Thoughts and commits on Weblogs: Learning in Public by Jill Walker:
I call this response Irony because I can’t help but think that it is a little bit ironic to write a response blog entry to an article that is all about students having to write responses on a blog.
As we discussed in class this article has a lot of interesting information, most of which reinforces my dislike of blogs and blogging in general. Right off the bat I began to disagree with Walker’s interpretation of the benefit of students writing a blog.
Walker states: “Student work is usually only read by their teacher, making their education a system to be gamed. This may cause a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence in the worth of their own work and may be a root cause of the current rash of plagiarism among students.”
I agree that students should share their work with the teacher as well as other interested parties, however, I entirely disagree with that the idea that students handing work into their teacher solely creates a “system to be gamed.” This notion just seem far fetched. If a teacher creates an atmosphere where individual creative writing is encouraged and emphasis on grades is reduced and a student trusts their teachers to give productive feedback, I believe there would be no system to game. In addition suggesting that blogging would solve students lack of motivation or lack of confidence is improbable at best and I can say from personal experience that as a student who has been asked to blog homework responses (such as this) that it hasn’t motivated me to do my homework and it has not given me confidence in my writing abilities.
In general, Walker has good intentions by asking her students to write blogs. Teachers give lots of assignments that have mixed reviews; some students love them and take to them like a fish to water and other students like myself go kicking and screaming. I believe the major mistake Walker makes is giving blogs too much credibility. I understand when this article was written blogs were more of a novelty and the majority of bloggers were more serious about the material they posted. However, nowadays anyone can create a blog for free, they can post about anything, often blogs have no fact checking oversight and people are able post misinformation and material that they don’t have copyrights to. In many ways it makes a type of plagiarism more accessible and accepted in society.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that all blogs are useless, many act as political commentary which informs social awareness. Other blogs give technique advice on everyday products which have real practical applications. Even great movies have been made about bloggers such as Julie and Julia and I’m sure more are to come. (See link below) However, in my experience the majority of personal blogs fall somewhere between grocery store tabloids and a whiney self-observed memoir.
Related Links:
Jill Walker’s Blog: http://jilltxt.net/
(Let’s see if she tracks back?)
Julie and Julia Movie website: http://www.julieandjulia.com/
P.S. How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?
