Do blogs have a place in the classroom? 

By Aaron Barlow

Once, students sat in dorm lounges arguing-even about their classes-into the small hours. Now, they rarely do; the technological cocoon in each room is too enticing. Still, the bull session may not be lost. By using a classroom blog in a way that helps students see it as part of their regular online conversation, we may restore an academic aspect to their replacement bull sessions.

First, however, we have to be clear on just what a class blog is, and on its instructional place.

My students and I grappled with different approaches to blogs when I taught two sections of First-Year Composition-one in a computer classroom, one not. In the first, the blog dominated; in the second, it worked for the students, but at home.

To be fair, the first section operated at a disadvantage: It took place in that computer classroom, with rows of monitors demanding attention. The "traditional" classroom of the second section, with its moveable chairs, worked much better. Class time could be used more easily for other purposes when the draw of the computer wasn't present.

When any blog works, it works as a locus for community. For a group of students, it encourages informal honing of ideas and peer questioning, and provides a base for online research. However, it can't generate community alone, changing individuals into a cohesive unit. Classroom hardware may even serve to keep the students apart, individual work stations providing barriers. So the blog may end up as an ineffective addition, as it did in the first section of First-Year Composition.

In the other section, the blog worked, for it wasn't represented by technology in the classroom-often the only site the instructor can use for developing community. At a distance, the blog served to augment the learning process in a way it did not when it was at the center of the classroom. Still, it would have been even more effective if we could have started the blog in the classroom, letting students continue with it later.

Today, as technological development moves away from the PC, keeping the blog at bay is becoming easier. "Smart" classrooms, where technology becomes a group focus, are a positive step, but they don't allow simultaneous individual input. Add full Wi-Fi access, however, and students' personal communications devices, and we may even finally place the blog where it belongs by the end of class-in the students' backpacks, ready to be taken home.

When we see the Web as a new universe, we make decisions that can narrow classroom possibilities-as when classrooms are built for computer usage. When we see the Web as simply a technological extension of what we are trying to do anyway, we don't run that risk. By guiding discussion toward the blog, starting our blogs as nontechnological classroom discussions and allowing them to move online afterward, we will be providing both portability and the possibility of individual commitment to the conversation.

The simple, and old, rule is that technology alone provides no answer. Blogs work well in education-but usually only when used expansively from the classroom, and not in it. Leave the classroom for face-to-face interactions. After all, these are the basis of any good education.