It was the second week of October and our principal Mr. Kennedy was going upstairs, I was coming down. He knows my expectation that the TOK class develop skills in classroom discussion. Conversation is the paradigm of learning, and students should learn to ask questions, respond appropriately, ask for clarification, draw their own conclusions. The ancient Greeks definitely got that one right. Socrates was not walking up and down the aisle passing out multiple choice tests and telling kids to stop yapping. We are not going to be taking tests all through life (I hope); we will certainly be learning through conversation. “Why don’t you try a blog,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Some students who are hesitant to speak in class might benefit.”
Sounded like a good idea. Take the conversation to the web. Same conversation skills expressed in cyberspace.
When I mentioned it to the students, some did not know what a blog is. So I gave them an overview, how it is a web log (say it fast) and the earliest appeared in the mid 1990s, as the Internet began to weave itself around the planet. Technorati reports that the majority of bloggers are hobbyists, but one can see that blogs, as a source of widely disseminated independent opinion, are becoming a significant lever in many spheres, including politics. They help to fund campaigns, they raise issues that the mainstream might overlook. In Italy the comedian/political activist Beppe Grillo’s blog has an enormous following. It’s as if anyone can have an internationally syndicated column.
And they are being used in education. There are blogs for administrators, for teachers, for classes. Some students keep a personal blog as a diary. Each is a voice in the global educational community. If you value conversation, you probably value blogs.
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