Using Blogs with Discussions
Nina McCune
After visiting positions at Columbia University and Pratt Institute, Nina McCune has relocated to the deep south to teach Modern American History at Baton Rouge Community College. She is currently writing a book on human and civil rights in interwar America. Her other publications include writings on xenophobic violence and human rights.
After a rousing discussion of blogs and blogging (which in cyber-time happened light-years ago – you know, last week), I retreated into the a-technological abyss of sketching out several scenarios on…note paper. It wasn’t an I-Pad or the safe, glowing confines of a word processor that captured my ideas and questions from the webinar – no digital audio recording to be later transcribed, no random one-word electronic grunts to outline my ideas. As terribly old-fashioned as this is, I am also preparing a conference presentation of moderating the use of electronics in the classroom, and wanted to keep my outlines separate and little more alive than hitting the “save” button to reactivate later. While suffering the humilities of messy ink and crumpled paper, I found I was struggling with a possible contradiction: if I am aiming to suggest to colleagues in Baton Rouge myriad distractions, problems, and the hostile learning environment associated with gadget-addiction in the classrooms, how on earth may I dare contribute to cyberspace on constructive dialogues via blogging?
As it turns out, no matter of sketching out, scratching out, and re-crafting can resolve this apparent contradiction, because I realize there is really no contradiction after all. Actual calendar years ago, I underwent online teacher training when the only discussion modality was the asynchronous forum. Long before instant-messaging, chatting, Skype-ing and all other sorts of remote-yet-instantaneous communication, we fretted about the value of posting ideas on the web for others to read…possibly days later. How would we craft discussion questions and create discussion environments that remained fresh and active (at least until the due date)? What if students would not formulate complete ideas fully addressing the question at hand, making discussions muddled and confused? What if we did not check the forums every hour, on the hour, and some misguided or mispronounced comment led the discussion down a terrible, dark path? Could learning happen? Can we really support our students in such a format? Reflecting on the webinar on blogging – I realize that we continue to ask a similar set of questions. To be frank, haven’t educators returned to this similar set of questions since serious pedagogical inquiry began/time immemorial?
These new formats, while allowing for different types of delivery and engagement (the aynchronus forum, the synchronous chat, the downloadable podcast, the virtual youtube experience, and so on), pose very similar challenges on improving our teaching in general. Be specific in grading expectations – be specific in instructions – carefully monitor discussions and our own presentations for objective analysis of the evidence at hand. But ultimately (and here my “contradiction” is resolved), we need our students’ attention to have meaningful discussions in the first place. If the face-to-face contact is dealt with as ancillary to urgent texting, web surfing, or other such electronic experiences, clearly additional formats of engagement are even greater superfluous distractions.
That said, one avenue I’m eager to explore is how blogs can augment the discussions we have in class with our students – and extend our “face time.” I think our level of analysis – in part due to the global reliance on innumerable “gadgets” and ceaseless access to every idea ever produced – demands more specificity in our initial presentations, and blogging is a fabulous way to offer a deeper level of that analysis. Offering discrete primary source analysis, encouraging alternate interpretations of those sources, or expounding on a (tangential) question raised in class can be quite useful.
So, to be specific – and to use this blog to ask for your help – it may be worthwhile to use a single text central to a lecture/class discussion as a topic for blogging. For example, this week in my modern American survey, we’ve been discussing Wilson at Versailles. I start my analysis with a quick intellectual history of war and peace and address how Wilson’s 1918 14 Points speech incorporates themes found throughout St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, to everyone’s favorite, Klemens von Metternich. (Of course, there are many absent from this list – this is a quick overview, after all, meant to clarify existing notions of war and peace; and to demonstrate how World War I utterly broke away from such notions). This may be a bit too much for a general survey, but I find it more helpful and constructive than doing without. Besides, I’m a bit of a geek and this stuff really excites me.To begin this lecture, I had asked students to read the 14 Points. After all, my seemingly well-crafted examination would only make sense and be meaningful if students actually considered the text prior to class. While I was disappointed only a very few students had done the reading, I wonder if using a blog to post a link to the speech and offer a simple primary source analysis could ignite further interest? For those of you already using blogs – have you tried this? Or, if you’re not using a blog (but also furiously contemplating it), do you think this in fact *could* augment such a discussion? Or – if you’re a student, what would you think of this? We’ve all been there – showing up for class without carefully doing the reading. There’s shame in that, of course, but would this type of blog approach be helpful? Or would you perceive it as “just another” thing to do for this class?
