blog of proximal development

I have been thinking about Writing vs. Blogging this week. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of my students associate blogging with knowledge-building. They see writing in their blogs as transactional writing, as writing to be interacted with, to be returned to and reflected upon.

Here are some excerpts from my class logs:

I was asked today whether or not I would allow revising of blog entries based on reactions (comments) received from peers.

This afternoon, one of my reluctant writers asked if she could stay in class during recess and post some entries she had accidentally saved to her electronic portfolio and not her blog. “I don’t want them [my classmates] to think that I haven’t done it.”

Question: “Is it OK if we comment on something that was written last week?”

Grade 8 student: “People only comment on stuff that I worked really hard to write.”

Grade 8 student: “I didn’t do what the assignment said but I still wrote about the topic. I wrote about what [student name] wrote about this stuff.”