The Power of Blogs

I read Tamim Ansary's blog Blogs Invade Classrooms! in which he responds to a Newsweek article that essentially said that education boiled down to a teacher, a blackboard, and a classroom of kids eager to learn and that technology would have no significant impact.

Ansary discusses several benefits with which I absolutely agree. He points out that blogs facilitate discussion much like an in-class discussion. However, these online discussions have several benefits that face-to-face discussions do not have. Classroom discussions can be dominated by a select few (vocal) students. Often, these are the same students that respond every day in class. Online discussions require all students to participate, offering both new threads and commenting on peers' threads. As much as we as teachers try to get everyone involved in classroom discussions, often we cannot get everyone to contribute every day. Also, shy students often shine in these situations. I, as a shy high school student, often had insightful comments that I kept to myself, sometimes because I was intimidated by others in the class and sometimes because others were just so much louder and quicker in their responses.

Ansary also points out that blogs are an easy way to give students an authentic publishing outlet. I agree that when students have a wider audience than the classroom, they often produce higher quality work. Some classes even go so far as to write to the author of the novel they're discussing and inviting him/her to contribute to the blog. One example is a New Jersey high school's blog about Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.


Another benefit of blogging is that it gives students another way to read and write. As much as some people don't think that texting and writing via Facebook and MySpace isn't true writing, students are engaged with language much more than they were in the past. And with the increase of hours spent online reading and writing, we should give them various writing outlets. As we do this, we also can help them realize the importance of switching between formal and informal writing styles and situations.