Blogging 101 — The Newspaper Column

    Here’s an entry into the Blogging 101 category — the latest installment of my "On Writing" column for the Fort Collins Coloradoan.  custom writing paper

Blogging gives students real audiences

By Bud Hunt

Students today have access to a
huge network of writing and publishing tools via the Internet. And, to borrow a line from Martha Stewart,
that’s a good thing.

If you can send e-mail, and I am
guessing that many of you can, you can publish your writing online for the
world to see. This is great news for
students who wish to communicate their thoughts and ideas to others in their
communities or to students in other states or even half way across the world. It’s even better news for teachers, as we
know that there’s no better tool for improving writing than a real, non-teacher
audience for the students’ work. The
Internet, via weblogs or blogs, provides just such an opportunity.

According to Dave Winer, a blogger
since 1997, a blog is “the unedited voice of a person.” More specifically, a blog  is a collection
of posts written for online publication. Blogs and bloggers cover almost all possible topics, from hurricane
disaster relief to to dealing with candy
addiction.

Blogs are more and more becoming
first stops for those looking for news or information on the Internet. In the classroom and at home, blogs are
tools that students can use in order grow as writers and responsible citizens
in the digital world. At school, blogs
are not yet essential curricular tools, but they will be. While schools are still learning where
blogging fits into the curriculum, students are flexing their digital muscles
after school.

There are
several free sites out there that you can use to start a blog. Perhaps the best known of these is
Blogger. After a five-minute
registration, you can post your writing directly to the Internet. Many students use free websites like
Myspace, Xanga, and LiveJournal to tell stories about their lives,
share musical influences, and write about and discuss just about every topic
that you could possibly think of. On
their blogs, students are talking about the war in Iraq, how to help in the
aftermath of Katrina, and who the cutest kids are in class.

To get
started, try reading some blogs to get a feel for the genre. Perhaps the best way to do this is to use a
search engine that specifically searches blog posts. Two useful ones are Technorati and Icerocket. Try searching for a topic that you are
interested in and see what others have to say.

The
Internet is a big place – there might be some content out there that you find
objectionable. However, the vast
majority of bloggers are interested in opinions and viewpoints and good
writing. They will welcome you as you
begin to comment on their blogs and, preferably, starting your own.

Blogging allows students to both
practice their writing and to have a connection to the real world that exists
outside of the classroom. Interested in
astronomy? Start writing about and
linking to interesting astronomy websites. Along the way, you’ll meet others interested in astronomy and begin to
have conversations with them about your passion for starts and supernovas. You’ll also be taking control of your
learning in a powerful way that was unavailable to students just ten years
ago.

Because they contain hyperlinks,
blogs are a great way to visualize and show in practice how ideas connect to each
other.

Parents have an essential
responsibility and privilege to stay up on what their students are writing and
thinking about. They should even be
regular readers of their child’s blog – both to learn about what learning is
going on but also to become a partner in that learning. Because blogs are
public, parents should also read to make sure that students are protecting
themselves by not sharing too much personal information online – phone numbers
and home addresses are probably a no-no. Families should sit down together to review family Internet policies and
privacy concerns.

Of course,
parents can and maybe should start their own blogs to provide a positive model
for writing with their children. Ask
your child if you need help getting started. They might just already know how. One estimate says that teenagers are responsible for more than half of
the sixteen million blogs current online.

That’s a
lot of writing.

Bud Hunt is a board member of the Colorado State University
Writing Project. He blogs at http://www.budtheteacher.com.

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