Blogging in the Classroom 101

This week, I was asked to give a short presentation during at my department's next composition meeting on ways I teach writing. And since student blogging is one of my favorite ways, I put together this short presentation on class blogs.

I first got the idea of student blogs while lamenting over grading student response papers to class readings. Many students where making the same or similar mistakes, in addition to ignoring their audience (the fictional "don't-know-anythings" we often use just for this purpose), and I felt if they could only see what they were doing and were writing in a situation that forced them to consider their audience, they might get more on track. That same semester, at an academic conference, I sat in on a composition panel in which one speaker presented pedagogical reasons for using blogs in the classroom, and the solution was in front of me! She suggested some books, which I read and have since forgotten the titles of. But I experimented with blogs on my summer Freshman Composition II that year.

Since, I have slowly expanded to using blogs in all my composition courses, and below are some things I've learned in the past two years.

Rationales:

• Interesting replacement for weekly responses/journal entries
• Forces students to consider broader audience as well as giving them more feedback
• Generates class discussion of course texts outside of class
• Acquaints students with the internet as producers of content
• Easy to quickly share information with students
• Snow days don’t stop them from turning in their work
• Better than Blackboard

How I Use Them:

• The most basic reason for having students blog is to get them writing, reading each other’s writing, and discussing it
• Students’ blog posts take the form of responses to course texts, feeders for essays, and sometimes the essays themselves
• Students are sometimes given specific ways to respond to texts, but in general, I ask students to summarize the text and respond by agreeing, disagreeing, relating personal experience, and/or tying it to another project they’re working on--depending on what levels I want them reading
• Students must also comment on at least one peer’s blog before class
• Comments must be constructive and/or continue the discussion
• Post on the class blog, as well:
• Comments on student blogs
• Links that are related to class work or that are just of interest
• Clarification on assignments
• Information about Learning Community activities
• And encourage students to do the same
• Promote the best blogs so students can receive additional feedback

Things to Consider:

• Privacy: not all students are keen on sharing their writing with the world, so give students the option to create usernames that only you and they know
• It’s probably not a good idea to post student blog grades on the class blog
• Allow students to get their grades from you directly
• You may need to spend a day teaching students how to use a blog (account creation, login-in, posting instructions, etc.)
• Before beginning class blogs, you probably want to have already given feedback on a non-blogged writing assignment to set-up your expectations for student writing
• Often, students view blogs the same way they view text messages and e-mails
• Student comments should be part of the blog grade

Student Spotlight: Still No Country for Old Men

 Well, it's a new semester, and you know what that means--new student blogs! This Fall I'll be promoting the work of my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community students and students in my former Teacher for Tomorrow Learning Community. Last week, the former students watched the locally filmed No Country for Old Men in their History of Motion Pictures class and blogged about it for me. While the general consensus is that Anton Chigurh is crazy and Javier Bardem is creepy, few students really delved into the film's themes so deeply (or comically) as Sagey:

Ed Tom is now retired and is having breakfast with his woman. He tells her of two dreams he had in the night. The dreams are almost complete analogies to the story of the movie. He reflects saying that he travels into a snowy mountain (his life and being a sherif) and at the top of the mountain waits his father (the killer who waits for him at the end of the chase). Instead of staking out after Chigurh in a fatal battle, Ed Tom chooses a different path and retires.

That's what he imagined.

Take a look at the rest of her post, and let her know what you think!

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?