Blogging with Freire

Well .... not exactly. Paulo Freire - that great Brazilian educational thinker - died in 1997, just as the World Wide Web was emerging in the Western world. So Freire didn't actually live to see the power and potential of social media, or the impact blogging would have on education. But what would he have said about blogs if he had been witness to the participatory web in all its present glory? Here is my interpretation of some of his ideas, drawn from his most celebrated book 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed', and presented in six key points as they might apply to the art of educational blogging.

1) Respond to reader comments with humility. Freire wrote: "...dialogue cannot exist without humility. Dialogue, as the encounter of those addressed to the common task of learning... is broken if the parties (or one of them) lack humility. How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own?" (p. 71). This is not just a message for educational bloggers. It is a message for teachers everywhere. How can we stand there in a self proclaimed position of enlightenment, and view our students (or audience) as being in a state of ignorance? This is hubris of the first order. And yet that is what happens in many classrooms across the world every day, because that is often how teachers are trained. It is also acknowledged that many teachers teach in the same way they themselves were taught. In a blogging context, it is easy to be offended when an adverse comment is received on your blog. You may be tempted to respond aggressively, to 'put the other person right'. Often though, good learning occurs when we consider the views of others. Even if we don't agree with the views of other people, it is good to consider them, to evaluate their meaning and contemplate alternative perspectives. Dialogue is what blogging is really about.

2) Don't be afraid to speak out. Freire counsels: "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." It's clear that there is a lot of inequality in the world, and some of this exists within the world of education. Schools are not perfect, and there is no education system in the world that has it completely correct. There is no better place for speaking out against injustice, or exposing inequalities than a popular blog site. It's better than owning a newspaper. People will read what you have to say if you have something interesting to speak about. So use your blog to speak out on behalf of those who can't speak out for themselves.

3) Use blogs to circumvent regulated learning. Students who blog quickly realise that they can explore knowledge for themselves. They can become independent learners. Freire was critical of the banking approach to education, where teachers regulate learning: "The teacher's task is to organise a process which already occurs spontaneously, to 'fill' the students by making deposits of information which he or she considers constitutes true knowledge" (p. 57). When a learner starts to blog, they start to think for themselves. They have to consider an audience of more than one (teacher and essay writing) and they are required to be masters of their own journey. In another sense, blogging can subvert traditional education in another way. The dialogue that can ensue from blogging is often more valuable than the act of writing on the blog. Quadblogging and the 100 Word Challenge are just two of the school based blogging projects that are making a real difference for learners by providing them with a guaranteed audience every time they blog.

4) Read other people's blogs and make comments. The act of seeking out alternative perspectives and views in itself will sharpen the reader's thinking and cause them to question received knowledge. Freire says: "... it is indispensable to analyse the contents of newspaper editorials following any given event. 'Why do different newspapers have such different interpretations of the same fact?' This practice helps develop a sense of criticism, so that people will react to newspapers or new broadcasts not as passive objects of the 'communiques' directed at them, but rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free" (p. 103). Alongside newspapers and news broadcasts we can add blog commentaries. Blogs are places where people can express their opinions and offer their interpretations, and these are the new street corners where individuals have their conversations. Engaging with knowledge in this way will liberate the mind and help develop critical thought.

5) Use blogging to support thinking. Often, abstract thoughts remain abstract unless they are externalised in some concrete form. Traditionally, writing has been used as a means to crystallise thinking, because as Daniel Chandler says "In the act of writing, we are written." Freire writes that "In all the stages of decoding, people exteriorise their view of the world" (p 87) which implies that in order to understand our personal reality, we need to first bring our thoughts out into the open. Blogs are public facing tools that enable their owners to externalise their thinking in a way that is open for scrutiny. In the act of public writing, we expose our ideas and begin to understand our own thoughts more clearly.

6) Use blogging as reflection. Reflection is an important part of learning, and is a skill that must be developed if it is to lead to successful outcomes. Reflection is also the key to personal liberation. Friere argues that: "Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building" (p 47). Reflection means active participation in learning, and blogging is a very powerful tool to support this process.

Reference
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Blogging with Freire by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Seven reasons teachers should blog

I have written extensively on what makes a good blogpost and why it is so powerful. From personal experience blogging is one of the most beneficial professional development activities I have ever engaged with. I learn more from blogging than I do from almost any other activity I participate in. Here are 7 good reasons why teachers should blog:

1) Blogging causes you to reflect. Donald Schon suggested that reflection on, in and through practice were vital components of any professional practice. Teachers naturally think back on what has happened in their classroom, and often wonder what they could have done better. Blogging can help with this process, enabling teachers to keep an ongoing personal record of their actions, decisions, though processes, successes and failures, and issues they have to deal with.

2) Blogging can crystalise your thinking. In the act of writing, said Daniel Chandler, we are written. As we write, we invest a part of ourselves into the medium. The provisionality of the medium makes blogging conducive to drafting and redrafting. The act of composing and recomposing ideas can enable abstract thoughts to become more concrete. Your ideas are now on the screen in front of you; they can be stored, retrieved and reconstructed as your ideas become clearer. You don't have to publish if you want to keep those thoughts private. Save them and come back to them later. The blog can act as a kind of mirror to show you what you are thinking. Sometimes we don't really know what we are thinking until we actually write it down in a physical format.

3) Blogging can open up new audiences. You can become a teacher within an infinitely larger classroom, and as you blog on subjects you think are interesting, you will discover that there are plenty of other education professionals 'out there' who are also interested. People who are interested will eventually find your blog and visit it regularly to see if they can learn something new from you.

4) Blogging can create personal momentum. Once you have started blogging, and you realise that you can actually do it, you will probably want to develop your skills further. Blogging can be time consuming, but the rewards are ultimately worth it. In my own experience, I find myself breaking out of inertia to create some forward movement in my thinking especially when I blog about 'edgy' topics that may be emotive, controversial, challenging. The more you blog, the better you become at writing for your audience, managing your arguments, defending your position, thinking critically.

5) Blogging can give you valuable feedback. As you gain feedback from your readership, you gain a sense of peer review, sometimes challenging and refuting your ideas (tricky to handle, but be open minded and you will learn a lot from constructive criticism) or affirming what you already believe to be true (some feedback from readers adds further value to your blogpost, and it's there for all to read). Affirmation of your own beliefs can be a powerful enabler for you as a professional practitioner.

6) Blogging can be creative. If you persist with blogging, you will discover that you develop new and creative ways to articulate what you want to say. As I write, I often search for alternative ways to express myself, and this can be through images, quotes, a retelling of old experiences through stories, videos, audio, or useful hyperlink to related web resources. You have many ways to convey your ideas, and you are simply limited to your own imagination. Try out new ways of communicating and take risks. Blogging is the platform that allows you to be creative.

7) Blogging can raise your game. Blogging is immediate. As soon as you press the Publish button, your ideas are on the web in front of a potential worldwide audience. Time and again I have heard from other teachers (and students) that they take much more care over grammatical construction, spelling and punctuation when they discover they have an audience.

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Seven reasons teachers should blog by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The truth about blogging

Anyone who blogs regularly will have discovered several truths. The first is that you are only as good as your last post. Many people struggle to maintain a regular blog that is consistently good, or at least meaningful. The blank page and writer's block are familar companions to all authors. But there is a contradiction here. Although you are only as good as your last blog, all your previously blogs are also out there, archived, published for people to read (and for you to revisit, if you wish). So be careful what you blog - the affordance of persistency is quite a powerful one, and can work either way.

The second truth is reflected in something that Shelly Blake-Plock (@teachpaperless) has expanded upon in his excellent post 'Why teachers should blog'. I quote: To blog is to teach yourself what you think. For me, this is reflexivity in action. Your work is placed right out there on the blogosphere, in a public agora for others to read, reflect on, and comment on. It's a shop window displaying your thoughts, opinions or arguments to anyone who happens to walk on by. Blogging in effect, can contribute to an endless cycle of learning through content creation, feedback, reflection and refinement of thinking. It is this kind of critical reflection cycle that can build excellent, creative, flexible and responsive educators. I have on several occasions written concerning the reasons I blog, but let me extend my argument further to all of my writing efforts, paper and online:

I write because in the act of writing, I am written. In Daniel Chandler's terms, it is about constructing meaning, discovering and drawing out your internal thoughts, and externalising them in prose. He says: "The experience of ‘discovery’ in writing may sometimes represent having found a way to make one’s ideas coherent." In effect, as I write, I create concrete meaning from my abstract thoughts. Also, because the blog is public, I write for an audience. My writing has become a social act. As I learn my thoughts, I share them with you.

A third truth, deriving from my previous statement, is this: Writing on blogs is dialogical, much more so that it ever could have been in paper format. In some journals there is occasionally a dialogue between two experts, who each write a treatise in response to the arguments of the other. This kind of dialogue is as far removed from the debate as it is possible to get without disengaging totally. Far more immediate is the dialogue that can transpire between two or more protagonists when they are simultaneously online, and using the basis of a blog post to argue. This kind of dialectical process most closely resembles the debate, and synthesis of ideas can occur more quickly for those who are engaged. Even the lurkers, those who participate peripherally or merely observe, can gain from the experience of reading the content of the comments boxes.

So there are many reasons to blog, and even more reasons to blog regularly, especially if you are in the business of education.

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The truth about blogging by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web feats 3: Blogging

I continue my series on the tools I can't do without, and today, I want to talk about blogging, and the platform I use for Learning with 'e's: Blogger.

This is Blogger. What you are reading now is on a blog hosted by Blogger. It's probably one of the simplest 'free' tools you will find anywhere on the web for creating your own blog. I find blogging very valuable, because it allows me to post up my ideas, reflections, questions and fun content so that I can share it with the world. Having a blog is like owning your own publishing house or personal radio station. I have complete editorial control over my content, and once I have written and posted it, it's there for the entire world to look at, should they wish to. But I can also come back to it and add, delete or modify the content any time I want.

I first started blogging at the end of 2006, and have continued to do so regularly ever since. I have already posted up my reasons for blogging (Why do I bother?), and I have also given my opinions on what ingredients there should be in a good blog post. There has also been a lot written by others about the pedagogical and personal benefits of blogging, but I won't try to summarise it or repeat what has already been said. I will simply give my personal view, because that's what this blog is all about! Blogging has transformed my professional practice (teaching and researching) because it has enabled me to write down and present my ideas in a way which is coherent to my wider community of practice. OK, so I could publish in a peer reviewed journal and often do, but that takes time (read Publish and be jammed and you'll see what I mean). Blogging is different - it has immediacy - it's almost instantaneous, so I now use it as my preferred weapon of mass instruction. In doing so, I have had to articulate myself clearly, separate out fact from fiction, and have also needed to adopt a creative approach to the way I represent my ideas. Doing all of this has made me better at writing, better at speaking, and ultimately has given me a springboard from which I can launch into developing my ideas and theories further afield. I gain very valuable feedback from people who comment on my posts, and in doing so, I can reflect critically, strengthen my ideas further, modify and adapt them to make them more workable, and even gain some new insight as I blog. In the act of writing, it has been said, we are written. As I write, edit and then post my content on this blog, I make my ideas available to the world, and wait for the world to make its feedback available to me. It's a two way street that brings a lot of personal and professional benefits.

Image source (Joyce Seitzinger)

Web feats 3: Blogging by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Why do I bother?

Reading Tom Barrett's post 'Why Bother Blogging?' got me thinking about my own reasons for blogging. It can be hard work, but it can also be very rewarding. Some readers have remarked that they wish they were as prolific as me when it comes to blogging, and other have asked me where I get all my ideas from to blog about. Well, I'm not half as prolific as I would like to be, and others out there in the Blogosphere write a lot more than I do and on a more regular basis too. It is difficult to find material to write coherently about, but that is probably one of my main reasons for blogging:

1) I blog because it keeps me on my toes intellectually, thinking up ways to express what I know about how learning technology is progressing, how my ideas are being challenged by new methods and emerging technologies, how my own practice is being enhanced, my skills extended and how my students are finding new ways to learn through emerging media and devices. Thinking about the content of my next blog post often prompts me to read a lot, interact online and face to face more, and generally encourages me to reflect critically on what I believe.

2) I also blog because during the process of thinking and reflecting on my own professional practice and what is happening around me, I need somewhere to keep a record of these impressions. Blogging gives me a chronological record of my own thoughts, dated and time stamped, complete with hyperlinks to useful related online resources and materials, and images I have selected which have evoked an emotional response in me. All of these features combine to provide me with a digital artefact that captures a moment of my thoughts in time.

3) I blog because it attracts feedback from readers on my ideas and views, and the comments box can sometimes overflow with excellent responses from readers of my posts. I value greatly the comments of all those who take the time to respond to my posts, and I learn a lot from them. Many the time someone has commented on one of my posts and this has led me to either modify my own ideas, or to confirm to me that I am on the right track in my reasoning.

4) Blogging helps me to make concrete all the ideas I have, and reifies the thoughts I want to keep. Somehow, putting down these ideas in a manner that makes them publicly accessible, makes me strive even harder to articulate my ideas in a coherent way. In writing I am written, and blogging is more than just a part of my personal learning environment. It has become a key part of my professional development and practice.

5) Another reason I blog is to share my ideas and thereby contribute to the intellectual wellbeing of the community of interest I belong to on the Web and add to the shared knowledge we rely upon. Others share their ideas freely, and I want to reciprocate. This frank exchange of ideas and content is what makes my community of interest such a wonderful thing, and enriches all of us who claim to belong to it.

6) It's a creative process, and can be great fun. I often lace my posts with humour or irony, and enjoy the way my posts come together. Dreaming up pithy titles for these posts is also great fun, and it is surprising how many people make encouraging comments and give positive feedback on these little additions. It's a great exercise for my mind and keeps me from getting bored.

7) Being able to publish my ideas instantly to the world is a great asset. Knowing that more and more people are reading my posts, following regularly, and responding too - is both a pressure and a pleasure. It's a little like owning your own newspaper, but potentially a lot more powerful, because posts can be updated, enhanced and linked on the fly, and they enable interaction between the writer and the audience.

There are probably other reasons why people blog, but those are my personal 'magnificent seven'. Now tell me ... what are your reasons for blogging?

Image source (edited)


Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

A blog for teacher

I found a very readable article today on the use of blogs to promote critical reflection and community of practice for language teachers. Written by Shih-Hsien Yang, the paper appears in the open access journal Educational Technology and Society. It's good to see that research is being published into the serious educational/teacher professional development aspects of blogging.

Here's the link to the pdf and below is the abstract:

Using the theories of critical reflection and community of practice, the aim of this paper was to explore the use of blogs as a reflective platform in the training processes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student teachers, who were learning to teach English for future employment in Taiwan. They made use of blogs as a platform to critically reflect on their learning processes as well as to gauge the impact of blogs on their own professional growth. Forty-three student teachers in two teacher-education programs at two science and technology institutions in central Taiwan participated in this study. Two instructors created a blog for use as a discussion forum so that the student teachers could engage in and examine their own reflection process. The data collected was qualitative in nature, consisting of student teachers’ posting messages and comments on the blog, surveys on the student teachers’ reflective experiences using blogs as reflection tools, and group reflective dialogues recorded by instructors in class meetings over the implementation of blogs during the course. The results showed that the student teachers actively discussed teaching theories and their implications through blogs. All of the 43 teachers who took part in this study were reflective, and some critically reflected on their thoughts and made significant comments; and the participants considered technology a useful platform for reflecting and communicating with each other. The positive implications for the use of blogs as a medium to provide and promote critical reflection for EFL teachers are discussed.

Reference: Yang, S.-H. (2009). Using Blogs to Enhance Critical Reflection and Community of Practice. Educational Technology & Society, 12 (2), 11–21.

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