Wednesday, February 18, 2009

To Blog or Not To Blog: That is the Question

I'm struggling to find a balance between "requiring" so many blog posts a week, rewarding for posts, punishing for no posts or just letting it run its natural course. I made a huge effort to teach good blogging and good commenting and as long as I was requiring several posts a week I had a lot of participation--when I dropped the requirement, participation bottomed out.

I tried for two months to "make" everybody participate, I wanted to see if I could capture some kids who would not normally blog. I did capture a few, but mainly the bloggers are the girls who like to write. I get so furious at the laziness of kids, What to do? What to do?

7 comments:

Kevin said...

Some kids don't like to write, and some kids don't like specific forms of writing. Require a certain amount of writing and require a few important forms, but don't require them to endlessly do the same form.
Daily journaling or blogging can be torture for those to whom it is not a natural writing format.

nbosch said...

I know, I know---you are right. I have found over the last few years my kiddos do very little writing in their regular classrooms and many gifted boys usually hate to write. But I get so frustrated when the "refuse" to get engaged. I do think our blog offers variety--they can write on any topic, it is not all personal narrative and I don't allow "diary" entries. One of my Aspergian kids wrote only on scientific topics including "The History of Man: Part I, II, and III"!!

Even my best writers are lazy lazy lazy. Blogging causes them to have to think, and they don't want to think. Yikes--on a rant!

You can start at Recent Posts to see what the kids are blogging about http://areallydifferentplace.org

Anonymous said...

waincestroneI am new at this ,I am trying to find students to blog with my student .Exchange imformation.If you know any 4th graders that would like to blog with.Please email at wilkenk@woisd.net

mschoenberger said...

i ran into this same problem with my 5th grade gifted. at first it was required blogging--basically responding to my posts. then allowed free posting. Some students took off=mostly those who liked to write, or liked computers, or had access to computers. some had to forced to participate. funny, you would think that they would love to take part in this cool technology, but i guess it being a 'school assigment' still makes it uncool.

nbosch said...

I think that written expression has been one of those areas that have been 'left behind'. Kids, at least in my district, have few opportunities to write in the regular classrooms. Many tend to find it tedious. In my opinion, there is not a lot of thinking going on in many classrooms. Students, even the gifted ones, are spoon fed every little bit of info and so when they have to be reflective and introspective (to blog) they aren't proficient in it. We will plod and blog on!

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, regardless of the age, people often need a certain level of requirement to get them going.

My advice to any new blogger is it takes time to appreciate what you gain from blogging. Often we are talking months not weeks or days.

Have you check out Konrad's posts on student blogging?

nbosch said...

Thanks for stopping by--no, I haven't read Konrad, I will.