Perfecting Student Blog Comments

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Subin on April 16, 2009 at 2:41pm

How about having the students submit their comment (with reference to what thread they are replying to) in Word (or even email) format for editting. Teacher can turn on the show editting feature and return it to the student for corrections. Once acceptable, submit to the blog. I agree about still encouraging proper writing technique, it's what gives structure to our communication. Electronic communication is very vulnerable to misinterpretation. We all need to learn to improve our online communication. I'd see this as an opportunity to promote that. Meanwhile, the artist in me balks a bit at the censorship. I'm sure there's a median there somewhere.

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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Clarkson on April 18, 2009 at 9:22am

"Her argument is that the student is a representative of the school so he should have a good, well written response."

and a reflection on her abilities as a teacher, hmm? Is it entirely selfless that she's editing like this?

If it's a *blog*, not an assignment, all she's going to do is discourage students from sharing and responding, because who needs the stress of it becoming more work when they can spend their online time in less restrictive places? Yes, she's teaching, and I can understand developing the habit that makes her want to correct papers, but at what cost, and what other things is she teaching students with this?

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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on April 18, 2009 at 5:52pm

Love it! These blogs that she is posting - all 4 questions in one year - are more like mini essays. The whole understanding of the purpose of a school blog has been missed. How she is utilizing the awesome tool has killed the interest in her students. They have to receive bonus points or homework credit for answering these posts. She replies to me that these kids don't like to blog. I think she has overkilled it by the grammatically correctness needed to be accepted in her terms.

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Subin on April 19, 2009 at 3:05pm

A few questions pop to mind... how old are these students? Is this an inclusive classroom, a remedial situation, AP?

I agree, if the purpose is just to blog, converse, contribute thoughts, and become engaged in discussing with classmates, then yes, stop censoring! After the momentum picks up (increase in blogging activity), maybe a few well placed comments to the students about the value of exercising punctuation, spelling, etc... improving blogs would help. She could share that more people will understand and respond to a well written blog. Also comments such as, "You never know when I future employer might be reading one." or "You will make your school look good." could go a long way.

If she's using the blogs as a writing tool, just another medium to turn in an assignment, then maybe she needs to ask students to go back and revise (via cut and paste in word). Perhaps she could suggest to students that a quick way to check spelling and grammar is to write their response in Word then cut and paste it into the blog. Or, to find a balance perhaps she can tell them that while they won't be penalized for poor writing, they can earn extra credit for posts that are mostly free of typos, spelling errors and have passable grammatical structure. To provide incentive versus punishment. If my blogs weren't posted because someone thought they were poorly written, I'd stop blogging too. Perhaps this teacher could be reminded to step into the student's shoes and empathize how that would feel to a young writer.

There is a lot to be said for encouraging any writing, but I also share the concern about what the online writing world is doing to our language. There has to be a way to keep kids engaged and excited about blogging (writing in general) but also invested in presenting a well written contribution.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on April 20, 2009 at 9:03am

I love your point - to take it to the positive approach. Support the ideas and continue the conversation by allowing comments to go up, but positively reinforce those who are writing well.

I really feel too that if you get your blog an audience outside of the school that the writing will improve on its own. I have a different teacher blogging and she claims that having the global audience has improved students writing by a grade level! Talk about intrinsic motivation!

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Permalink Reply by Melissa Smith on April 20, 2009 at 9:06am

Sorry - didn't mean to ignore the questions. They are in 6th grade, in a regular classroom. I think that most likely the students are just unmotivated about the material being discussed on the blog and don't like the fashion that the blog is being presented in. But they can write better, if they took the time. So knowing that they can write better, but were being sloppy or lazy would you still accept their comments?

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Subin on April 20, 2009 at 11:54am

I doubt I would continue with an exercise that my students were feeling bored with. I'd hope to find a way to get them engaged in the process then reintroduce it when they are more pumped about the process.

And yes, there is a lot of evidence that regular journalling will improve writing naturally without a lot of editing and critque by a teacher.

I'd ask what's missing from the process that the kids aren't engaging? How can we reach them and get them invested in the process? Is there another way to reach the goal of regular online contributions (assuming that's the goal) or to get kids writing more? Maybe they don't get the purpose of blogging? Maybe the topics or prompts aren't appealing. Why aren't their imaginations getting lit up and shifted into gear?

In 6th grade we wrote a TON. We created speaches and presented them to each other, selling silly products or teaching our friends to do some silly invented thing we dreamed up. We also had a great creative writing teacher that encouraged us to use colorful descriptive active writing and we spent every Friday reading our stories to each other. I grew to LOVE writing through that process.

Following the logic of the Project Approach... key into what interests the kids, allow them to develop the questions and "discover" the tools and processes they can use to engage with the topic, then I'd hope they'd increase their writing about that topic especially in mediums they'd decided to use from a list of choices (wiki, blog, social network, website, book, magazine, etc...). I believe I'd turn to the evidence on how project approach develops writing skills and use blogging as a tool in studying topics chosen by the students. If it's a true project, the rule tends to be hands off the writing technically and focus on the content. Well place comments from a teacher embedded in tons of praise can go miles. For example, excellent thinking student, I am enjoying your thought process and investment in the project and interest in the subject (by the way, I might have misunderstood this line because of punctuation, how would you fix this?) over all, what a great start to your project, what are you doing next? If it's blogging, I'd send that coaching via the blog. Students seeing others getting props are going to want some of the same.

What class is this for? Or is this in general about how much to "interfere" with student's writing?

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Permalink Reply by Kristi Bernstein on April 25, 2009 at 7:37am

The first time I had my middle school students leave comments on my blog, they were told to answer in complete sentences. I even gave them a handout with the questions they were answering. As long as they submitting something that looked something like a sentence, I didn't make them change it, but I was very frustrated about all the grammatical and spelling errors. The next time we went to the PC Lab to post comments, I asked students to type their responses and raise their hands when finished typing. I came by to check for errors. A lot of students were finishing at the same time, the waiting students were asked to not publish the comment and to go to the next assignment (which I already had open on a different tab) until I could get to them. Students really appreciated me coming and working one-on-one to help them correct their sentences. I didn't make them correct every single mistake but enough to make it look better. It seemed like a win-win situation to me!

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Permalink Reply by Enrique Guevarra on April 27, 2009 at 4:01pm

Blogging is a privilege to express one's thoughts and concerns in his own perspective. I do understand that every individual has his own way of viewing things in life and expressing those things in his manner. To me , this is the essence of blogging. A person's ability to argue , critique and opine is enhanced. Thus before initiating a blog forum, the concerned individual must have himself immersed in the environment and extract as much information and learning from the experience. Say , how does it feel if one's opinion is criticized ? Much so if dictated from colleagues to what things to be posted. Yes, there may be guidelines to follow in the course of blogging, but one's opinions whether driven positively or negatively must be given much respect.

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