Sample Case Study Analysis, EDU 808 (Fall 2017)

Case: Teaching and Learning though Blogging by Brian Cann

Reviewer: Troy

Summary 

As a writing teacher interested in educational technology, blogging has long been an interest of mine, both personally and professionally. As Brian Cann notes in the beginning of his case study, "Blogging addresses one of the biggest educational challenges faced by educators today- getting students to be excited about writing." Drawing from the work of Brown, Lapadat, McGregor, and Theilman's "Teaching with Blogs: A Case Study of Technologically Mediated Literacy," Cann describes the experience of Glen Thielman, a teacher who had personally been a blogger since 2004, as he asked his 8th grade students to compose nine blog posts during a winter semester.

During their observations of class activity and analysis of student work, the research team indicated that Theilman drew on constructivist pedagogy to design the blogging assignment and that he "dedicated approximately 20% of his class time to blogging in the computer lab." Cann describes how "The instructor states that he is a firm believer in constructivism as constructed by Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dewey," and this is particularly important as he describes digital literacy values that were imparted by the project including both technical skills such as creating and publishing blog posts as well as social skills such as providing comments. to classmates. In his conclusions and recommendations, Cann argues that "Teachers need extensive training on social media platforms and how they can be best utilized in the classroom"

Analysis

Cann's description of this classroom use of blogging connects with a number of the topics we have been reading for the first module. In addition to the specific connections that he made to the Seven Affordances, Cann draws out connections to Bruner, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dewey. It is important to understand the constructivist stance as it relates to Thielman's teaching because – rather than a simply providing a technical approach to having students write and post blogs – he situates their work in a social community.

As Bates states in his chapter about constructivism, "knowledge is essentially subjective in nature, constructed from our perceptions and mutually agreed upon conventions." Theilman draws from this tradition, inviting his students to read and analyze his own blog posts as models and to provide feedback on their classmates' work. In particular, it appears as though Theilman provided his students with opportunities to move beyond typical classroom writing assignments, and in one case a student "constructed a series of original, metaphorical peoms about computers" within his blog responses.

In Chapter 1, one of Cope and Kalantzis's points in the description of Affordance 5, "Collaborative Intelligence," Chapter 1 is that

Perhaps the notion of the individual mind was ever only and at least in part an ideological illusion created by didactic pedagogy and its assessment systems. In e-learning ecologies, it becomes more necessary to recognize the social sources of intelligence.

Indeed, as Theilman demonstrates (and Cann articulates), writing with purpose and for an external audience "is not a common practice for most students, who, in our experience, write assignments, hand them in to the teacher, and think little more about them beyond the grade they receive." I know that this continues to be a challenge in many of the assignments I design, even when my best intentions are to help students share their work with the world.

Application

When considering applications of blogging to my own blended middle school English class, And after exploring additional resources from our course materials and my peers, three ideas come to mind.

• First, I will look for alternative – and perhaps more authentic – writing prompts for my students from sources like KQED's Do Now.
• Second, I will provide opportunities for my students to write in existing spaces where they will find a community of open-minded years and provide feedback such as Youth Voices. 
• Finally, I need to consider different options for assessing their work including pass/fail grades simply for participation as well as exploring how I can realign my rubrics to value their mindset and effort through self-evaluation.

Through each of these applications, I will consider ways to gradually release responsibility of the writing more and more to my students, both individually and as an entire class. I know that the blogging model Theilman uses is one that I can't "control" from beginning to end, and I will need to think about my own disposition toward making student work public. In the past, I have been quite nervous about doing so, but I feel that I can introduce them to some specific blogging practices and communities, so that should help in the process.