The connection or new learning for me while reading this chapter is the difference between blogging, journaling and writing. If someone had asked me before reading this chapter, I would have said all were the same thing, skill, and task. I WAS TOTALLY WRONG! Here is what I now understand about the differences of blogging, journaling and writing.
Blogging is a genre, a process of thinking in words. In other words, what I am doing write now. Blogging can be a reflection. It is collaborative and connective writing. In other words it is a conversation. The skills that it takes to blog are different than journaling or writing. A blogger must consider the "world" audience when creating their post. A bloggers goal is to start a conversation. Blogging is a synthesis of the content that the blogger has read, and the blogger may provide links to that content. Blogging can increase the following skills: critical reading and writing skills, increase information management skills, and evaluation of sources.
Again, before reading this chapter, I would have said journaling and blogging are the same. Journaling is similar to a diary. It is a more finished and final than a blog. This happened today, and that happened yesterday. This type of writing doesn't change and evolve with new learning taking place among the people reading it. It is social, and a good task, but not really blogging. This reminded me of a teacher-librarian blog that I found while looking at library websites for my Information Lit. final. I've attached this one here. It is called a blog, but is it really? Especially the twitter feeds on the left. I don't know. Do people really want to know that the school librarian just ate some macadamia nut cookies? I don't know how I feel about that much information on a library web page. Maybe someone else has an opinion on that for me.
Lastly, writing is a monologue according to Richardson and again blogging is a conversation.
"A blogger's goal is to start a conversation" - yes, I think that is true.
ReplyDeleteSo, to keep the conversation going - how about librarians - how can they be involved in helping teachers learn about blogs?
A natural would be to model in their own blog and as you pointed out, it's sometimes a missed opportunity.
I think teacher-librarians can help other teachers learn about blogs by creating one themselves, but it needs to be high quality. It needs to be something that teachers see the value in and gain learning from. Many of the teacher-librarian blogs I have seen are simply memos that replace the daily announcements which as I learned in chapter 2 isn't really blogging. These types of announcements have their place, but they rarely start conversations or make someone want to write a comment. Collaboration and small group professional development are also ways to teach teachers about blogs. I would have teachers subscribe to blogs that I knew would be of relevance to them before I had them start their own. They need to get the "bug" first.
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