Blogging is a process, and we can think of ways that this communicative tool helps us to understand the thoughts and minds of students. This week, we have a few articles on the topic. These two reading give us a lot of food for thought. The first one, Invited Commentary: New Tools for Teaching Writing, Mark Warschaur, (2010), discusses blogs as a medium for intellectual exchange between people who may not be necessarily experts in the field, but who are interested enough to contribute. In this way, anyone can pitch in, and say their piece. Blogging here is powerful, but in many ways it is a lot of people talking at once.

We can also turn to the idea of wikis as expanding on the world, and there are two minds of this. One is that it is an easy, on line dictionary or encyclopedia, giving quick information about a subject for the casual reader. However, the open nature of a wiki can make anyone an "expert," including those who may not be as well versed on the subject as they think. In fact, because these are lauded open source materials, they can be changed at whim, perhaps by critics who may wish to give disinformation, or quite simply lies. Who will be the wiki police? And why should we trust them? With some wikis, like wikipedia.org, so many people are monitoring the site, and have a stake in maintaining the veracity of the site, that few saboteurs get through for long---as is in this example of Stephen Colbert's fans' prank.

The next article, Abdullah's Blogging: A Generation 1.5 Student Enters the Blogosphere, Joel Bloch (2007) talks about one students progress in his schoolwork and thought process by using a blog. Here Abdullah, perhaps his real name, is a student who has two ties, one to his native Sudan, which he left before his mid-teens, and the United States, his newly adopted home. His schooling in Sudan was patchy at best, and his real scholarship began in the US. Here, he was encouraged to use the modern tool of blogging, and had a stable environment in which to do it. Bioch tracks his progress, through using the medium. The suggestion is that students can learn to improve their ability to critically reason by writing on a blog. The question arises, however, about whether this is better or worse than having traditional homework assignments. Bloch argues that the constant use of blogging allows students to get better, because they have a place to write their feelings, but share it with others. Blogging can become a way to make students more aware of their progress, and to show how they can write their way to success.