Novel discussions about blogging

Web services that connect teachers with independent schools seeking new faculty members allow candidates to upload videos of themselves. This fall I made two such videos for Carney, Sandoe and Associates and the Southern Teacher's Agency. In each, I expressed that one of the reasons I like teaching secondary students is that I enjoy the task of coming up with curriculum that sufficiently challenges this age group. They have thought about a lot of things, and they've been asked all the classic questions of grade school curriculum: what is the moral of the story, who is the protagonist, is this a static or dynamic character, how do we speak when we're writing an email versus writing a speech?

I know that these questions don't thrill them, but it is still hard to know just what approaches to a subject will light their fires. The current unit on blogs has been an exercise in letting their comments direct the course's content and outcomes.

Last week we started talking about blogs, and in the first discussion, students listed attributes that make blogging different from other kinds of media. These are their notes (we were comparing blog as a form of new media to 17th century pamphlets in Britain as a form of new media).

Y. raised her hand and argued that this is not how blogs work. People aren't this bold. She said, people are afraid to write what they think. A. countered that people do all kinds of criticism online, that there is critical blogging on almost every topic imaginable. I agreed with A, but I realised that Y had a point. We are constrained by our sense of audience. We don't write things that the audience will discount. 

This brought me back to the drawing board for a minute, because what Y had brought up struck me as useful. The need to attract eyeballs to my post influences what I write and how I write it.

Say I have a message I think is really important, but which other people don't necessarily think is important. How do I get them to care? Well, today students pointed out that I could link it with some sensational news event. I could use a headline that exaggerates, or poses a provocative question. 

Part of our discussion involved looking at tmz.com, the celebrity gossip site which is the second-most frequented blog in the world, behind Huffington Post. We looked at TMZ's sensational homepage laced with gossipy headlines and lewd photographs. 

We talked about the power of these tactics to attract eyes, and they introduced me to the term click-bait, a tactic in which you give a juicy headline in order to get someone to click, with minimal investment in whether that person ends up reading your whole article. 

Then, H made exactly the comment I was hoping someone would make. "I'm writing about feminism. I can't use a gossipy tone." This catalysed a conversation on what effect using such a tone has on the writer's message. Hands were in the air all over the place. So many people had good comments. I felt glad, because it indicated to me that I had hit the "novelty" sweet spot. They had thought about these things before, and had things to say, but hadn't necessarily had an opportunity to express themselves on this topic. That's the magic zone of the secondary English classroom that I am fascinated by - when they get to say things that are the result of ideas that have been percolating, awareness that has been mulling, perhaps for years.