Session 3 reading: Educational blogs and their effects of pupils’ writing

 
Barrs and Horrocks report Educational blogs and their effects of pupils’ writing discuss the hugely beneficial impact blogging can have on pupils’ written English and how we as teachers can use this brilliant new tool correctly.

• In chapter 5 Barrs and Horrocks talk about the importance of the semantics of a task; due to the independent nature of blogging, the tasks must be both inviting and engaging to the pupils. This is done through a use of well targeted activities, with enough support for the pupils learning, whilst still enabling the freedom for children to break the confines of traditional writing.
• Chapter 6 discuss what is good writing; it starts by emphasising the impact of ensuring your tasks peak the children’s interests citing the fact that young children love to write stories and ergo will work harder for them. He goes on to discourage the ‘short burst’ writing that many teachers have used blogging for as it restricts children’s writing development but curtailing their creativity.
• One of the main factors in the success of blogs is the idea of audience; normally a child is simply writing for the teacher or maybe a parent but with blogging they’re writing for the whole class which gives their writing a purpose. This empowers the children giving them a voice and a sense of worth to their writing.
• The main drawbacks of the blogging project seemed to be confines of an ICT suite and the disinformation provided by parents providing too much help with blogs from home. Many schools have one set of 30 computers and time with these is always restricted meaning blogging sessions are often rushed and the ‘short burst’ writing chapter 6 warned against is often in effect because of this. Secondly, the age old problem of parents doing homework for a child is evident in blogging as well with parents keen to show off their technological prowess or their budding authorship by significantly contributing to children’s blogs; this is a huge problem because you can’t assess a child’s progress in writing if the writing is just produced by the parent.

Despite the negatives, when executed correctly it is evident from the report that well regimented and planned blogging exercises can provide huge benefits to children’s writing. It is evident from projects such as ‘The 100 word Challenge‘ that when children are provided with well thought out tasks they’re capable of writing incredible things through the use of blogging.