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November 19, 2009, 03:00 PM ET

Teaching Tool: Blogging a Mass Killing

Leslie Whitaker, a guest blogger for Wired Campus, is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Previously she worked as a reporter for Time magazine.

My first experience with blogging’s potential as a teaching tool occurred last week. I am teaching a class on blogs to English majors this semester, and I asked them to blog immediately after watching a live broadcast of President Obama’s address during the memorial service for those killed at Fort Hood, in Texas. I gave them about 10 minutes and then asked them to read aloud what they’d written. I figured we’d brush up against the limits of blogging, with its inherent pressure to process and post as quickly as possible. Even though I have a thoughtful bunch of students, I didn’t expect to hear much worth saving.

I was wrong.

The first several students reacted to the murders on an emotional level. Some mentioned their grief at learning that one of the shooting victims had been pregnant. Others wrote more like reporters, recounting highlights of what Obama had said.

A handful of students wrote things that stand out sharply in my memory. One young woman had family members in the military. She wrote a prose poem that started every sentence with “I hate.” One line I remember in particular. “I hate that my brother lost six years of his life in the Army.”

A young woman who is Muslim had to be persuaded to read her post because she considered it controversial. She raised questions with an eye toward understanding this horrific event in a larger historical perspective. An even more cautious student refused to read anything, noting that she had friends in the Army and didn’t want to publish anything stupid. A young man who was proud of his Italian heritage and yet was also proud to be American wondered how the accused killer, a U.S. citizen with a Muslim background, could shoot his fellow countrymen and -women.

The last student, who noted that he had no experience either with violence or the military, posted a confession of sorts: “I have never witnessed the horrors of a murder. To the best of my knowledge, neither has anyone I know. I cannot approximate nor rationalize nor understand the emotions involved, and pretending otherwise seems false. So I am detached.”

Hearing these students’ reactions, shared with each other, made the experience of watching President Obama far more meaningful than it would be if I had done it in my usual way: by myself or with my family. When the female student who had relatives in the military and the male student who felt detached addressed each other, civilly, I felt as if the class was giving voice to the widely divergent views that exist in our country, as well as to the sorts of confusing contradictions that sometimes occur inside our own heads.

Is this what blogging at its best offers us as a society, the chance to put the various slivers of reaction to any complex problem side by side? Or is the process I stumbled upon simply a standard educational model of requiring students to think, write, and then discuss? Was 10 minutes too short a time to process a reaction to such a complicated situation? Or is 10 minutes longer than we usually get?

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Comments

1. jkratt - November 19, 2009 at 07:11 pm

I think it does show one of the strengths of blogging: many, many different facets or perspectives on potentially shared experiences. -jkratt

2. emoticon - November 20, 2009 at 08:48 am

Unfortunately I think the process closely resembles the standard model of think, write, and discuss since blog entries are typically written in isolation. You had your students create their blog entries in the same room at the same time after witnessing the same event. This is far from typical. A better idea might have been to have students respond to the same blog post via commenting. This is where you more commonly see multiple opinions/voices related to the same theme - a singular blog entry.

3. pcpbob - November 20, 2009 at 09:18 am

I'm struck by how this form enabled contradictions -internal and external- to be surfaced and seen. Too often, in my view, blog responses pull for contrasting certainties rather than curiosity and exploration.

4. scades - November 20, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Yes, an emotional event with many possible threads for analysis. But tell me: This is an assignment in an English class. What is the teaching intent here? In the discussion that followed students' reading their (hypothetical) blog entries, was there discussion of development, grammar and syntax, or links to the great essays or poetry on the topics of grief, rage, death, "the other," etc. that might invite deeper understanding and the value of reading and reflection?

Or is this the sort of course that leads the larger public to discount the work of the academic community?

5. carynmedved - November 20, 2009 at 12:41 pm

Leslie -

Were the computers in the classroom? I'm wondering how having them 'blog' vs. writing a reaction on a piece of paper might vary the experience for the students. Or, were they blogging at home after watching the broadcast and then asked to read their blogs in class the next day? I've been struggling with the 'value added' of this technology in the classroom, so would like to hear more about how you conducted this exercise.

6. jbohrer - November 20, 2009 at 03:54 pm

Another aspect of learning to write in blog format is to see what response, if any, they receive from readers outside of the class. Learning how to engage (or not) with commenters is another new form of communication today's students need to consider.

7. lesliewhitaker - November 20, 2009 at 04:32 pm

My classroom is equipped with Macs. The students have not blogged in class since they set up their blogs at the begining of the semester. Students have individual blogs, each devoted to a topic of personal choice, and they write their entries outside the classroom. We use class time to discuss compelling topics that blogs raise, such as First Amendment rights vs. privacy. We also have a class blog, where we can converse about what's been covered in class.

This was the first time I asked students to open up their blogs in class and write an entry about the same topic. While the Ft. Hood speech didn't fit naturally into anyone's blog, and I said they didn't have to post what they wrote, I think it was a different exercise than just writing something to read to your classmates. The breadth and quality of the responses, I believe, was partly due to the fact that the students have gotten into the habit of trying to write something of publishable quality, in a short amount of time, that could be interesting to an outside audience.

8. marymallory - November 21, 2009 at 12:43 pm

This assignment demonstrates what I have found to be one of the most powerful aspects of online course delivery - our ability to tap into and share the broad range of attitudes and opinions elicited by a shared event. Internet-based courses generally require students to join (real-time or asynchronous) discussions by posting their responses for everyone to read and comment upon. Passively and silently "sitting in the back of the class" is not possible. Students are logging in from around the world - Iran and Afghanistan, South America and Japan. The discussions broaden our comprehension of world views and diverse perspectives in a way I have not experienced in the traditional classroom.