Jo blogs
Pupils
David Tuck introduces the Stamford Endowed School digital student voice
In September 2017, I launched a digital blog based on the premise of Edward Norton’s famous ‘rule’ in the film Fight Club: ‘The first rule of the blog is that only students are allowed to blog on it’. Admittedly, the cultural reference was lost on many of the students, but the idea was serious enough: it was their space. Over two hundred students have contributed to almost five hundred separate blog posts, whilst the HMI eulogised about the opportunities for pupil voice when the school was inspected. The blog itself has been viewed over 15, 000 times and has its own twitter handle with over four hundred followers, predominantly parents. This article will discuss how blogging supports creative writing, as well as facilitating independent learning and pupil voice. What does student blogging achieve? Educational research shows that student motivation increases if they have the opportunity and freedom to use their imagination to generate their ideas (Morton-Standish 2014). A blog’s open-ended structure compliments this and encourages both inclusiveness and exclusiveness. In the early weeks of the blog the most common misconception students had was that it was an academic vehicle for scholars and, rather depressingly, that no-one would be interested in anything they had to say. This was frustrating, as we had worked hard in giving the blog a positive launch, but not surprising when one looked at educational research. Renwick
(2017) has argued that the unintended consequence of academic competitiveness within a school is that it can reduce overall engagement amongst those who do not consider themselves the most able. Winning the hearts and minds of the students became crucial, as it could easily have withered on the vine in those first few weeks. Lenhart (2008) has argued that students are motivated to write when they have the choice of topics and when the writing is relevant to their interests. It was therefore necessary to alter the initial perceptions of the students, so in the early weeks of the blog I relied on colleagues acting as cheerleaders, cajoling and encouraging students to try blogging. Once students overcame their fears, and more importantly when the blog started to accumulate interesting posts, attitudes altered. The slow trickle of blogs became a constant stream of incredibly varied content. Two years into the project, I no longer chase blogs, since students are constantly emailing me content to post. These cover an amazingly wide range: show-jumping; engineering; chemistry experiments; fashion tips; film reviews; poems; SXS Champion racing; blogs written entirely in French, Spanish, German and Chinese; and one from a student who is a stunt double on the Netflix show Free Rein and wanted to share his exciting experiences. A student blog has advantages over a school magazine in that it has unlimited capacity. So, whilst the big sporting, drama and music events are very well represented, so are the
Summer 2019
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