On Blogging and Learning

I came across a blog that talks about the uses of blogs as a learning tool.  (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/)  It has some interesting posts and resources.  Some of the info is practical, some philosophical.  One post gets right to the issue of epistemology and the extent to which educators are the gatekeepers of knowledge.  A summary of an interview with David Weinberger, excerpted below, was posted by Will R. on June 28.

"The idea, then, that the best curriculum is set by one person or entity is "hugely problematic." In fact, he said, knowledge has been a social experience forever, and to try to remove that aspect from it "drains the blood" from it. Humans can't get to perfection as the Web has made abundantly clear. So we have to stop trying to fit everyone into the same scope of knowledge. Making the change to a time when schools stop evaluating how individual students remember knowledge and instead evaluate how groups of students construct knowledge is going to take a generation, he said.

( . . . ) This is not easy stuff for educators in general, I think, the idea that we don't own the knowledge. It's what is making it so hard for many schools to adopt these tools in the first place."

Ouch!  Are we really such a bunch of control freaks?  This caught my attention because whereas I like for students to have a lot of responsibility for what and how they learn, I can't help but be thankful for having been "stuffed" with a certain amount of knowledge in school.  Would I have known to colloborate with students to "construct" valid knowledge during my long apprenticeship as a student? This is an oversimplification, of course, since people have different learning styles and motivations for learning.  But the internet has revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge like nothing since the printing press and we educators will be sorting out the implications for a long time to come.  I'll definitely be following this discussion, with an open mind and a dose of skepticism.  I'm planning to assign some weblog writing in a French composition class this fall.  Anybody have any advice?  I'll let y'all know how the experiment goes . . .

Comments

[jake]

Yes, one advice, tell them that what they write will be read by their grandkids. I am sure it will change their outlook on it. I cannot believe the type of stuff I wrote 13 years ago on the internet, even though I still agree with most of it still.

[walisabeth]

I taught an Advanced French Grammar and Composition class last semester and, although I did not make the student keep a blog, I made them post their essays on Livejournal, and each student had to comment on two of his/her peers' essays, both in terms of content and form (this aspect of the project sort of fell apart after a while, though.)

However, I completely jettisoned the textbook, and resorted entirely to process writing, and used the students' drafts as a springboard for discussing form and reviewing grammatical points. Some of the essays the students wrote should still be available online - I just have to remember how to access them... (I also have them on my computer, though.) The students wrote end-of-semester reflections on the process and were quite positive about it. I personally think that it did work quite well. They especially loved the peer editing -- so here you go about co-construction of knowledge.

[Michael]

Man, I wish I was in school again! We never had tools like this and "cool" teachers. You have such great jobs and great opportunities to help change the way people think.

As a Learning & Development guy in a large company, I'll have to think how to use this at work, but with the added political/public risks to consider!

Great ideas!