Room With A View

I mentioned in an earlier post that I usually teach my students that the writing process goes something like this: plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish. I also teach them that it doesn’t really happen exactly in this way but it’s a good guide to help us as we write.
I also, mentioned that since starting the wiki my students are not following the writing process. It’s more write, publish, write some more, publish, revise a little, publish and so on. I’m not sure I like this. I’m concerned about the quality of the writing my students are producing. I think the quality of the conversations going on in my room and the collaboration is fantastic—better than before the wiki—but I’m not sure about the quality of the writing that my students are publishing. They are so keen to publish that they seem to have forgotten the processes I’ve worked hard to establish with them since the beginning of the year. I went in search of some answers to my concerns. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any research on the subject of writing conventions but I did find a summation of several studies about blogs. Miranda Bella wrote the summary. Here are some of the key points.

• Students put more thought and effort into their blog writing because they know they have a wide audience for their work.
• Students can strengthen their reading skills by reading blogs.
• Students that are quiet in class come alive on a blog.
• Some teachers are concerned that the casualness of blogs means that students don’t pay enough attention to writing conventions.
• There are concerns that students’ work can be too public when published on the web.

Bella, M. (2005). Weblogs in education In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved March 2, 2006, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/blogsined/start.htm