Blogging at School

This week I've been teaching blogging to my students and it's been surprising seeing which students have really taken to it. (We're using edublogs.org - its meant to be safer for the kiddies, but I have to say that blogger is much more intuitive!)

The task they have is to create a fictional blog to demonstrate how blogging can give a voice to someone who may otherwise not have that voice. It's a response to reading The Baghdad Blog by Salam Pax (a fascinating insight into an Iraqi perspective on the Iraq war, but much too complicated for my Year 11 students).

One of my students, who is less than motivated at the best of times and refuses to read ("I don't read, miss")has spent hours considering what he is going to write about. He's discovered that this is an opportunity to express what he's going through at the moment and perhaps work towards some solutions.

Other students are letting their imaginations go, planning to give perspectives on life from bulimics, addicts, gangsters (the Melbourne ganglands wars are a big topic at the moment, thanks to Underbelly), a person with multiple personality disorder, someone with autism (inspired by The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime), even the life of a cannibal (entitled the skin's the best part). I'm actually looking forward to marking this work!

On the down side, when I explained to the class that they needed to "draw on" their understanding of The Baghdad Blog, one student, who always speaks the obvious without thinking, said, "We have have to draw?" Her class mates just turned around to her and stared. I myself, had to cover my mouth with the handout I was reading from to hide my smile. It didn't work.