David Huffaker’s “The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom”


This article basically sets out to describe why and how blogs should be used in educational settings. Huffaker defines the features of blogs: offer instant publishing, people can comment/give feedback to different posts, are archival, and other bloggers can hyperlink to them.

Huffaker suggests that we should not ignore blogs in educational setting because a majority of blog users (40.4%) are adolescents—people under the age of 20. He writes, “This article hypothesizes that blogs can be an important addition to educational technology initiatives because they promote literacy though storytelling, allow collaborative learning, provide anytime-anywhere access, and remain fungible across academic disciplines” (92).

Huffaker begins his argument by writing about the importance of literacy. Education is based on reading and writing, and educators need to take every opportunity to get students to read and write. Huffaker writes about an emerging literacy—digital fluency. Digital fluency is basically about people becoming comfortable using technology. He writes, “The uses of educational technology have a two-fold advantage: they can promote the types of literacy traditionally encouraged in learning, as well as the digital fluency needed to prosper in the digital age” (93). He continues that blogs are a great way to get students to increase their literacy (especially digital fluency) because blogs are easy to use and allow students the opportunity to get more comfortable with computers.

Storytelling is often used as one way of introducing kids to literacy. This is an effective way of getting children used to expressing themselves while being entertaining at the same time. Blogs open up the possibility of incorporating storytelling into educational settings. And again, using technology in this way would help students with their digital fluency.

Blogs can easily be utilized in classrooms and offer many benefits. Students have an opportunity to express themselves in the same way that they can in a diary or journal while at the same time being hooked into a digital community. Blogs have a simple design making them accessible to most people. Because blogs are so simple, they are easy for teachers to teach. One of the biggest draws to blogs is that they are based on the internet, making them accessible anytime from anywhere there is internet.

Blogs allow personal expression while at the same create a sense of community. Blogs open up opportunities for feedback and comments, and bloggers can also link to each other’s blogs. This is essentially a space where the private and public mingle.

Another positive feature of blogs is that they can be used in any discipline. Huffaker gives examples how blogs have been used in science and math classes—it does not have to be used solely be English instructors. He writes, “any discipline can use blogs to approach a style of meta-learning, where concepts of contexts are discussed and articulated in both a personalized and group exchange, and ideas are built on previous educational content” (95).

Huffaker continues by listing more reasons why blogs should be used in classrooms. First and foremost, blogs bring the idea of audience to life for students. Blogs also are easy enough for students of all ages to use (including an example that he gives of third graders using blogs). Blogs are not confined by a certain group, specifically that one school using blogs is not stuck only with each other’s blogs—blogs transcend individual schools. Blogs are also good for teachers to use because they can work as an archive of the work they’ve done. Ultimately, the biggest draw that blogs offer is that they create sense of community.

COMMENTS:

I think the most important thing that Huffaker wanted people to learn about blogs is that they are easy to use, which up until a few weeks ago I would have disagreed with—not because it isn’t true, but because I didn’t know how easy it was until I was forced to learn. My question becomes, how can we convince educators to give them a try? I think Huffaker does a nice job of listing reasons—sense of community, ease of use, the importance of digital fluency—all good reasons why blogs are a reasonable place to start or add to using technology in the classroom. I also think that Huffaker made sense by relating blogs to journals—an already pedagogically accepted learning tool. Perhaps it would be beneficial to push this idea when trying to convince educators of why they should give blogs a chance.