Abstract:

‘Digital literacy gives writing a whole new dimension which primary children must be exposed to, it is, after all, their future.’

School blogging is helping to transform the business of writing in school and is part of a general increase in writing that has come about through the huge growth in digital literacy. This small-scale Education Development Trust research project, based in four London primary classrooms, set out to explore the differences between pupils’ digital writing on school blogs and their regular school writing, especially in Literacy. Blogging was found not to be subject to the same constraints or detailed assessments as writing in ‘literacy books’; both pupils and teachers judged it by different standards. Most pupils said that they enjoyed writing on the blog more than writing in their books:
‘On the blog you can write about anything you want but in the book the teacher asks you to write down similes’.

Their teachers felt that blogging had contributed to a general improvement in pupils’ writing, despite the fact that writing on the blog was not as careful or accurate as writing in books.

This research raises interesting issues about questions of the ‘global audience’ for blogs, and about key issues in blogging such as access to computers, e-safety, the structure of blogs, and automaticity in writing. It also highlights the effects on these classes of becoming writing communities, aware of each other’s writing.

Keywords:

Blogging, writing, literacy.