SLJ chats with Diane Penrod about Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy
Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal,10/09/2007
It seems like everyone has a blog these days. But can this tool be used to improve literacy and enhance collaborative learning? You bet, says Diane Penrod, a professor of Writing Arts at New Jersey’s Rowan University and author of Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy: The Next Powerful Step in 21st Century Learning (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
Penrod started teaching with blogs about seven years ago and immediately saw their potential as a learning tool. Since then, she’s been trying to get educators hooked.
SLJ caught up with Penrod to talk about how blogs can be used to improve everything from collaborative learning to critical thinking—and how to get media specialists on board.
What kinds of literacies does blogging enhance?
Well, stronger skills in visual literacy [and] media literacy, for starters. Changes in reading and writing—not just the texting phenomenon, but fluency rates, information sorting, and evaluating happen, too.
Are there other benefits of blogging?
Having students learn how to build a blog teaches them necessary design and conceptual abilities that can transfer to art, photography, graphic design, writing, and other contemporary information-manipulation strategies. Blog building also helps students understand how technology works from the ground up.
What differences have you found between boys and girls, and even ethnic groups?
Boys really respond to blogging. It's a writing [format] that they become excited about because it's hands-on, and they can see something that has a definite "beyond school" value. Girls tend to like blogging when it's more journal-based.
The Pew Internet studies I draw upon in the book found that the "digital divide" we were worried about in the late 1990s is not between ethnicities as we first thought. The Pew studies indicate that several racial and ethnic groups sometimes blog more than Caucasian students. The biggest problem still is economic—it’s expensive for many families to have computers and Internet access.
How are blogs being used to promote collaborative learning and critical thinking?
Blogs are really all about collaborative learning. When students post responses or questions, others feel comfortable in responding and offering assistance or ideas.
When instructors or librarians design innovative lessons that encourage students to delve into the material, then post that information on a blog, critical thinking can happen. Students are able to provide links to other sites that the class can examine and evaluate in terms of the quality of information provided, as well as [understand] how they might use such data in their own assignment.
Why did your book focus on blogs when iPods, wikis, and other technologies are great literacy tools, too?
The three reasons why I focused on blogging are cost, ease of use, and accessibility. Blogs can be set up through free, open-source hosting sites, many just for educators. Blogs are easy to learn and maintain, which is really important for teachers, many of whom are overwhelmed with the volume of material they have to teach in a given year. Blogs are also accessible from just about any computer, or even cell phones with Internet access. That means pretty much any child has the ability to blog, regardless of income.
Blogs are a "killer app." I compare blogs to email. It's a revolutionary breakthrough in communicating with others. It's also a fundamental genre for Web 2.0 environments like those you mention. If you can blog, you can move to these other genres.
Podcasts, wikis, Moodles, and whatever comes next are great literacy tools. But iPods can be very costly to families, wikis aren't always easy for teachers to learn and maintain—and there is a learning curve for students. My college students take a few weeks to learn how to wiki, and twitter is sort of silly, albeit fun.
Why have K–12 educators been so slow to catch on?
I can see why teachers might be afraid. Media stories abound with horror tales about children on blogs. Or teachers will hear about Xanga or LiveJournal or Bebo or MySpace and dismiss the potential the genre has for writing.
The other reason I think teachers are slow to take up blogging is because many aren't technically savvy. Blogging isn't hard, but there is a small learning curve—mostly in prep time to think about how the teacher wants to present course material to the students.
What suggestions do you have for librarians who want to take advantage of blogging?
School librarians can be a huge help! I'd love for them to take the lead in K–12 districts, holding workshops on safe blogging with community officials, mental health professionals, school staff, and the community at large. Librarians who are really tech-savvy can reach out to those teachers who want to incorporate blogging in the classroom, because I know librarians have those information technology skills that they can pass on to others.
What’s your next project?
Actually, I'm at work now proposing a book on Literacy 2.0, which focuses on how Web 2.0 products like podcasts, social networking sites, texting, YouTube, and other streaming video and video games are changing education and literacy skills. With all good luck, I hope the book will come out early in 2009.
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| Submitted by: | Sandi Jordet 10/11/2007 7:45:06 AM PT |
| Location: | Brush Public Schools |
| Occupation: | Distirct Library Media Coordinator |
This is a great article. I just attended a convention for our church and they had sessions on how to use blogging to reach young adults. It seems to me that blogging is going to be one of the most powerful tools that we have to help students communicate with purpose and not just fluff.
| Submitted by: | Lucille A. Ferragamo (lferragamo@revere.mec.edu) 10/10/2007 4:27:06 PM PT |
| Location: | Revere, MA |
| Occupation: | 5th grade educator |
Great article...I am a 5th grade teacher in an urban school. This is my 30th year teaching and I hope to never stop learning. I have just set up a blogging site (with the help of our school libraian)for my 5th graders. The site is called "Write" Down In History. Every 2 weeks a quote from American history is placed on the site. The students will respond to the site by posting their thoughts on what the quote means to them or if the quote relates to them in present times. Permission to blog slips will be passed out this week. Students chose an alias (a person from American history) to log on and blog as. I will keep you posted as things progress.
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