Figuring It All Out

Well, I introduced blogs & blogging last week in class. Instead of having my students write me a weekly letter, I had them got to blogger.com & create a blog, then post their blog address & a quick note about their semester research topic in their post on discussion board. Pretty much everyone did it -- those that didn't benefited from Erika V.'s blog set-up instructions. Thank God for Erika & the ease of blogger.com!!

One of the things that came up in class this week was questions on what a blog is -- in comparison to using our discussion board or emailing. . . We had a wonderful discussion about Web. 2.0 technology & most of my students were really excited about this opportunity. Of course, as anticipated, I had one student in my morning class who wasn't really hot on the idea of submitting his stuff into the "void" of the internet but once I explained our process, he seemed to be okay with everything.

An older student in my afternoon class asked me how to post a blog -- I hadn't thought of that one as a need (don't know why), so I quickly put up my blog on screen & showed students how to create a blog entry. I've already found it very interesting to see how excited my students are to try this format of discussion. Although a number of my younger students have blogs on their myspace accounts, few if any have ever looked at a more academic blog. So, their weekly letter assignment this week is to look at one (or more) reputable sources such as cnn, abc, nbc, cbs, fox & review some of the blog entries made about a current topic. I first thought about having them seek out an article & blog relevant to their topic but decided to leave the choice up to them. I did, however, encourage them to look towards their research topic in order to give them even more information about what people are thing about their subject matter.

I handed out a slightly altered version of my argument essay assignment sheet to help them begin to prepare their minds for setting up & presenting their arguments on their blogs. So, what's left? Plenty!!

1) How do I get their reference pages linked to their blogs so that people can reference the sources they site?
2) Do I really need to worry about citations in this venue?
3) How am I ever going to get my few "taildraggers" to work on their stuff a little each day or so which will help them formulate ideas & post blog entries that are overwhelming them or their reading public?

I'm sure there is more that I'm missing but for now that's all I can think of. I'm meeting with my professor tomorrow to discuss this project &, with any luck, get some more direction on what I'm doing. I still have no clue what theoretical point I'm coming from here so I have to figure that out also! My two greatest fears are not being able to properly present this to my students & having them more frustrated then reinforced AND running out of time!