The “workshop” approach to writing concerned as it is with ownership, time, and response has always seemed to make sense to me as a teaching “method.” Let people write more or less what they choose (or have the illusion of choosing), give them time to write, talk to them about their writing, and they will more than likely get better at writing. Practice makes perfect? (If this is too bold an assertion, do you buy they will at least write differently?) As an extension of the more positive idea, this school year each of my students at Crockett in my language arts and reading classes will have and contribute to a blog of their own. (Yes, like this class.) Now, this entails from a teacher standpoint, a number of considerations that I will be noting and commenting upon in my blog for this class. I will try to grasp some of the difficulties in just starting my Crockett endeavor. Tony (district tech director) and I have already talked a bit and it seems at this point that having my students at Crockett separated in cyberspace from those of us in this staff class as bloggers is a good idea. Security settings for students will not be the same as staff settings. There are issues of who will see, for instance, the student blogs. I acknowledge arguments for not allowing the “outside” world to see what the students write. Call this a personal safety concern. I know this includes parents but maybe that is best simply to shield out the others. Or is there a way to set up a registration process with me as the gatekeeper for permission to see what is written? At least that way I can “let” parents in the community so they can read what has been written. Comment if you have an idea/opinion.

I will write a letter to go home for parents so they may give permission for the students to participate. There could be problems here. What do you do with those that don’t have permission? How does that go, etc.?

I must think of access issues at home. Now, this is another advantage it may seem to having the students and myself as the only ones able to “see” the blogs, i.e. the “site” on the Crockett server hence only worked on while at school. I think this would involve working on the blogs at school and not at home which would provide something closer to equitable access. Comments?

And as we all do as teachers, I will observe student motivation/comments/attitudes, etc. in order to get a feel for their “viewpoint” of the whole blogging idea as it is in actual practice once we are up and writing. And then what will they write? How will I read it? How grade? What do I do with it? Do they appear to be getting better at writing? This list of possible considerations is endless . . . for example, the whole idea seems well suited to peer editing based upon the read and comment format. I even have thoughts of pairing my writers with upper grade level writers as “blog buddies” who help read and edit each other’s writing particularly from a top down perspective.

I basically am going to study, in general terms, the planning, implementing, maintaining, troubleshooting, and evaluating of my Crockett classes using blogs for writing/reading practice and instruction. I will write later in the semester about how it’s going and then in the spring I will try and write up some sort of sorting-out of the process. Of course, remember, I may have to abandon the entire idea . . . best laid plans.

Note: This entire study of mine, and yours too, even ours as this entire class, becomes reflexive. Craig, as teacher times two, teacher at Crockett and teacher in staff tech class for comp time, publicly reflecting upon his own experience (only as teacher 1 at Crockett?) of his students blogging at Crockett while his observations about such blogging (as teacher 1 and 2) are commented (reflected) upon by colleagues (teachers 3, 4, 5, . . . ) who are all teachers in a class designed to be reflective by intention and technology (blogging as shared public reflexivity?) which may then be commented back upon again by Craig who is subject to comment and so on and so on . . . As a group we recursively study ourselves? The conversation is driven by human concerns? This is my convoluted way of saying, “Let the conversation begin.” It is what we do anyway, isn’t it? (I am not sure about any of the above punctuation. Feel free to give me lessons. Wait! Is this more reflexivity, writers writing about writers writing? I am getting dizzy.)