To follow on from Yesterday’s Post ……… John commented:

I guess this might be different on a class/group blog, I hope so as I’ve commented on a few. My own class always seem encouraged by adult comments on their class blog, I’d not thought through the difference with personal blogs, but it it is an important point I think. (Liking the new blog look and title, John!)

This has got me thinking about some more issues. I think that when you set up a class blog and then give the children their own space linked to that, you are in fact setting up a mini online community. The children from my own school, the children from AllStars, from Sandaig, from Loirston and from Dingwall … along with their teachers …. automatically became part of our online community.

Very rarely do the children receive comments from outwith that community. If children post to their individual blogs, they are either from our own school, or one of the ones mentioned previously.

John’s comment reminded me of one other incident maybe worth noting.

Last session Darcie received a comment from a teacher who had left our school a year previously. The teacher was interested in setting up a class blog and had found Darcie’s blog and left a comment on a post.

 It can be viewed HERE.

 The children were unexpectedly bewildered by this, and had difficulty coming to terms with how the blogs were discovered by this teacher. Although all the children were aware of search engines, and had personal experience of using them, they still could not quite grasp how this visitor had stumbled upon one of their blogs.

Visiting children, on the other hand, did not surprise them at all.

They appeared to have had no real conception of what it means to publish to the ‘world wide web’. Their perceived audience was themselves and their peers. 

It re-emphasises the views of Stern (2007) who stresses that knowing that their personal sites are publicly accessible does not lead most young people to envisage a broad audience for their online works.

(Owen et al, 2006) reveal that there is growing emphasis on the need to support young people, not only to acquire knowledge and information, but also to develop the resources and skills necessary to engage with social and technical change.