As usual, online writing and discussion is an important part of my Grade 12 University level course. I’ve elected to use both a class wiki and individual student blogs for this component.
Our class is using 21Classes for our blogging platform. I chose this because it allows me to set security at levels that are comfortable for me and my administration. All of the students’ work is visible only to members of the blog portal. If necessary, I can also set permissions so that all blog posts and comments must be approved by me prior to being published.
One month into our semester, and I’m really impressed with the quality of interactions happening online. I’ve given students broad topics and a target number of posts and comments for each unit.
This past week, I noticed a significant improvement in the quality of the posts and comments appearing online. It dawned on me that the students had just completed their blogging self-evaluations. Unlike many evaluations that students seem to just accept as their achievement, this self-evaluation process appears to be encouraging better online communication. Since the self-evaluation, the entire class seems to be very careful to incorporate images using only the “Attribution License” images from Flickr; they’re properly citing these images; they’re all using links in their posts with displayed text, including links to their earlier posts; and they’re replying to comments left on their own blogs. It will be interesting to see what happens after the next self-evaluation in a couple of weeks.
Based on this experience, I’m going to be introducing more structured self-evaluation in other areas, too. It’s a bit more work — I feel like I still need to ‘mark’ their work myself as well as ‘marking’ their self-evaluation — but the quality of the students’ work is well worth it.
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Photo by mezone
I teach Freshman Composition, and I’ve actually been thinking about incorporating blogs into my classrooms. In fact, I spoke at a pop culture conference last week and attended a Digital Classroom panel. And one of the speakers discussed her experience with blogging in the English classroom. Between her tips and your discussion here, I’m convinced it’s a good idea. Perhaps this summer I can work it into my syllabus…
Interesting. Would you mind sharing a copy of the self-evaluation you use?
Ben, I’d be interested in learning about your experience if/when you incorporate blogging into the classroom. So far I’m enjoying having student-owned blogs much more than my former use of a class-wide blog (one where I posted, students commented). The writing and dialogue have been much shaper.
Lisa, thanks for your interest. I’ve put the self-evaluation here in Word document format. I’d be really interested in any feedback you have on it.
Well, it looks like I will, in fact, be teaching a Freshman Composition II class this summer. It will certainly be an experiment. Luckily, this will be the fourth semester I’ll have taught that particular syllabus. So working blogging in should not only be easy but provide direct contrast to the same curriculum taught without blogging. That’s a ways away, but I’ll post about the experience at the beginning, middle, and end of the summer. Thanks!
I really love your student self-assessment rubric! I think it’s so funny that this is the first time that I’ve left a comment for you on your blog since your blog is what got me blogging in the first place (did I just use “blog” far too many times in one sentence?). I’m doing a workshop with some teachers tomorrow on the topic and I’d like to direct them to this post. Thanks for sharing your hard work!
Hello Brad,
I really like the blogging aspect. I have gone from the floppy diskettes to forums for journal writing and blogging seems to be the next step. I have a few questions about 21 classes. Do you use the free version? If so, did you group your students within’ the 9 blogging spaces?
Thanks for your detailed posts!
Peggy