Can Microblogs and Weblogs change traditional scientific writing?

“Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” quoted Mark Prensky (Prensky, 2001). The students have changed radically because they easily and quickly adapted themselves to the transformation of the society. One of the biggest transformations of our society is the new way of creation of social networks. The traditional ones such as through family, school are still working but new ones such as socializing on the Internet with applications like skype, msn, facebook, blogs, microblogs, have emerged. As new tools of communication are more easily available to the students and as younger generation is getting more familiar with it, the method of teaching is also evolving. This brings us to the question “can Microblogs and Weblogs change traditional scientific writing?” [1] In order to answer this question Martin Ebner and Herman Maurer have conducted a short study.


In this study, the authors examine if the implementation of blogs or microblogs as a new learning method can enhance the learning outcome in term of reflection, discussion and quality of writing by comparing two groups of students: the scientific writer/reviewer and the blogger/microblogger. In the first group, the scientific writer should write two short papers and the reviewers have to read it. In the second group, the bloggers and the microbloggers have to provide at least two weblog-posts a week but in addition the microbloggers have to post a comment on at least two blog posts of the blogger group. The results of the study are quite interesting. It shows that with the use of blogs and microblogs, the students share more critical and personal opinion given that they can write anonymously. It also points out that the possibility to review and comment the work done by the student enhances quality and settles discussions. I completely agree on the fact that using a blogs or a microblogs can enhance the quality of learning. I guess that blogs and microblogs can be a complement to traditional lessons because, students feel more motivated to learn when they are introduced to modern learning tools. As a complement, students learn not only from the teacher but also from each other when they blog. As the blogs are interactive, the sharing of information among students also develops curiosity and thus they are prompted to participate to the lesson.


But it seems that the use of microblogs or blogs as an educational tool is still debated. In the article “Using and teaching educational technology”[2], the author stresses the point that when using microblogs, it becomes difficult to control the activity of the students behind the computer as they are used to surfing on the internet. Moreover it represents an additional work for the teacher to check all the comments. The author also underlines that it is not healthy to work all the day on computer. So he concludes that blogs or microblogs should be used as a complement to traditional lectures. Another article [3] raises also the facts that such learning methods will entail an impoverishment of the writing. In addition when we quit the traditional student/ teacher relationship to use digital exchange, students’ statements may be inappropriate in an academic context.


I really believe that one of the actual issues of the education is to incorporate the use of IT and should take into account that most of new generation builds its social networks on the Internet using IT tools such as chats, blogs, online games... Education aims to give autonomy to students by making them use knowledge they gain in school but the new generation, raised with the habit of using Internet, often lose their marks in the traditional way of learning offered by education. Sometimes the teachers are more ignorant about the latest internet tools and the students are more likely to teach them how to take advantage of the resources available on the web. If the use of internet technologies is spreading in schools, then the way of teaching, the student/teacher relationship should be rethought.
We know that these new learning tools will be used by most of students when they become “adult” in their workplace because our society is more and more digitally connected. At the hands of the growing information flux, education should help students use in an efficient, thoughtful and critical way the resources available on the Internet in order to build their knowledge and thus to practice their critical thinking in academic activity and social habits.


Sources :
[1] = http://www.scribd.com/doc/19837202/Can-Microblogs-and-Weblogs-change-traditional-scientific-writing
[2] = http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/printer_1122.php
[3] = http://www.atelier.fr/reseaux/10/28082009/twitter-enseignement-universite-pedagogie-etudiant-micro-blogging-interactivite-38632-.html