Ruijie Zhao
Department of Humanities
Parkland College
Regarded as a utopia that embraces heterogeneous opinions, virtual space was conceived as an environment devoid of oppression, discrimination, and other social biases. It did not take long, however, for people to find out that online space is not free of oppression originating from power, gender, race, class, etc. Blackmon argues that “Ironically, although computers and the World Wide Web are being hailed as the great equalizer for students in the computerized classroom, African-American students are finding themselves further marginalized” (p. 153). She continues to say that “If we assume that because minority students have material access to computers they should be able to perform at the same level of computer competence as their majority counterparts, we once again fail to make good on the promise of a better life” (p. 160).
Blogs differ from formal academic writing largely due to their less formal writing style. As Petterg explains, “Some aspects of blogging are certainly very similar to oral cultures: blogs are conversational and social; they are constantly changing and their tone tends to be less formal and closer to everyday speech than is the general tone of print writing” (p. 33). Bloggers may treat it as a space to carry on dialogues with themselves and others; thus, they tend to write more casually. Such causal writing, as opposed to formal academic writing, appeals to students because they have an additional space to express and exchange thoughts in a new style. Such a new addition creates an opportunity for students to gain the pleasure of writing in a dialogue form that they do not always have the chance to explore in college composition courses. The pleasure found in writing contributes significantly to active learning.
Carrying on dialogues promoted through the use of blogs adds exciting dynamics to teaching writing. The possibility to link to others and have potential readers enables and encourages dialogues. Pettberg said:
Plato . . . argues that dissemination is wasteful, and that dialogue with worthy listeners and the careful tending of communication is the best way to spread your ideas. This idealization of dialogue has been particularly strong in modern ideas of pedagogy, where experts in the latter half of the twentieth century have moved away from previous ideas of education as a simple transferral of information (a kind of dissemination) and towards the idea that knowledge is constructed by the learner in dialogue and interaction with people and technologies. (p. 36)
Pettberg is promoting the idea that knowledge is constructed and shared in a community of people, rather than a single individual. In the digital world, knowledge construction involves people and technologies that interact. Loss of interaction diminishes the power of dialogues, which negatively impacts the building of knowledge, an act that is both situational and materialistic. Therefore, the question is: How do educators promote collaborative and democratic learning among students in virtual space?
Turnley argues, “When interactions with technologies are assumed to be automatic rather than contingent upon personal, social, and political factors, users (including students and teachers) are positioned as passive receivers rather than active agents” (p. 134). This observation reinforces the importance of approaching technologies in a way that promotes their active qualities so that the advantages of implementing these technologies are cultivated. Moreover, this observation suggests the importance of understanding technologies to promote positive learning outcomes under specific social settings. For the postwriting stage, with its goal of encouraging students to reflect on the prewriting and writing/rewriting stages, blogs are an effective tool.
Richardson argues, “By their very structure, blogs facilitate what I think is a new form of genre that could be called ‘connective writing,’ a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, that is done for a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed” (p. 28). The connective writing benefits the students because it connects them with a wider audience, motivating them since having a real audience helps them see the value of this postwriting activity. Meanwhile, when students publish their reflections on the blogs, they can collaborate in smaller groups virtually. Such virtual collaboration occurs when students are connected to each other by adding classmates’ blogs, which creates a positive networked learning environment for each individual.
Penrod contends that “because a blog is a personalized learning environment in a real setting, it simulates a genuine writing activity. Student writers learn about writing by completing a real writing task. In many ways, the blog becomes an interactive teacher” (p. 24). When students comment on their writing as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, they need to understand what they wrote before they evaluate and eventually articulate such evaluation online. When they write, they are writing to themselves, their group members, and their instructors. This group of audiences know the subject well and, in fact, has undergone the writing process together. Therefore, students do not need to provide detailed background knowledge about the assignment or the activities they did in class to contextualize their reflection. Such a specific audience challenges the writer to critique his/her writing and the writing process critically so that the reflective essay is meaningful to the audience. Under this learning circumstance, a reflection that lacks depth will not appeal to such a specific audience.
The web that is woven through blogs, as a result, connects different life styles, different understandings of the same subject, different angles for approaching the assignment, and different responses to the same post. However, blogs do not guarantee effective connected learning. It is the dialectical and interactive learning environment advocated by feminist pedagogy that contributes to the establishment of a dynamic virtual network.