Blogging Press

Well, Barb and I were really nervous. I'm doing research on blogging in Barb's class, and a local reporter called to do an article. Maybe not in all regions, but blogging feels a bit like it's on the margins. I didn't want anything to ruin our work, but the article turned out very nicely. The pictures are nice too.

NWP Writing Retreat

We're in Branson, Missouri at our first National Writing Project Professional Writing Retreat. There are fifteen of us. The windows in the meeting room face Table Rock Lake, and the fall colors are beautiful. I'll post a picture. The focus of the retreat was to write for professional publication. At first, I was a little nervous that no one would come when I said we needed to write about our teaching and our classrooms. The experiences in our summer open institute (a satellite of GKCWP) tended to be more writing rooted in our personal experiences.

Actually, the focus on professional writing created a drive and ambition--and a professionalism to the writing that we did. It's 2:00 p.m., and we won't leave until 8:00. Ginny, from Willard, leaned over to me and said we needed a couple of more days.

I could have been worried that we didn't have 20 people, but like I told Laura, we are small but powerful. We are just trying to grow and create leaders for our site. I felt like Laura--worried that there was not going to be enough people, but when I saw everyone in their small writing groups--hunched over the tables, writing and books in front of them, participating in intense discussions, I knew that we had exactly the right group. It was perfect.
Here's an overview of our writing:

• Ginny is writing about her reluctant readers and writers in her junior and senior applied communications class.
• Laura is writing about talk in peer writing conferences.
• Joe is writing about his college composition course (Writing II) and his experiences teachingit this summer.
• Karin, a new creative writing lecturer at a local university, is writing about teaching her courses.
• Beth, a college professor, is researching and writing about her experience teaching a senior English class at a rural high school.
• Larry was recording his experiences as a first year teacher.
• Connie wrote about the lessons she learned for all students based on her student with Asperger's.
• Alicia wrote about self-regulated learning in a writing classroom.
• John wrote about his first year experiences with crazy parents.
• Kelly wrote about how journal writing and writing a healing.
• JoAnn wrote about her class of all boys in an experimental writing class she organized.
• Barb wrote about the blogging that was going on in her classroom.

The food was wonderful, and the schedule was beautifully arranged. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful fall day. The work felt so productive.

Teaching with Blogs

Teaching with Blogs

Barb was disappointed today about students' language on the blog. I have to tell you I've been impressed by what I read tonight. One student posted in her blog her self-initiated writing. She said that she doesn't often share her writing, but she was proud of this and wanted to share it. This kind of "work" was unsolicited by the teacher. The student really put herself out there by blogging about the death of her father, and there were two comments from one blogger. One comment said the piece was really long, the other comment said it was time consuming to read. I have never posted on the blog, but I couldn't help it. I just felt like I had to post--through her a lifeline. I just moved from participant-observer to active participant--at least for one post.

Teaching with Blogs

Well, today was the first day I had a chance to look at the blog posts from the class I am studying. There are three blogs from three different classes. They are all reading the same novel right now--To Kill a Mockingbird. This is the third time that I have worked with this teacher as she incorporated blogs into her classroom. Oddly, the first two times we had 100% of parents and students consent to being a part of the study. This time there was between 1 and 4 parents who said no. I thought that was interesting, and I wondered how much the media and politics was involved in parents' perceptions of technology.

Another future study would be to interview each parent whose student participated in the study. Let them look at the blog (they are already invited) and hear what they have to say.

A lot more scaffolding was done by the teacher as she tried the blog for the third time. Unfortunatley, one thing has stayed the same. Technology problems. The school had two mobile laptop labs at a cost of about $15,000-$25,000 each (I was told by the principal). A couple of the laptop were deemed "broken" by the new technology specialist. Some of them were missing a key on the keyboard. The teacher made a long list of the problems and gave to the technology specialist. The tech person's solution was to take the broken laptop's off the cart, pile them in the corner, take the working laptops off the rolling cart, and place the computers in a room of teacher who has no students.

When Teach (that's the person I'm working with) tries to get students access to the computers at school the electrical outlets can't sustain the power that is needed. Wireless internet goes in and out, and calls to the tech person go unheeded. Any teacher who wants to blog has to have a backbone of steel and stubbornness to go along with it. No one wants to help, and no one really cares about technology. I've read other blogs where teachers said that there was lots of support. from administrators and fellow teachers. I'm a very positive person, but where I live--in southern Missouri--people see technology as a t.v. and a radio, and there is not much interest in learning how to integrate it into technology.