Jo blogs, David Tuck

Pupils Jo blogs 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

supposedly lesser ones: the epic U13D Rugby victory, all the minority sports, the lower school production that lives in the shadow of the big school production, all are recorded and remembered. Blogging confidently and for public consumption is not easy, and the blog’s inclusiveness means that younger students can build self-confidence and find their voice. For this digital generation of students, a blog that they have written can be easily shared via social media and for many has more intrinsic value than if it appeared in a school magazine. Moreover, it is a starting point for students to develop more ambitious and analytical styles of writing.

At its most cerebral, the blog is a forum of unashamedly academic and creative endeavour and it has been a place to pilot our idea of students building digital portfolios. Renwick (2017) defines digital portfolios as online collections of learning artefacts that intentionally curate a student’s learning over time. The blog is being used in a pilot scheme with our academic scholars to help them develop a variety of blogs on different subjects. Like many schools we like the extended project for A-level students, but the blog offers opportunities for students to write shorter pieces of high quality on a regular basis. We want our Year 10 scholars to be producing at least one independently researched topic per term. Highlights so far have been: • A piece on the Venezuelan Crisis written entirely in

Spanish. • Blogs on Quantum Physics. • The use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport • A s hort history of the genetic alteration of animals. • A n essay on antimicrobial resistance.

UCAS applications for competitive courses demand that students articulate their academic/creative interests and we are increasingly seeing sixth-formers tagging a string of blogs within a digital link and then including them in a UCAS personal statement or in a letter of application for an apprenticeship. Our current Year 10 scholars will have blogged around ten of these pieces by the time they are applying to university. This should dramatically improve the quality of their personal statements but, more importantly, we are explicitly encouraging an intellectual inquisitiveness that goes beyond the examinations that they are studying. Two of our students have gone on to create their own blogs where they concentrate on their specific interests and nurturing this kind of initiative is where we see student blogging further down the line.

As educationists we know that employers are looking for innovation, initiative and independence, and student blogging provides valuable scaffolding to support students in developing those skills. The initial feedback we have had from universities, employers and potential parents has been intensely positive, primarily because so few schools offer such an opportunity for their students.

The SES blog has created opportunities for students to write creatively and is now the digital centre of student voice as well as being an evolving archive. For colleagues interested in setting up their own blog, I suggest a meeting with their GDPR Designated Officer to check that they are not contravening regulations or their school’s privacy policy. What is crucial is that the students perceive the blog as theirs; that only students (or alumni) can post; and that they decide the layout. My job is to check content and post. Overheads are low, we blog on the free edublogs platform that allows the school complete control over policy and content. I would also recommend coupling a school blog with a twitter account and sharing posts on your school’s existing social media as this draws into one’s audience students, parents, staff and, with a marketing eye, potential parents.

Although blogging is not a new concept, only a tiny proportion of schools have a designated blogging space for their students. The communication revolution that we are living through is going to demand that the workers of the future are comfortable expressing their ideas and producing written work that informs, influences and persuades. Student blogging, lightly supervised by staff, allows students to develop skills that are vital for the future but that are not directly addressed on the formal curriculum.

David Tuck is Head of Politics and Citizenship at Stamford Endowed School and SES Blog Co-ordinator.

SES Blog website: http://stamfordendowedschools.edublogs.org/ SES Blog twitter: https://twitter.com/blog_ses Stamford Endowed School student blogs https://laramonahan.wixsite.com/website https://blogsbymads.wixsite.com/ website Bibliography Lenhart, A. (2008) Writing, technology and teens. Pew Internet and National Writing Commission. Morton-Standish, L. (2014) Using Online Media to write extended persuasive text. The Reading Teacher. Renwick (2017) Digital Portfolios in the Classroom, ASCD, USA.