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There are more than 500 million blogs on the Internet with an estimated growth rate of more than 7 million new blogs daily. If this can be the size of the whole blogging industry then there are enough reasons for students to participate in this. Students must know and learn to write blogs as part of their study curriculum as they use it to write essays.
Before there used to be school or college magazines and journals where students used to express their views and ideas. That also used to provide motivations to students to write better and more creatively to reach his or her potential readers with a better package. This cult is fast dwindling and something has to take place of it if we need to encourage and acknowledge student writing skills and talents.
It is true that in the long run every student is not likely to become any sort of writer or even blogger, but still there should be scope and opportunities. Not every cricket or football player plays in the world cup, or in the national team, still we encourage every student to take up a game of his or her choice in order to perform some sporting actions. Blogging has to be taken in the same line of views.
In this context it is better to mention that it is not much better or always advisable for students to enter into public blogging space, as that would need much maturity and responsibility as a writer or blogger which cannot be expected at their junior ages. So the best alternative is a school blog or college blog. Every educational institution can host their own blogging space, just like that used to be in the case of school or college magazines. A review committee has to be there to check the health and legitimacy of all the posts.
Thus in that guided and reviewed space, students can find their windows to open up with what they want to speak to the world and how they want to speak that out. This empowerment of expression is crucial in building a sound and stable personality in their future.
This will not only promote writing skills and aptitudes, but also tend to create a good reader in most of the students if not all. Fellow students would always feel curious and interested to read what their friends are writing or expressing, and in the process their reading and perceptive skills. They would learn to listen and understand.
Together writing and reading skill development through blogging can create very significantly good outcomes in every students’ overall academic performances. Nowadays students are already fast losing their reading and writing skills and aptitudes. Under this descending evolution, blogging can make a difference and make things reverse. Afterall that can be a positive attempt without almost anything to lose but only to gain, if any.
In case of student blogs, a few issues get more crucial than other cases of blogging activities. Let us explore few such issues
Platform
Purpose
Process
As I mentioned above, students are ideally not to undertake public level blogging and they don’t need that either. Let us save the public domain for more professional and adult bloggers.
Students are learners, and the blogging activities have to belong in their learning schedule. And the platform has to be selected and set accordingly. Here by platform we are not to understand the blogging application platform, but the actual implication is about who will own and maintain the blogging platform.
Institutional blogging platforms hosted and maintained by the respective school or college of the student is the most ideal space for student blogging. Every student or perhaps the interested students can be given an user level access to the platform against an issued username and password. Thus being the portal user he or she can upload blogs for teachers and peers to read and comment.
This is the most important issue in the case of student level blogging. This is because the other two issues of platform and process to a considerable extent depend on this.
Until and unless one cannot set or define a purpose to any enterprise, then that becomes like sailing the sea without any destination and without the compass and map.
To reach anywhere first one needs to know where to reach. Then he needs to figure out how to reach. Also he needs to list what he would need to reach there. Without having the answers of these few fundamental questions, usually no purpose can be met for any organized activities. And blogging is a high level organized activity as it needs a lot of planning, resources and execution. It also involves a lot of people including the writer and the readers.
For our present issue of student blogging, fixing the right purpose should not be too tough or complex as I feel. For professional bloggers things are expected to be totally different. They have questions of influence building and monetization and maybe some things even more.
As I said above, the main purpose of a student blog is ideally educational. They already write essays and paragraphs as part of their language application curriculum. But there happens to be only one reader, the teacher. That does serve the purpose of education to a certain level. But education is most highly related to motivation. And how can the best of the writing delivery come without that motivation?
Expression of ideas and accreditation to those ideas not only provide enough motivation for more ideation but also shapes the personality to a significant level in the long run. This can be used for the writing exercises of the students through writing blogs.
Making students think (or can we say think it right) and shaping their mindset and personality are among the highest purposes of their academic journey through schools and colleges. And in this the added advantage of institutional blogging can become a major contributor.
After the purpose is set (or perhaps apparently set) and platform has been chosen the next obvious question arises on the process. Without the right process, the purpose would become hard or even impossible to meet. And also the usefulness of the platform thus gets deprecated or even void.
Determining the right process sometimes can become the most time taking and strenuous job. There can be a lot of experimentation and trial and error, obviously not without the toll of errors and failures. And that can erode or exhaust a significant amount of resources out of the platform resulting in a lot of compromises in the purpose. Obviously these are not at all desirable and to be avoided at best possible effort.
I am not anyhow suggesting any particular process over here because we are not doing any case study with a defined purpose and platform. Still there are some parts or aspects that can become a common entry in any efficiently working process. Let me discuss them.
One important part of the process is monitoring the quality and legitimacy of each uploaded content. That can be a mammoth task if the number of student uploaders are quite high. Still there seems almost no better alternative to this.
Panels of teachers and some senior students can become the panel to review each blog article preferably before upload. That will ensure the quality and integrity of blog contents submitted by various students.
Uploads can also be done in different processes. Each student can have his or her login access and they can upload their own articles in the blog. But that will have some problems relating to the review and presentation standards of the blog on the website.
A better process can be a central upload committee who will undertake all the content upload and maintenance issues of the blog website.
Now let us see some of the benefits of student blogging. The benefits depend on the purpose of blogging, or in the other way, the purpose platform and process has to be designed keeping the eye on some set of benefits.
There are many benefits of student blogging and it varies on a case to case basis. Still there are some most general benefits, let us see into that in brief.
This is the most common and obvious benefit of student blogging. As I said, blogging can be a good and even more motivating language learning activity than practices of essay writing, or many creative writing exercises.
Immediate publication and equally spontaneous feedback and comments makes blogging an unparalleled platform for motivating as well as evaluating one’s writing skills and creativity. Students can more flexibly experiment with their writings which gives more opportunities for improvisation than any other writing medium.
Students, and specially those who are above average or talented, need channels to express their ideas and views. Many talents get suppressed due to lack of proper writing medium and readers. Through blogging they can learn to express themselves healthily and as civilized in a more academic manner. This can enhance their confidence and self-worth as well as there remains enough scope to evaluate their ideas and views for future betterment.
Connections and communications (obviously of the right kind) are very important for human living. Humans by definition are social entities, hence connections and associated communications are required. But often wrong connections cause more harm than benefit. And finding the right kind of connections is very hard to find. So how can blogging help students in that?
Blogging is a highly social activity, very purposeful simultaneously. It connects a lot of people with the writer and sometimes readers with each other. And this way many like minded people come into a common space. And especially the writer enjoys a major privilege to find many people related to his views and mindsets. These connections can become a major benefit of the blog writer student.
Blog is somewhere where the writer is expected to speak his mind. And interested readers are expected to get more details as well as pay more attention inside the writer’s mind. And often they also connect to the writer through comment or email, whichever applicable or available in a particular case. This way, like minded connections can keep growing to build up a beneficially symbiotic community.
When we are discussing the academic ecosystem, the teacher-student connections and interactions also become very beneficial for academic progress. I have even seen many students to find a mentor in a teacher if they can relate to each other in that mindset.
In a general academic setup also, better teacher-student communication can result in much better performance. We often see enough gap in teachers’ understanding of his or her students’ mindsets and capabilities. They remain buried under the burden of curriculum and textbooks. But there is supposed to be much more in education than just syllabus and texts.
Blogs are both curricular as well as extra-curricular activities in the same package. This can promote both the modes of educational interests in enthusiastic students. Thus this is very crucial for overall progress in the academic environment for both the teachers and students.
Well the pride in one shot may look a little odd in the context of discussion over here. But if thought deeply, especially in the light of student and parent psychology and their interconnections.
Inspirations and promotions from parent’s sides can become a major game changer in the life of a student. And often parents remain quite unaware about their child’s thoughts, views and talents. Either parents have less time to dig deep into those, or sometimes less interests as well. But if their child becomes their matter of pride for some reasons whatsoever then there remains possibilities that he or she can pull more attention and care from the parents.
And exactly at this point blogging can work well. Blogging can make a student a kind of micro-celebrity within his or her academic circles consisting of teachers and peer students as well as their parents also. This can become a significant source of pride for the parents of that student.
And the resultant will be more care, inspiration and motivation, as well as promotion from the parents. This can help the student to nurture and flourish his talents and abilities to a higher level that may not have been possible otherwise.
The parents will take more interest and enterprise in their child’s education and overall academic growth, will tend to participate much more for the purpose of holistic welfare of the student. And obviously we can guess the outcome of such happenings.
So these were some benefits of student blogging. There can be more for specific cases. And there can be more discussion on student blogging, especially different how-tos and DIYs. I would try to cover more specific and practical issues on student blogging in some more future articles.
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