Schoolsafe Blogging – The Holy Grail revisited

James Farmer prodded me from my blogging slumber and got me thinking again about the quest for the Holy Grail of weblogging software. The arrival of some major corporate players with their weblogging offerings for schools seems to be signalling a time when the goal of schoolsafe blogging is finally on the horizon and local education authorities and school districts can breath a sigh of relief safe in the knowledge that the ‘blogging stallion has finally been reined in.’

According to Will Richardson, ‘It’s like the Wild West of blogs is coming to an end.’ He looks at the situation with a mixture of delight, sadness and trepidation. James also pointed to my writing on the subject from those days when blogging was not yet in the Oxford Dictionary and under the radar of most educators.

The perfect all-embracing edublogging software does not exist and probably never will. No software can satisfy the multi-facetted desires and needs of the colourful and varied educational stage. Tweaking software will ‘please some of the the people some of the time’ but pleasing all of the people all of the time is another matter altogether. Ease of use is also important in software adoption but what one finds easy is another’s challenge. Software alone will never produce a ‘blogtastic’ revolution in our schools. In fact, blogging software choice is not the crux of the matter. There are no fatal mistakes to be made in that area as long as we realise that all ’software sucks’. Pioneering, mentoring educators are far more crucial to the whole edublogging process. Let’s concentrate our ‘hot air production’ on that subject

At the time of writing that piece I had already spoken to the then major players in the blogging software world and they were not interested in shaping their software for the educational market. Adam Curry and myself had already set up SchoolBlogs.com to offer the opportunity for educators to taste weblogs for themselves. The decision was borne out of my experiences with weblogging at the chalkface of educational practice in the classroom. I just got on with using and tweaking blogs to offer my pupils communicative and collaborative opportunities that they otherwise could not have experienced. Was the software perfect? No! Did it matter? No! If I had wanted the perfect piece of blogging software before pioneering with my class of ten-year-olds then I would still be waiting.

Aren’t we now living in different times though? The corporate suppliers are waking up to educational weblogs, driven no doubt by the potential market that education might offer. The variety of general weblogging software with prices ranging from free to extortionate, has also dramatically increased. Educational blogging consultants seem to be springing up all over the place, some aiming for the guru-status of being paid for hot-air production about blogs and related technology that they never have used at the chalkface. I would like to think though that the majority of blogging consultants are driven by a vision to see teaching and learning transformed because their own practice has been transformed.

After all – it has never been about the technology per se. It is about what teachers do with it to affect teaching and learning in the 21st century. Pedagodgy must drive the software not the reverse. Weblogs have had great impact so far because they have an inherent flexibility that allow teachers and students to explore, create and find solutions on their own terms. Software that imposes limits on teachers’ ability to teach will stifle creativity in the end. That for me, is where the present danger lies. Big corporations will start producing their blogsafe walled-gardens for schools to use. Districts and LEAs will love them, and pay handsomely for them but their very blogsafe and inflexible nature will drain them of their enabling power, adding just another demand on teachers in the classroom.

If a weblog is like a polar bear then the best place to see it is roaming free. I worry though that some people are trying to trap and tame weblogs, the equivalent of putting the polar bear into a zoo where the magnificent beast will live out its days repetitively trudging up and down the confines of its cage. Safer it may be in captivity but it was made to be free. Eliminating every risk from our students’ lives is not the role of education in my view. Our job as educators is to ensure that students are digitally literate and cybersavvy so that they are equipped to weigh up risks for themselves. Weblogging offers an authentic plaform for real responsibility to be developed in students. Take away the authenticity and you have little that is of use in the classroom and beyond.

I see no problem with having corporate solutions as long as teachers are not locked into using them if they do not turn out to be (cost) effective. As long as teachers can vote with their feet and choose other options to preserve their ability to be creative then there is hope. However, as we are seeing with the recent blocking at the district and LEA levels of really useful and effective blogging sites such as LearnerBlogs , these decisions are often taken out of the hands of teachers on the frontline. The Wild West of blogging may be coming to an end but the district or county cowboys are still out there making poor decisions on behalf of teachers.

To cut a very long story short – there is no Holy Grail of blogging software and none that will ever meet all our requirements. It is fine to hope for the Holy Grail but just do not spend too much time waiting for it We are experts as teachers at operating in less than perfect conditions. Let’s just get on with exploiting the potential of blogging with whichever software we deem best for our particular situations. Just do it!