Parker Carwile

Dr. Bulent Dogan

CUIN 6320, Section 10991
Technology Investigation

The “Posting” Proposal:

How Blogging May Enhance Writing Skills in High School English Classrooms

With the pressure to integrate technology and keep up with an increasingly digital age,

most educators are constantly looking for new ways to use technology in their lessons. In my

experience, I have witnessed a trend: experts advocating all the benefits of a specific technology

and educators clinging to these ideals, integrating it and hoping for promised results. But the

outcomes are usually more complicated than expected, where teachers face student, time-related,

and personal obstacles that render the benefits useless despite pure intentions. Because of what I

have experienced in my teaching observations and personal life, I wish to present my technology

investigation in a way that does not equal a solution but simply proposes a possibility for

improvement.

It has come to my attention that writing instruction in secondary schools has been a

struggle for many English teachers. I not only read about it in articles or news stories, but see it

frequently in the classroom, either through a teacher’s uncertainty in how to teach writing or

through the students’ poor execution of writing. And quite honestly, it seems like the problem is

beyond helping in some instances, where the number of contributing variables is unfathomable,

but because I was presented with the opportunity to conduct a technology investigation, I

decided to see if any web tool I could find would be an option for improving the crisis.

This is when I came to blogging.

Blogging is not a new practice; it comes from combining “web” and “log” and mostly

consists of written reflections posted to the public online. But what was originally described as
“online journals or diaries” could have further implications for writing curriculums (as cited in

Nair, Tay, & Koh, 2013, p. 109). Hossain and Wiest describe blogs as “an example of Web 2.0

technologies… because they allow users to create, modify, and share content” (as cited in

Morgan, 2015, p. 27). As further discussed by Shiang-Kwei and Hui-Yin, this means that blogs

provide connections to real-world audiences unlike private-server discussion boards (Shiang-

Kwei & Hui-Yin, 2008). So, what does this mean for writing instruction? Unlike most writing

prompts students receive in a classroom, blog assignments are not just for teachers’ eyes only or

for a mark in the grade book. Blog posts have the potential to be viewed by other classmates,

students from different grades or schools, or anyone searching for terms associated with the

content, which gives the act of writing a more authentic purpose. In the words of Gee, “writing is

a social practice;” writing for “authentic audiences can increase… output and achievement”

because writing skills essentially “develop within the context of interpersonal communication”

(as cited by Jones, 2012, p. 16). This is important to keep in mind as a writing teacher because

writing only in the context of essay prompts “may pass standardized tests,” but does not

accurately prepare students for “the complex writing… outside of school” (Jones, 2012).

Other areas blogging can encourage are student engagement in writing and writing

creativity. In a 2017 study of blog effectiveness in Biology classrooms, the results determined

that using blogs in instruction can “better achievement” and “understanding of the teaching

material” (Lazarević, Miljanović, Županec, & Zarić, 2018). Although advanced students seemed

to benefit most from this study, the interactivity of blogs including audio and visuals proved

more capable than textbooks to engage students in active learning across all levels of

achievement (Lazarević et al., 2018). According to Jerles, “student enthusiasm tends to increase

when teachers integrate blogging” with the preference for “using technology for assignments,
and the increase in motivation helps reluctant readers become more involved” (as cited by

Morgan, 2015, p. 28). So with the added features of “videos, sound, images, text, and links to

other content on the Internet,” blogging could become an important tool for student expression

by promoting the art of reflective writing while “building skills of communicating, sharing, [and]

analyzing” (Morgan, 2015; Nair et al., 2013).

Based on my findings for blogging in educational settings, most of the feedback seems

positive. There is evidence for increased active learning, motivation, critical thinking skills, and

writing development despite few formal studies being done on the subject. However, I am also

aware that the benefits of routine, reflective writing in higher-level composition skills is still

widely debated, so concluding that blogging assignments throughout English curriculum will

transform poor writing students into success stories would be false. Regardless, most educators

and researchers seem to agree that just the act of writing regularly with an authentic audience in

mind is enough to at least boast the confidence of student writers, and interestingly enough, this

not only affects the quality of student writing but the quality of writing instruction as well.

When I began researching the causes poor writing skills in high school students, I began

to realize much of the issues could be traced back to their teachers, most notably teachers’

perceptions on writing. As discussed in a 2016 article in the Teaching/Writing: The Journal of

Writing Teacher Education, a teacher’s writing identity could greatly affect the quality of writing

instruction as well as student attitudes toward writing: “research has shown that when teachers

write, their confidence, modeling, enthusiasm, and writerly behavior benefits young writers in

their classroom” even though “many teachers… express having low self-confidence and negative

writing histories that challenge how they write and teach writing” (Zoch, Meyers, Lambert,

Vetter, & Fairbanks, 2016, p. 1-3). This opinion is not alone however, many other English
educators and scholars have speculated writing insecurities among English teachers.

Christenbury and Lindblom posited that the lack of comfortability with writing could be related

to the original reason for writing instruction: to act as “a conduit for communication” when

classes became too large for individual oral recitations (Christenbury & Lindblom, 2016, p. 293).

They claimed that since this type of writing was more “focused on correctness” rather than “a

creative means of thinking and problem solving” that many teachers still approach writing as a

formula and lack experience or comfortability in authentic writing (Christenbury & Linblom,

2016, p. 293-294). With push toward higher-level thinking in Common Core standards, an

English teacher’s lacking confidence or experience in writing could be a detriment. But just as

students could gain more comfortability through blogging assignments, so can teachers.

One of the beauties of blogging is that anyone can publish content and receive honest

feedback, both students and teachers. Some blogging platforms such as Edublogs even offer

school/district wide access to all practicing teachers and current students, which makes it easy

for English teachers to get started and even form blogging communities. The best part is that

blogging could serve as an extension for lesson plans or objectives, exploring content discussed

in class more in-depth or even touching on grammar rules, citation rules, and literary

terminology not otherwise mentioned in the classroom. But once teachers become comfortable

with the tool, they can start using it for academic research and connecting with other English

teachers to share insights.

To claim that blogging in English classrooms would drastically change everyone’s

writing abilities and confidence would be an overstatement, but I do believe with all the

supporting evidence of effectiveness as well as all the features blogs have to offer is worth

exploring to make writing more engaging, less scary, and fun. Since I personally care about
enhancing my writing skills, I am constantly looking for new methods to approach writing and

can attest that most advice I am given is to practice regularly and get out of my comfort zone.

And at least in the beginning, for when students and teachers are not ready to publish anything

professionally or conduct extensive research, publishing blog reflections to an authentic audience

is a great way to follow this advice.

 References

Christenbury, L., & Lindblom, K. (2016). “Writing, Revising, and Publishing”. In Sue Paro
(Ed.), Making The Journey: Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts (4th ed.,
pp. 293-333). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Jones, S. R. (2012). Digital Access. Teaching Exceptional Children, 45(2), 16-23.
Lazarević, T., Miljanović, T., Županec, V., & Zarić, G. (2018). THE EFFECTS OF USING
BLOG AS A WEB TOOL IN BIOLOGY TEACHING IN HIGH SCHOOLS. Journal Of Baltic
Science Education, 17(2), 331-342.
Morgan, H. (2015). CREATING A CLASS BLOG: A STRATEGY THAT CAN PROMOTE
COLLABORATION, MOTIVATION, AND IMPROVEMENT IN LITERACY. Reading
Improvement, 52(1), 27-31.
Nair, S. S., Tay, L. Y., & Koh, J. L. (2013). Students’ motivation and teachers’ teaching
practices towards the use of blogs for writing of online journals. Educational Media
International, 50(2), 108-119.
Shiang-Kwei, W., & Hui-Yin, H. (2008). Reflections on Using Blogs to Expand In-class
Discussion. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 52(3), 81-85.
Zoch, M., Meyers, J., Lambert, C., Vetter, A., & Fairbanks, C. (2016). Reimagining Instructional
Practices: Exploring the Identity Work of Teachers of Writing. Teaching/Writing: The Journal of
Writing Teacher Education, 5(1), 1-3.