JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:2 OCTOBER 2007 92 “That’s online writing, not boring school writing”: Writing with blogs and the Talkback Project Shelbie Witte Witte teaches at Fort Riley Middle School (4020 1st Division Rd., Fort Riley, KS 66442, USA). E-mail shelbiewitte@yahoo.com. FIRST PERSON By combining writing with online technology, teach- ers can provide opportunities for students and fu- ture educators to develop their digital fluency while also strengthening their traditional literacy skills. Cassandra (pseudonym) was a student in my eighth-grade language arts class during the fall of 2004. She showed little interest in our class- room writing activities and assignments. During a parent–teacher conference to discuss my con- cerns about her lack of involvement, I was shocked to hear her parents say,“But she writes all the time! She’s on the computer writing essays and poems for hours each night.” Cassandra was quick to reply, “That’s online writing, not boring school writing. We all do it on Xanga.”“We all?” I asked, wondering just how big this world of Xanga could possibly be. Cassandra replied,“You know, everybody! Teenagers...any teenager in the world with a computer.” I was dumbfounded that Cassandra, a stu- dent reluctant to write a paragraph in her journal each day in my classroom, was writing pages and pages of creative words, unassigned poetry and prose, each night on her blog. In one way, it was a stab in the heart for me as a writing teacher. I worked hard to give my students thought- provoking prompts from which to write. Although I was excited that she, and apparently every other teenager in the world with a comput- er, was passionate about writing, I took the news personally.Yet the technology side of me was in- trigued by this revelation. What was it about posting personal writing on an online blog that was so different from the writing in my class- room? Blog integration in the Talkback Project While attending a 2004 U.S. conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, I had the opportunity to hear about a variety of writing collaborations in- volving university and middle school students. In one particular project, preservice teachers at Indiana University were writing two-way journals collaboratively with middle school students. Both sets of students were strengthening their literacy skills on different levels: The preservice teachers were learning the intricacies of interpreting and © 2007 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 92–96) doi:10.1598/JAAL.51.2.1