Confessions From a Digital Hermit

"Through their active participation on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga, students are acquiring various digital literacies for engaging audiences in ways that allow them to display competence and make social contacts." - Mr. Richard Beach PhD

Ok, so I have a confession to make. Of the three online entities mentioned above by Rick Beach, I am a member of all three. I have been a member for several years. Now you all know it. I have a blog. I have had a blog for the last three years and it is awesome and I even have 17 subscribers.

About three years ago, the younger sister of one of my collage roommates died, and she used her blog to deal with some of her grief. She wrote amazing, sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes humorous blogs about the memories of the past 19 years with her sister. It was during that time that many of my friends and I started our own blogs so that we could subscribe and comment and keep a dialog of this shared experience.

For the next few years, we built our own little blog community just to keep tabs on our day-to-day activities. I would find myself writing little blog entries in my head all day long. I would often get to where I was biking and immediately pull out a pen so I wouldn't forget that great idea for my next blog entry. I never really considered myself to be a writer of any sort, but my blog gave me an excuse to try different things and the more I blogged, the more confident I became, and the more I wanted to do it. Since I started this program, I have given up my personal blog, due to lack of time, but for those two years that I was actively engaged in this format, it really did work to keep me writing (even if sometimes that writing was just about what Bob Barker did that day on TPIR).

I don't think I really need to say it, but if you get kids excited about your classroom blog by building an interesting, enthusiastic blog community, it can work wonders. I think just getting them started and interested is most important. After that, Lord knows what can happen.





My link of the week:

Book Crossing

This is just fun, and students might get into it as well!