{"id":46,"date":"2014-11-11T02:13:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/?p=46"},"modified":"2014-11-11T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T02:18:08","slug":"to-blog-or-not-to-blog-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/2014\/11\/11\/to-blog-or-not-to-blog-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"“To Blog or Not to Blog? That is the Question.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Connection<\/em>. My Grade 8 English class has spent the last several weeks unpacking this concept. It\u2019s the Key Concept of our current MYP English unit titled, \u201cThe Youth Connection.\u201d The students have spent much of the unit exploring different types of connections, as well as actually making connections (text-to-text, text-to-world and text-to-self). The vehicle through which we\u2019ve been making many of these connections is Edublogs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the outset of \u201cThe Youth Connection\u201d unit, the students were asked to select one of four novels to study. Each of the four novels focused on youth experience, albeit in different times, places and spaces. For example, \u201cBetween Shades of Gray<\/a>\u201d by Ruta Sepetys recounts the story of a 15-year-old Lithuania girl living during the WWII era, while Deborah Ellis\u2019s \u201cThe Heaven Shop<\/a>\u201d tells the story of a 13-year-old AIDs orphan living in Malawi in the modern day. After selecting a novel, the students were put into small groups with others who chose the same novel, and were tasked with building a blog about their book.<\/p>\n

Among several other required blog posts, each group was responsible for developing a post that described real-world connections and personal connections to the novel. The blog proved to be an effective medium for this assignment, allowing students to embed links, videos, and even some personal photos, to comprehensively explain the connections. I was extremely pleased to see my students not only make a number of strong connections to their novels, but also make excellent use of the various features of the blog to reinforce these connections.<\/p>\n

Upon completing their novels and blogs, the students were then asked to visit their classmates\u2019 blogs, and make connections to the other three texts via comments on others\u2019 posts. Here too, there were a number of excellent connections being made, such as:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, there are some striking similarities between Lina\u2019s experiences in Between Shades of Gray and Binti\u2019s experiences in The Heaven Shop. They are both living happy, comfortable lives in the beginning. Then, with no warning, their worlds come crashing down. Both girls face extreme adversity, but in the end they become stronger because of it. Through their struggles, it is shown how much both of them love their families. As we know, both of them lose their parents. Also, when Binti gets to her grandmother\u2019s house, she is one of the oldest so she feels a responsibility to take care of the younger ones. Lina probably felt that same responsibility when her parents died because she had become the oldest in her family. Even though these books are taking place in completely different places and time periods, they are both great examples of the impacts that these horrible tragedies… can have on young adults.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once again, the blogs turned out to be a highly effective tool for this task. They facilitated the sharing and analyzing of other students\u2019 work, and ultimately, helped students to learn about and make connections to other texts that they had not previously read.<\/p>\n

With all of this in mind, it seems as though the answer to the question I posed at the beginning \u2013 \u201cTo blog, or not to blog?\u201d \u2013 is rather straightforward: a resounding \u201cto blog!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n

It seems that in all my effort to inspire and cultivate connections, I may have sacrificed another important type of connection: human connectedness.<\/p>\n

I found that the interactions between my Grade 8 English students in class were actually rather disconnected <\/em>during this unit. They spent many of the class periods I had set aside for them to work on this project with their headphones on, staring at their computer screens, typing away on their blogs. It left me wondering: Did I encourage the making of literary connections via the use of technology at the expense of students connecting and collaborating with each other in class?<\/em><\/p>\n

The debate around technology as a \u201cconnector\u201d or an \u201cisolator\u201d is certainly not new; and like all nuances of life, it has the potential to be both. Technology isolated my students in that it discouraged collaboration. Then again, it promoted connectedness, helping students to recognize the similarities amongst youth across time, space and place – a masterclass in empathy.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the issue of disconnectedness in this English unit could be solved on my end by a change in the assignment criteria and expectations. This is the first year we\u2019ve run this unit, and there are certainly some adjustments that could be made. As we well know, a crucial part of the 21st<\/sup> century teacher\u2019s role is learning how to leverage educational technology such that it enriches student learning, while reinforcing<\/em> (rather than sacrificing) the best practices that already exist.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I should do away with the blog component altogether and go back to the more traditional literature circle format, which encourages a great deal of discussion amongst students.<\/p>\n

Or, is the implementation of this idea incomplete; is a blog-based unit the perfect setting for the flipped classroom?\u00a0 What might be the impact of having my students blog at home and discuss in class?<\/p>\n

And so, paraphrasing our noble Prince Hamlet, I ask you Cohort 21, “to blog, or not to blog?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Connection. My Grade 8 English class has spent the last several weeks unpacking this concept. It\u2019s the Key Concept of our current MYP English unit titled, \u201cThe Youth Connection.\u201d The students have spent much of the unit exploring different types of connections, as well as actually making connections (text-to-text, text-to-world and text-to-self). The vehicle through … Continue reading ““To Blog or Not to Blog? That is the Question.””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,10,11],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom-reflections","tag-blogs","tag-concept-based-learning","tag-connection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}