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blog evolution
By audhill | October 7, 2007
LAST YEAR’S BLOG
Last year, I kept a classroom blog and students left responses in comments. See here. Primarily, it was a place for students to leave assignments. Very occasionally, they responded to each other. I felt it was a successful project. The benefits included:
- more involvement from the bottom 3rd of the class
- a paperless classroom
- introduction to a very limited amount of html formatting
- ability of students to read each other’s work
It wasn’t social in the sense that there wasn’t a broad interaction among students. But, that’s okay. I learned a lot about how I want to proceed for this year from last year.
THIS YEAR’S BLOGS
This year will be very different. For one, students will have their own blogs. Actually, groups of 5 students will share one blog. My goal is to have them create journalistic/literary blogs. I’d like to have them get into designing the blog (although, because they don’t have total back end control, they will have to give me input to change the css for the blogs or upload images… and my knowledge is a little sketchy as well… so we’ll see) Each student will have one day that they are responsible for. To begin with, they will write non fiction feature articles on topics of interest. They will have to learn to research, hyperlink, add images, edit and revise their work. I’d like them to eventually consider how to brand their blog (although their entire audience is inside the cluster among their peers for now).
I’m both excited and anxious. I want my program to be exciting, AND rigorous. So far, I haven’t bought any books on blogging… either education or other blogging related. That comes next. I know I could have saved myself some time by reading, but like a lot of ADD people…. I like to hack and then read the directions.