What are the issues and benefits of having students publish their writing on the internet?

Students publishing on the internet seems like an good and fun idea, right? There is a lot of research that shows that students are motivated to having their content displayed for others to see so publicly. People want to be acknowledged and use their voice, and publishing onto the internet is a great vehicle for that. In addition, using technology can encourage and enhance collaboration between writers, which is a good skill to have for 21st century learning.

But, I think that there can be difficulties. Mostly I write from my own experiences as a teacher, but I suspect I'm not alone. I have a classroom website (currently experiencing some technical difficulties), and I was so excited to have a place for students to showcase their work. I was proud of their accomplishments and I knew they were, too.

We had a few hiccups. For one, publishing with technology takes a lot of time for third graders. My school does have a computer lab in which each student can use their own computer, but we can only have it for an hour a week. From my experience, typing a piece in word can take a typical child almost two hours. That's two weeks of computer lab time doing nothing but typing.

Another problem we've run into is compatibility. I've had my students create their own webpages using Microsoft Word. They learned how to design and create hyperlinks. However, my website uses Microsoft Front Page. It was difficult to have links to the students' webpages (and other published works) using two different systems. My school doesn't have software to help both my students and I to be on the same page. I could have gone back and switched my website into a Word website, but I had already spent so much time doing it in FrontPage (and my district is having us all switch to a template this summer so I didn't want to do it a third time).

Although technology has come a long way, students can still have limits to technology access. As I wrote earlier, time can be one issue, but software programs can be expensive. Sometimes schools, mine included, cannot afford to buy a programs, subscriptions, or licences for all students to use.

Lastly, technology changes so much that it's difficult to keep up with the latest and greatest. For example, Front Page is pretty much not used any more and it's difficult to get support for that. My website is not that old, and already I'm forced to learn something new.

Any of these problems can give teachers a headache and wonder if it's all worth it. The good news is that as time goes by, technology is more and more common. Students come with a deeper background of keyboarding and word processing skills. Some terrific programs are available through the internet for free, so schools don't have to spend a lot of money that they don't have on more publishing programs. Also, the emergence of blogs and social networking sites have payed new avenues for reading and writing and other learning.

I've tried to keep up with the times. I've started my own classroom blog, which I'm hoping allows for easy student participation. Already I've had students comment on our blog (although we could still work on keyboarding skills). A colleague of mine, Renee White, was able to successfully get her students' creations on her website like student portfolios and digital science journals (she created her website in Word). Her class loves it!