Giving Reluctant Students a Voice

R. Redekopp and E. Bourbonniere's article "Giving Reluctant Students a Voice" addresses the way that technology, blog specifically, can provide students with an outlet to share their thoughts if they normally do not feel comfortable participating in class discussion. In one of my classes last semester, we spent time discussing this so I was already familiar with the idea. Online blogs, discussion forums and other tools allow students to feel safe and more protected from ridicule than they would in a regular classroom discussion. As Redekopp and Bourbonniere point out in their article, a classroom discussion via blogging gives one reluctant student the confidence to disagree with a point made by his or her classmate. The confidence and security felt by students participating in online discussions allows for a much more thorough classroom discussion. When the teacher brings these ideas back into the classroom by reading posts aloud, it bridges technology with the standard classroom format.