With the exception of a photo of my cat, I did not set up the blog, in terms of its title or its “mission statement,” to be about my everyday life. I could see setting up a different blog to be about my everyday life, or using the “labels” area to identify personal items, but I think a blog should stick to one focus. I haven’t seen many blogs, but the best I’ve seen are very focused on one topic. The worst are the very personal ones, those that the “Blogging for Dummies” author calls “navel-gazing” blogs.

I can easily see using the blog for my teaching, especially for “reflective practice,” and this is how I set up my blog. I took a class with a well-known composition scholar, Chris Anson, about 9 years ago, he has since left the U of MN, and there I was introduced to the idea of reflective practice; I have been a proponent of it ever since. We benefit when we continually examine and question what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. We benefit from talking to others, listening to others, and watching others. This is how I hope to use my blog: to record my reflections and observations about my teaching, and about the teaching of others.

I can also see using my blog to record how my own classes went each day, but more for me than for my students. I can see some students using my blog as a way to keep up with class without having to attend class. But the point of the blog wouldn’t be to record lecture notes or discussion points. It would be to record what happened, what went well, what didn’t, what surprised me, and how I felt about it. On the other hand, perhaps a blog SHOULD be used for that other record, for students who legitimately cannot make it to class -- weather, illness, etc. They could at least get a snapshot of what happened on a particular day, and they could post a comment or question for me or someone else to respond to.

Another benefit I can see with a blog is helping a writing teacher to establish a habit of actually writing him- or herself. Writing teachers should be writers, but we often have too much else to do to have time to devote to our writing: preparing for class, meeting with students, grading papers, serving on committees, etc. Having a blog could help with this, especially since it is encouraged that blogs be updated on a fairly regular basis.

I’m not sure how I will use blogs in my teaching, or if I will have my students develop and keep blogs themselves. That’s why I’m in this course, to help me figure out what’s out there for digital writing tools, and how and why I might use them in class. Having students keep a blog seems analogous to having them keep a journal, and I was never crazy about that idea, even though it was to encourage fluency and the habit of writing. However, it never seemed to work out that way: students often did it just because they had to.

I enrolled in this course, as I said above, first, to help me figure out what’s out there for digital writing tools, and already I can tell I have a lot to learn: blogging, IM-ing, Ning-ing, wiki-ing, RSS-ing, vlogging, etc. Second, I need to think about how and why I would use whatever I choose, how would it help my students, how would it fit into the course, how it could be genuine writing instead of some artificial part of the class that students must do to get their grade. Lastly, I do hope that I will start to write more frequently, and to make time for reflection, and I think blogging will be a great help with that.

Wow, this does sound like a “mini-essay.” Oops.