Suddenly it seems like information I didn’t actively search starts coming just to confirm what’s been on my mind. I found in Virtual Canuck, a comment and a link to an article about a new framework of implementation of blogs in formal education: An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging in higher education.

The study by Kerawalla, L., Minocha, S., Kirkup, G., & Conole, G. is very interesting and confirms (as commented in my previous post) that is really silly to hope to use blogs informally to promote critical reading skills in those who did not have access to good quality basic education. The article describes a study done with a group of Masters students and their use of blogs. Although these students certainly had access to good quality basic education, there are still several aspects to be considered to achieve learning outcomes through the use of blogs. Thus they suggest a framework for their implementation.

This shows that the simple act of blogging doesn’t automatically promote the development of the thinking skills I’m interested in. As the authors cite, “Burgess argues that, to blog effectively students need to develop critical, creative and network literacies”. Not the other way around as I naively hoped. Well, at least it looks like now I’m getting a clearer picture. It’s ugly, but it’s clear.