I just read the article Let Them Blog: Using Weblogs to Advance Literacy in the K-12 Classroom by D. Huffaker (2005).

Huffaker makes the point that learning what types of activities and applications students are using on the Internet is only a superficial look, we need to understand how they are using these applications in order to come up with innovative strategies for new learning environments. Huffaker notes that blogs enable individual expression as well as aspects of community development, creating an online community of interdependent learners. The coexistence of these two ideas in one tool seems to be perfect for a primary classroom.

One point Huffaker raises that I found particularly interesting was the idea of digital literacy (p. 9). He states that educational technology advances all of the current essential 3 types of literacy (verbal, visual, and digital). Digital literacy is necessary for success in the technological world, just as reading and writing (the two foundations of education today) are necessary to success in society. The way that Huffaker puts digital literacy in the same league as reading and writing shows just how important it is considered. If we keep traveling in the same direction we have been for the last 20 years then, I have to agree. We will need to be ‘fluent’ in using technology to the point where it becomes innate. It will be a fundamental skill.

Image From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanexpedition/378644476/

I just read the article Indigenous Students Connect with Blogs (Education Views, 16(11), June 6, 2007, p.17).

This article is about a teacher who used a blog to connect with her students doing a specific program while she was overseas. It says that it took her two weeks to teach the students how to use a weblog, but after that the students responded very enthusiastically to the project. She used it to give them information and photos from her trip to China, and in that way got the students interested in the places she was going and seeing. One example is when she went to visit the Great Wall of China, she got the students to do research on it, and discuss their impressions with the class online.

The most impressive thing about this article was that it described a legitimate reason for the students to start using a blog. I believe that once they had that experience it would be easier to use a blog again, and possibly in more complex and collaborative ways next time.