One of the texts we’re reading for the Missouri Writing Project this month is, Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools. One of the pages that I’ve had a sticky note on quotes research from D.E. Freeman and Y.S. Freeman, Between Worlds: Access to Second Language Acquisition. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1994, p. 3.:

Effective school programs take into account factors from both the school and the societal contexts in planning curriculum for language minority students. (29).

Then the authors of BWM go on to say,

Writing research has shown us that learning to write involves not only learning the processes of inquiry, drafting, revising, and editing, but also a web of relationships between a child and her peers, home life and the wider culture, or a child’s culture and that of the school. (29)

This last statement, especially, makes me think of how much blogging would support this research because blogging is public writing on the Internet where students can establish a ‘web of relationships’ by linking to other web documents including fellow students’ posts, web pages, hometown web pages, cultural information, younger friends’ writing at their old high school. Also, if students share their blog URLs with parents, friends, and family, then their blogs become a new way they can keep in touch with their home communities.