Blogging in Composition and Literature Courses: A New Discourse presented by linette rasheed

1. Blogging in Composition and Literature Courses: A New Discourse presented by linetterasheed Technological innovations that assist students with critical thinking, developing, and expressing ideas in writing and literature classes are needed.

2. The Need for Blogging Researchthat addresses the solutions to this problem include: • Teaching strategies and instruction that help students engage in and successfully complete English courses (developmental and on the level) are needed. • Blogs are more frequently updated (in terms of adding new content or comments), include more exchange among people, and have a higher percentage of text (as opposed to multimedia) than standard Webpages. • The ease of writing and publishing on blogs makes them an appealing medium to students and thus has been found to help increase the quantity of student writing as well as its lexical sophistication (Fellner & Apple, 2006). • Having students write on blogs can help learners transition from a more colloquial to an academic writing style, develop a sense of voice, learn to participate in a community of writers, and gain an important new literacy in its own right by becoming contributors to and not just consumers of online content (Bloch, 2007; Rezaee & Oladi, 2008). • Blogs have a variety of formats and might include the user expressing their opinion about a topic or documenting activities. Blogs are interactive in the sense that other users could provide comments on the information posted by the blog author. Educational applications of blogs include researching, tracking, interpreting, and evaluating blogs for political commentary (multiple perspectives), cultural events, business, or other news and for examining changes over time

3. About Blogging • Links to YouTube that provide information on this innovation. • http://youtu.be/lu6ww1UWpik • http://youtu.be/rJ1JVGdUxkc • http://youtu.be/_rE3rTnWccE • http://youtu.be/MTCe9XMFPDk • http://youtu.be/ly5QGZVaQqk • http://youtu.be/497wsZ0vSsQ

4. Origins of Research • The term ‘Web 2.0’ was officially coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president of O’Reilly Media Inc. (the company famous for its technology-related conferences and high quality books) during a team discussion on a potential future conference about the Web (O’Reilly, 2005a).

5. Innovation: Development Snafus • While technological innovations that assist students with critical thinking, developing ideas, and expressing ideas in writing and literature classes are needed, some psychological barriers were encountered in the development process of blogging. • Among them is perception. Many educators continue to be critical of how tools such as blogging help students with mastery of the English language and mastery of relevant genres, enhance teaching and learning, and emphasize writing for meaningful academic purposes, and development of students’ academic language proficiency.

6. Timeline

7. S-Curve Rate of adoption of Blogging in Education among four-year accredited institutions in the United States. The study conducted by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research is a proportional sample of 28% public and 72% private institutions in all 50 states. Rate of adoption 2008-2009 41% Rate of adoption 2009-2010 51% Rate of adoption 2010-2011 66% Rate of adoption 2011-2012 68% Rate of adoption beginning to level off in 2011-2012

8. Commercialization: • Web 2.0 tools which include blogging have been packaged and manufactured using various mass media channels. The infusion and integration is distributed by educational publishing houses, marketing reps, and the most influential channel of communications---word of mouth throughout academic disciplines and departments. • First rolled out for the business sector, the tools usefulness spread into education.

9. Key Change Agents Each of these change agents will effect positive social change as they: • Assess client’s needs • Develop rapport with clients following establishing a need for change exists • Express empathy while diagnosing clients’ problems • Motivate interest among clients to achieve goals • Ensure that recommendations based on client need are in place in order to influence behavior change • Reinforce messages to clients who have confirmed adoption in the innovation-decision process and thereby stabilize behavior • Support and develop the clients self-reliance for change

10. Key Change Agents cont. • Innovators and early adopters of blogging will likely include members of the social system who are tuned in professionally and personally to social networking.

11. Audience Segmentation: Moving Key Change Agents toward adoption Strategies in garnering support from Innovators and Early Adopters include: Compile a “clique of innovators” from different geographical regions to network and open the communication channels Engage innovators in the diffusion process Increase awareness of the soundness and credibility of the innovation.

12. Resistance to Change • We must change the minds of these laggards who will reject the innovation primarily because they would rather hold on to the status quo and keep things as they are. • They are tied to the past and the social circle they operate within in the social system is small and contains like-minded individuals, all of whom are suspicious of change.

13. Audience Segmentation: Combating Resistance

14. Attributes of Innovations These combination of perceived attributes would be best for helping blogging meet critical mass. • Relative advantage • Compatibility • Trialability • Observability

15. Centralized or Decentralized

16. Critical Mass

17. Role of the Champion Students have already embraced blogging. They are championing the idea.

18. Defining the Need for Blogging • The number of students who unsuccessfully complete each section of Freshmen Composition, failing to earn a grade of “C” or better is on the rise • The number of students who receive an “I” or “W”, incomplete or withdraw, although few gains have been noted, this number is far too many

19. Matching Blogging to the Need • Like pieces of a puzzle, blogging in Literature and Composition classes fits. It provides students with a sense of confidence in reading, thinking, and writing. • When students have more confidence in their abilities, they have a meaningful learning experience. • This translates into more students remaining in the class, thereby reducing the number of incompletes, withdrawals, and failures

20. Persuading all Adopters

21. Persuading Adopters • With this in mind, and a critical eye towards student performance, let’s watch the video as students express how blogging has honed their writing skills while increasing their skills in reading, analyzing, and critical thinking.

22. Student Champions--Qualitative Research Their individual stories collectively provide anecdotal evidence that blogging can greatly increase how students engage with text and ultimately how they engage in the writing process.

23. Conclusion • As previously mentioned, we must encourage students to actively participate and be an essential component of planning, implementing, and navigating the wheel through their academic journey • In essence students must take control for what they learn and how well they learn it in order to meet educational learning objectives. • Blogging is one way to do that. Students can then meet their goals, and with this intended outcome, be a catalyst for change (Rasheed, 2012).

24. Wake up Everybody--Time to teach a new way • Fade to black with audio—Wake up Everybody • No more backwards thinking time for thinking ahead • Let’s teach them the very best we can

25. References • Bloch, J. (2007). Abdullah's blogging: A generation 1.5 student enters the blogosphere. Language Learning & Technology, 11(2), 128-141. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num2/bloch/default.html • Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pp. 31-38, Brisbane. Accessed from http://eprints.qut.edu.au • Fellner, T., & Apple, M. (2006). Developing writing fluency and lexical complexity with blogs. The JALT CALL Journal, 2(1), 15-26. • Rezaee, A. A., & Oladi, S. (2008). The effect of blogging on language learners' improvement in social interactions and writing proficiency. Iranian Journal of Language Studies, 2(1), 73-88. • Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin PressShale, D. 1988. Toward a reconceptualization of distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 2 (3): 25-35. • Rogers, E.M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. (5th ed.). New York, NY. Free Press.

26. References cont. • Teachers first home, 2007. Blogs basic for the classroom. The source for learning Inc. Retrieved   January 31, 2014. From http://legacy.teachersfirst.com/content/blog/blogbasics.cfm • Thomas, M. J. W. (2002). Learning within incoherent structures: The space of online discussion forums. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18, 351–366.  • U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). National assessment of educational progress: Nation’s report card [Data file]. Retrieved from  http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ • U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). Annual reports program [Data file]. Retrieved from  http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/Annual Reports/ • U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). K-12 practitioners circle [Data file]. Retrieved from  http://nces.ed.gov/practitioners/ • U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). State education data profiles [Data file]. Retrieved from  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/stateprofiles/ • Warschauer, M. (2010). Invited commentary: new tools for teaching writing. Language Learning & Technology, 14(1), 3-8.