[blogging is good for students]

I've always thought blogging was a good way to help students develop digital literacy (and *normal* literacy) skills and so agrees Diane Penrod.

Via Karen Levy's blog:

"What kinds of literacies does blogging enhance?

Well, stronger skills in visual literacy [and] media literacy, for starters. Changes in reading and writing—not just the texting phenomenon, but fluency rates, information sorting, and evaluating happen, too.

Are there other benefits of blogging?

Having students learn how to build a blog teaches them necessary design and conceptual abilities that can transfer to art, photography, graphic design, writing, and other contemporary information-manipulation strategies. Blog building also helps students understand how technology works from the ground up.

What differences have you found between boys and girls, and even ethnic groups?

Boys really respond to blogging. It’s a writing [format] that they become excited about because it’s hands-on, and they can see something that has a definite “beyond school” value. Girls tend to like blogging when it’s more journal-based.

The Pew Internet studies I draw upon in the book found that the “digital divide” we were worried about in the late 1990s is not between ethnicities as we first thought. The Pew studies indicate that several racial and ethnic groups sometimes blog more than Caucasian students. The biggest problem still is economic—it’s expensive for many families to have computers and Internet access.

How are blogs being used to promote collaborative learning and critical thinking?

Blogs are really all about collaborative learning. When students post responses or questions, others feel comfortable in responding and offering assistance or ideas.

When instructors or librarians design innovative lessons that encourage students to delve into the material, then post that information on a blog, critical thinking can happen. Students are able to provide links to other sites that the class can examine and evaluate in terms of the quality of information provided, as well as [understand] how they might use such data in their own assignment."

I'm personally not sure about the gendering of blogging though. In my pedagogical experience both female and male students tended (and here I generalise) to like blogging (if they did in fact blog as this was rare) as a way of keeping in touch and up-to-date with what their friends were doing.