Blogs

= Blogs = John Kelly

Description and Uses of Technology
A staple of Web 2.0, the blog, a shortening of w//eb log//, allows one or more users to publish content online instantly in the form of entries posted and dated in reverse chronological order (de Almeida Soares, 2008; Deng & Yuen, 2011). The content of blogs is as manifold as its users. Users can employ the medium for individual and personal expression, akin to a journal or diary, or focus on a subject that concerns a specialized community. This content, moreover, can assume the form of text, digital images, audio, videos, or hyperlinks (called //linklogs//) to other websites (Deng & Yuen, 2011). Besides the diversity and richness of content they afford, blogs also offer accessibility. For their authors, or bloggers, blogs do not require any technical construction or expertise with computer language (de Almeida Soares, 2008). As such, they are considered a "low threshold application," in that they are both easy to use and learn (Grant & Mims, 2009, p. 345). Bloggers can take advantage of free, user-friendly, ready-made, and customizable platforms, such as those popularly provided by Blogger or Wordpress. Perhaps the greatest appeal of blogs, however, is their accessibility to the public. The power of the technology rests in its democracy: Anyone with an Internet connection cannot only view a blog but also interact with its content and other visitors by commenting on posts, resulting in what is called the blogosphere. As privacy can be a concern, bloggers can regulate access by imposing password protections and control interactions by gate-keeping or managing comments. Their ease and access render blogs a robust tool for teaching, learning, and the education community itself. Deng and Yuen (2011) conceptualize four major educational uses of blogging: "self-expression, self-reflection, social interaction, and reflective dialogue" (p. 441). Blogs enable teachers and students, in authoring them, to express and reflect upon ideas and feelings. Blogs further support interactivity: teachers and students, in visiting blogs, can encounter and exchange ideas and feelings, whether within their own learning environment or on the Internet writ large, and enter into discourse about that process. Specific educational applications are numerous. Teachers and students can use blogs across the curriculum. Blogs can facilitate language learning and second-language acquisition (Arslan & Şahin-Kizil, 2010; de Almeida Soares, 2008 ). They can promote writing in science and mathematics (Cooper, 2012; Luehmann & Frink, 2009). Elementary students can practice writing (McGrail & Davis, 2011), while high school students can interact with the authors of novels they have read on the authors' blogs (Johnson, 2010). As an example of uses outside of core disciplines, students can encounter nutritional information or track their own health and fitness through blogging (Burke & Oomen-Early, 2008). These same studies provide important findings on student outcomes, as discussed in the next section below. Beyond specific content, blogs support general classroom management, instruction, and assessment outside the limits imposed by the school day (Crie, 2006). Teachers can maintain class- and bell-specific blogs, posting agendas, announcing and describing assignments, facilitating discussion, and providing links to the wealth of multimedia content and information sources on the Internet. Students can even develop blogs as creative, engaging projects, exploring a topic, extending their learning outside the physical and temporal confines of the classroom, and documenting their learning in multimedia-rich manners. This use suggests the power of blogs as a formative tool (Rusk, 2010). An ongoing, student-generated blog can provide teachers, and ultimately students themselves, insight into students' learning needs and the ability to deliver immediate feedback to support them. Regardless of subject, blogs foster multiple forms of literacy, from reading, writing, and discourse to nontraditional, but nevertheless imperative, forms such as digital, technological, media, and informational literacy. Educational blogging does not end with students in P-16 classrooms. Preservice and practicing teachers can communicate their experiences through blogging, forging professional relationships and developing their skills as reflective practitioners (Grant & Mims, 2009; Lai & Chen, 2011; Luehmann, 2008). Colgan (2005) proposes the value of blogs for administrators and schools themselves, helping to build identity and relationships with parents and the community. Blogging is a tool for a yet broader community: the education community itself. Many blogs focus on specific educational concerns, from disseminating instructional ideas, tools, news, and research to opening up important conversations about the politics and polices of education. Resources are abundant. For teacher and students interested in authoring blogs, Edublogs is a leading platform tailored for the educational community. For examples and content, this compendium provides hyperlinks to hundreds of blogs: educational, classroom, teacher, student, principal, parent, and even school psychologist blogs.

Important Findings on Student Outcomes
Research on the educational use of blogs is still nascent, but many studies have already documented that blogs can yield significant benefits on P-16 learning. Several important categories, which duly overlap, emerge from these benefits: social outcomes, in the form of interactivity, connectivity, dialogue,and social networking; cognitive outcomes, in the form of literacy, reflection, and higher-level thinking; intrapersonal outcomes, in the form of the empowerment of voice, story, ownership of learning, and motivation; and ethical outcomes, in the form of awareness-raising and caused-based action. All of these outcomes underscore the constructivist efficacy of blogging: through reading, writing, discussing, and researching, students, as bloggers and blog readers, have rich and relevant opportunities to construct their knowledge individually and collaboratively. Kim (2008) cites findings that blogs promote interaction and discussion between undergraduate students, strengthen connection between course materials, foster critical thinking, and build greater conceptual understanding through their capacity for immediate feedback from peers and instructors. Deng and Yuen (2011) provide further evidence for the postsecondary value of blogs. Rooting their own study in research that demonstrated that blogs deepen students' reflective, analytic, evaluative, and cooperative abilities, Deng and Yuen (2011) found that blogs' informal environment promoted preservice teachers' abilities to reflect critically through personal narratives and active reading. In their study, Higdon and Topaz (2009) explored the effects of blogs in an undergraduate physics course, concluding that blogs can successfully fortify students' conceptual understanding of content by activating prior knowledge and thinking ahead of class, according to the model of Just-in-Time Teaching. While the value of blogs has been more systematically studied in settings of higher education, the literature indeed illustrates that blogs promise to be just as useful in elementary, middle, and high school environments. Cooper (2011) establishes the ability of blogs to support students' expression of mathematical reasoning in writing along with increased cooperation and motivation. Luehmann and Frink (2009) conducted a rigorous study of classroom blogs in middle and high school science classrooms; they found that blogs promote student-centered engagement with scientific inquiry and student-initiated extension of learning that both adapted and surpassed the original instructional design. English-language learners also benefit from blogs. Greater exposure to and interaction with reading and writing on blogs improved their organization, grasp of semantics, vocabulary, and usage ( Arslan & Şahin-Kizil, 2010). In a study of fifth-grade students, McGrail and Davis (2011) put forth evidence that, even at the elementary level, blogs made the students more mindful of audience and increased their ownership of the writing process and craft— important dimensions of literacy that blogs, as a low-stakes and less formal writing medium, supported. Johnson (2010) shows how the blogs of published young adult authors can render reading more relevant and meaningful to adolescent students' lives by transforming literature into a lively, interactive community of discussants. Finally, blogs, embedded both in the informational wealth of the Internet and the blogger's personal experience, can expand students' abilities to synthesize and evaluate information, all while helping students discover, participate in, and act on important social and political causes (Burke & Oomen-Early, 2008). While it may be young, the research suggests that blogs already serve students in exciting and enriching manners, from broadening critical thinking to forging collaborative relationships.

Emerging Trends and Open Issues
A variation on traditional blogging, known as //microblogging//, has emerged as the dominant new trend in blogging. Microblogging concentrates its content, with updates featuring only a brief string of text, image, audio, or video (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011). Tumblr, for example, is a popular microblog in which users upload images based on a focused theme. Instagram operates according to similar principles and has mushroomed in popularity. Microblogging has achieved perhaps its greatest influence on the culturally omnipresent and consequential social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, both of whose status update functions are forms of microblogging. Video blogs, or //vlogs//, are another recent variation on blogging. Vloggers upload their content in the form of videos, usually featuring the vlogger addressing a webcam. Youtube is widespread platform for vlogging. Teachers have been seizing the opportunities of microblogging, as well as capitalizing on student interest in social networking, through such sites as Edmodo, which provides a Facebook-styled experience focused on educational outcomes. A recent and growing development, known as the flipped classroom and aimed at increasing student engagement and supporting student learning, depends heavily on video. In a flipped classroom, students watch videos of instruction at home to prepare students for scaffolded engagement with that material in school (Boss, 2012). Flipped classrooms may indeed harness the premise and principles of vlogs. Interactivity represents one of blogging's greatest values, but it also poses some of its greatest risks as well. Miller and Hufstedler (2009) explore one of the major, and very serious, issues that surface from the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs: cyberbullying, which entails "repeated harm willfully inflicted on another person through technology and can include teasing, name calling, hurtful stories, embarrassing pictures, lies, false rumors, mean or threatening notes, threats of violence or death, forwarding sexually explicit photos, or other hurtful actions" (p. 2). To prevent cyberbullying, and therefore to preclude the psychological trauma it can cause, Miller and Hufstedler (2009) recommend the professional development of teachers and administrators, educating parents and students, and the institution of official school policies about cyberbullying and its consequences. In addition to schoolwide policies, awareness-raising, prevention and intervention programs, and supervision are among the chief activities and responsibilities of educators (Miller & Hufstedler, 2009). A student-run and teacher-monitored blog about bullying and cyberbullying may be an effective way to educate students about this issue while simultaneously teaching the technical skills and cognitive demands of blog maintenance, participation, and writing. Grant and Mims (2009) cite a number of issues that affect blogs, as well as Web 2.0 technologies more generally: 1) immature applications; 2) longevity of applications; 3) number of applications; 4) unconsolidated services; and 5) security and ethics. First, blogging platforms can experience unexpected downtime and software glitches, threatening the stability and reliability important to time-strapped teachers. Second, blogging services, especially those offered by free start-ups, do not live forever and are not always free forever; data exportation can preserve content in the former event and the use of free and established extant services, such as Google's Blogger, mitigate the risk of the later. Third, the sheer number of blogging services can be overwhelming. However, services such as Edublogs and Wordpress have risen to the forefront as tried and true, lessening the need to assess services for quality, utility, and functionality. Fourth, as Grant and Mims (2009) continue, unconsolidated services, or the dispersal of technologies across the Internet and developers, can create a steep learning curve if teachers implement multiple and different platforms. While preferences should be considered and respected, teacher and students would be wise to use a limited number of platforms consistently. Finally, and as cyberbullying has already anticipated, blogging raises important concerns about security and ethics. To protect privacy, Richardson (2006) recommends: To blog ethically, Grant and Mims (2009) further urge teachers to educate students about copyrights, intellectual property, plagiarism, and fair use, as well as promote students' informational and media literacy. A final issue blogging raises concerns digital equity, sometimes discussed in terms of the digital divide, or students' unequal access of and ability to use digital technologies, resources, and services, typically based on race and income (Resta & Laferriere, 2008). With respect to blogging, students with Internet-connected, personal computers at home have great advantages, including in terms of the knowledge and skills required, over students who do not. Moreover, students who have to use library computers face many barriers; equating such use with home computer use is unfair and unrealistic. To incorporate blogs responsibly and responsively, teachers should not place an undue burden or penalty on students with limited out-of-school access to computers and Internet. Swain and Pearson (2001) provide teachers some general and useful [|strategies] for bridging the digital divide in the classroom. Blogs already prove to be a powerful technology to apply and integrate in and outside the classroom. Their recent developments only hold more promise and possibility for them in the future. As with all new instructional tools and pedagogical strategies, teachers need to adopt blogs responsibly. Besides student buy-in and take-up, teachers should ensure opportunities, depending on purpose, for students to learn how to build, maintain, read, write, and comment on blogs. Most important, teachers should align the implementation of blogs with their objectives and assessments.
 * 1) Teachers follow state and district guidelines for publishing student information and photos on school Web sites;
 * 2) Teachers ask for parental permission to engage in publishing online;
 * 3) Teachers should be prepared to discuss what should and should not be published online; and
 * 4) Teachers determine protocols for publishing, such as using first names only, using pseudonyms or using anonymity. (pp. 11-12)