XplanaZine

The Potential of Personal Publishing in Education II: How’s it going & what’s working?

James Farmer

Following on from part 1 I figure a good way to go would be to say ‘OK, so these are some of the things being done out there… how are they going?’ And so I am :o)

Well, am trying to in a very amateurish, overviewesque, by-no-means-comprehensive kinda way… but do bear with me.

First up, coming out of BloggerCon from Perseus is a very interesting survey regarding the use of weblogs (although see here for some reservations). Amongst various data concerning gender (more males than females blog, but more males drop out!) and age (it’s the domain of the young at the moment) is the, probably not so staggering statistic that 66% of blogs haven’t been updated in the last 12 months and thus are, pretty much, defunct. Makes you think… and makes you wonder how things have gotten on in education!

For example, in my last job I started off whole classes of English language learners with ‘weblogs’, and, pretty often, these came to very little. Why? Well, first up I wasn’t exactly clear on what we were doing… I saw this form of personal publishing as being a kind of reflective journal, a place where people could write and what I didn’t really get is the ‘network’ bit… one of the many reasons why personal publishing is so effective is that the expression it makes possible is all about communication, all about the dynamics between us all, all about audience.

So, while most of these flopped, some didn’t. When an enthusiastic teacher got on the case, shared learners weblog addresses around (oh, if only I’d really known about RSS & online aggregators then!!! - although, having said that, I’m not sure that a non-integrated package would work so well…), read and commented on learners posts and set activities related to their weblogs… things kicked off! Which is what brought me to the point of looking at weblogs in education, and academia as a whole, and thinking that this ‘give them the tool and they will use it’ approach isn’t really what’ll work. That’s not to say that we need rigid templates, guidelines and rigid QA ;o), but that personal publishing tools need to be introduced and used meaningfully, in a way which harnesses and develops their power. Tricky one that!

What is their power? That’s another article… although you might be interested in Stephen Downes’ “More than personal: The impact of weblogs”, Lee Bryant’s “Smarter, simpler, social” or Seb Paquet’s “Personal Knowledge publishing and its uses in research” in the meantime :o) Perhaps, however, the most truth comes out of their obvious and reported use… and sometimes that ‘aint so pretty:

Dan Mitchell of Teachnology has posted a very interesting article on weblogs in education which details his experiences in using weblogs in his own teaching, providing them for other teachers and facilitating student publication and peer-editing. Interestingly he notes that a use of weblogs in some faculty is very much as a discussion / commentary tool (especially where learners can feedback on what other learners have written)… something which he points out major LMSs do no better (and most probably, worse!)

Of particular interest here is that while asked to do just the basics, ‘most created more sophisticated sites with multiple pages…’ What is also notable, though, is a lack of comment about ‘what’s working’, that is, whether people are ‘personal publishing’ in a social sense and if so, to what extent?

A fair while back Oliver Wrede did a survey on Using Weblogs to Teach, which is well worth a visit. Of particular interest are comments such as:

“Unfortunately I see just few students can get into the weblogging mode. 90% of them drop down activity after a while, because they do not write interesting things, and don’t feel anybody is actually interested in their stuff.”

and conversely:

“Participation rates: In my experience more students participate, and with greater enthusiasm, with weblog-supported assignments than with assignments delivered using more traditional media. This may partly be explained by the fact that my web-based assignments are intended to be cutting-edge relying, as they do, on students researching the topic using the most up to date information available. Which invariably means using the web as the primary source.

Quality: many groups produced work that is more extensive and higher quality than would normally be expected. This may partly be explained by the fact that the students know that their work may well be publicly accessible.”

It’s well worth noting that despite a seeming lack of coherent ‘structure’, Dave Winer’s Weblogs at Harvard project has really hit the ground running and continues to pick up steam. Perhaps most notably there isn’t a basic premise about what people should / could do with their weblogs there. However, looking again at the rankings you wonder if, with a bit more coherence of purpose, whether they could have done even better?

Often mentioned is Schoolblogs which offers students the opportunity “to express themselves on their own terms”. And it’s certainly true that a lot of learners and teachers have taken this up. It’s equally true though that a lot of people aren’t keeping that going, looking at their recent updates is not particularly happy reading, looking at the number of ‘one posters’ in that is pretty disheartening too. A pretty tough thought to deal with as I LOVE what they are doing there.

So, what’s working? What’s happening?

My impression is that most of the people in my blogosphere are pretty committed individuals, understanding the medium, exploring what they can do and doing so after consideration. Most people aren’t going to personal publish like this. When someone like Dave Winer, Stephen Downes, Will Richardson or an enthusiastic ESL teacher hosts, supports, facilitates and gives meaning and scope to personal publishing, things happen, when we just lay it out and say ‘Hey, this is cool, use it’, things don’t. But this ‘aint exactly new ;o)

What needs to evolve is an understanding of whether and how personal publishing works in education and, perhaps more importantly, if it does, if and how we can facilitate that.

TBC :o)