I get a sense of this kind of approach when reading blogs. I read a lot of material in a day – blogs included – it’s the nature of the subject I teach.
Geography – that misunderstood subject. Where I, as the teacher, fumble my way behind a lectern, armed with a squeaky globe and request tmy students' pull out crusty atlases to begin a lesson on the capital cities of the world, their location, the correct spelling. But the types of blogs that I naturally gravitate to read (usually through my geographywee Twitter account!) are the ones that engage and illustrate the rapidly changing world around both my students' and myself. The genre of the writing in these blogs is succinct – usually loaded with infographics that make a clear statement, often with an opinion, that helps me use the blog to start a conversation – which could be on any one given day (like today!) about forced migration in Syria or South Sudan to a SWOT analysis of Rio hosting the 2016 Olympic Games. I find myself and my students' engaging in a blog more readily than a periodical or the textbook as the writing injects a degree of personal flair – a perspective (or, as we practitioners of the Middle Years Programme (MYP) would call it) the “Global Context” where we understand that this person is writing because of opinion, passion to position a stance that they want to take. This excites the mind of the reader and provokes the inquiry questions to flow. This type of reading is different to other reading as it allows the possibility of author error – to disagree and invoke discussion and to even communicate asynchronously with the writer to epitomize our own opinions.
For example, while reading Vicki Davis “If Common Core Standards become our straightjacket we’ll hate what education becomes” a key sentence stood out to me
“Most straight jackets worn in education are fabrications of the mind” Davis (2013).
The fear of the rigid, government direction of the dreaded Common Core invading our classrooms and robbing teachers of their creativity, independence and passion. It’s something I typically see when I am leading a workshop for International Baccalaureate (IB). While the educator is in the workshop to primarily to learn about the programme, it is often a more to the fore as to how this programme can do double duty with the Common Core that must now be tacked along with all of the other expectations of the educator’s district in their classroom. I so wanted to comment – I desperately felt the need to shake the author’s hand and agree that this was perhaps the first time that I had felt an educator embrace the challenge of the Common Core, not with the shadowy doom resembling the Sword of Damocles dangling above a teacher’s forehead, but with the notion that the structure may well assist educators who are struggling in an ever challenging and messy world of education to make some sense of it all. While other types of writing may well cause us to be reflective in this sense, the blog writer causes the reader to react with an emotion – a deeper connection to the subject that may well cause action (another key focus of the MYP!) that is beyond a text book or periodical.
In my line of subject specialism, the material can change daily. Imagine the challenge of teaching the geography of a newly emergent country like South Sudan or figuring out the geopolitics of Egypt and Libya during the Arab Spring – or the real reason why Dennis Rodman likes to hang out in North Korea! Commenting and contributing helps students (and helps me!) make meaning beyond our own linear and rather stymied brains. To add a sense of International Mindedness to the blog subject. To allow concepts to be applied in real time, to real contemporary issues that would have taken many days to filter around the world only fifty short years ago but are now glaring instantaneously from a push notification on our smartphones, a ticker at the bottom of a TV screen or a interactive billboard as you drive into the city via 14th Street. I encourage my Junior and Senior Diploma Programme (DP) students especially to engage with this – to delve further and to apply what is happening in the world around them as living case studies of the geographical theory they learn in class. On my class Moodle I have “Sunday Morning Reading” – links to leading blogs, periodicals and newspaper media that I want the students to read. A throwback to the hazy days in the Harper (my maiden name) household when my Dad would arrive back after church on a Sunday morning with the giant mass of media that was The Sunday Telegraph, which would be devoured by the household with a stiff hierarchy as to who got the “funnies” first.
It’s clear to see that we as teachers, and our students, need to develop a degree of “blogging literacy” – after all – publishing to a potential audience of millions of people is a scary contemplation! Transparency of thought, word and deed is the new intellectual currency of the 21st Century learner – and how we bank that long term is reflected in the digital footprint that we leave on the web. Blogging is certainly affecting the way we read – it’s completely likely that it will affect the way we write. As Richardson (2010) reminds us: “That potential audience is one of the most important aspects of the Read/Write web.” (pg 27).
Just in writing this blog post, I am considering that I might need to have a more professional eye cast over my work before I broadcast to millions. I’m lucky. My mother-in-law was, for her whole professional career, a copytaker for one of the oldest English language newspapers, The Newsletter. In the days when reporters phoned the news in, my mother-in-law took the dictation and typed it word perfect for the printed final edition. I may have to co-op her services across the Atlantic in Belfast and force her out of retirement to insure my professional competency (although what she will make of the APA citation malarkey might merit her guesting on my blog at a later date!)
References:
Morrow, J. (2012). 52 Headline Hacks; a cheat sheet for writing blogs that go viral. Available from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16007221-52-headline-hacks
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
V Davis (2013, May 2). If Common Core Standards become our straightjacket we’ll hate what education becomes. [Weblog comment]. Retrieved from http://www.coolcatteacher.com/if-common-core-standards-become-our-straight-jacket-well-hate-what-education-becomes-ccchat/