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Blogging for Educators
I have introduced blogging for adult literacy learners to generate their ideas and get them to start to write, to practise what I consider as essential: externalization of internal dialogue and finding personal voice. Many of the learners I work with are of First Nations descent, so the intent for blogging is not to impart information, per se, but to share feelings and intuitive impressions with others, to heal self and others, to pass forward experiences to others who may share the same state.
Asking learners to embark on a learning journey using blogging is asking learners to take a step into the unknown. Blogging is not just about writing skills, it is about cultivating critical self-reflection and promoting self-efficacy and confidence to give voice to ideas and express and discuss opinions among others in a respectful, inclusive manner. Blogging is about giving oneself permission to engage fellow learners and oneself, as both, simultaneously, as a novitiate and mentor. Blogging involves tackling threshold concepts that can lead to personal transformations:
Emerging roles as a learner/speaker
Identity of the individual and embedded selves
Holding aloft a number of different perspectives without identifying with them as part of one's own identity
Accomodating shifts of perspective when views collide or bounce off one another
Merging horizons of perspective of self/selves and others
Sponsorship and healing
Advocacy for personal vision
Cultivating personal voice
Offering constructive feedback to self and others
Sharing one's views in a blog requires vulnerability, a confidence of one's voice, and an ability to reflect on ideas as separate from one's identity, so that through the sharing of ideas with others and within oneself, stories might become more apparent, more complex, more contextualized. Sharing one's intuitions, one's fuzziness of thought, can open up insights as to how we juggle our "roles", in relation to others, in relation to our dreams, hopes, expectations, demands.
Setting up blogging within a course requires careful planning, a clear set of goals and expectations. But most importantly, a course that requires blogging from its learners needs to build gradually upon an equalized, respectful give-and-take between all who participate.
Blogging as a technology, as a teaching tool, can be most effective when the conventional mindset that permeates educational practice be set aside. There can be no room for dependency, insecurity, compulsion, or worry between learners and mentors. This paradigm exists to various degrees in a classroom; it cannot exist in a blogging environment.
- ▶ How Education Works, the audio book: now with beats
November 8, 2023 - 3:46pm
Jon Dron
Glenn Groulx
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Comments
Hi Glenn,
Thank you for this very thoughtful post that I will read more than a few times. As I reflect on your post it occurs to me that you are setting the stage for the quality of teaching and mentoring that you want in your business for your literacy learners. I like the idea of "careful planning, a clear set of goals and expectations" -- topped off with the equalized, respectful give-and-take. Hmm... how do you establish this? Well it seems that you have stated what it does not related to in the last paragraph. Perhaps operationally defining what it "is" could be a process worth evolving. Jo Ann
Hello Jo Ann,
The process of laying the groundwork of identifying participants' and mentors' goals and expectations, and operationally defining educational blogging, constitutes course elements of the educational journey. As expectations and impressions are explored by participants, there will be a working through of norms and rules that set the context for what will be an emerging, dynamic community of lifelong learners.
I am strongly influenced by the theories of Freire and Habermas. Though critical pedagogy has significant implications for literacy instructional practices, I am equally interested in the development of reflexive learning among autonomous, self-actualizing individuals.
My business proposal seems to be moving more and more to a simplification of one core service: offering a number of online courses (initially at cost, or break-even, to attract participants by lowering prices) and keeping the offering simplified in terms of technology use. This reduces the business idea to a simplified version from what I intially envisioned.
For now, it will be blogging, an incredibly simple, disruptive technology, which remains underdeveloped in its potential for widespread use in education. The courses will be aimed at educators and literacy learners.
In truth, there will be a need to find a sponsor, or alternate funding, so I can pursue my work as an online moderator/facilitator. I will need to design, develop and pilot the courses, moderate the discussions, research and prepare materials, develop supplementary content, and provide an assessment framework for participants.
I would prefer the funding to come from within a post-secondary institution, of course, but will still be able to begin the development and initial pilot without sponsorship.
I will need to account for time for development and testing, as well as for the development and launch of the web site and wordpress blog.
Other costs will involve the running of a commercial web site (SSL key, transactions processing fees, domain name and hosting fees, mailing lists, data transfer overage fees for downloads), and the purchase of audio/video recording equipment and software to develop content such as podcasts and recorded videos and slide presentations for the courses (along the lines of the connectivism course, with multimedia being used).