eFolioMinnesota: An Emerging Assignment

For my Fall 2010 ENGL 0950 classes, we will be exploring the potential uses of eFolioMinnesota, along with initial advantages and disadvantages.

We will consider the use of eFolioMinnesota in our particular class, along with use after this class has ended.

We will also consider comparisons to other digital "tools" or "products" that might be used for portfolios, such as blogs (e.g., Blogger), MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

For now, however, here are some of the most important links:

eFolioMinnesota

Minnesota Satellite and Technology (MnSAT)

Dr. Helen Barrett's Home Page

The REFLECT Initiative

An Initial Tutorial at YouTube



More later!

Blogs for Bibs? ... Or ...?

In my English 1121 class right now, we are beginning work on our annotated bibliographies for our major argument paper. One option I'm giving is to compose the annotated bibliography using Microsoft Office's PowerPoint rather than the "traditional" Word document.

To give credit where credit is due, or at least some credit, since my idea is a bit different:

A fellow classmate of mine, last year, when I was on sabbatical and taking courses at the U of MN, was Kate Peterson, a librarian at the U of MN, did her final project on "new" annotated bibliographies. If I remember correctly, she advocated using blogs for this, with one blog post for each source; the blog post would contain both the bibliographic citation and the annotation.

If you are interested, please read Kate's blog post about her final project.

I really liked this idea--for many reasons, including the use of a popular digital writing tool in place of a more "traditional" tool--but since I'm not assigning blogs (yet?) in my writing courses, I went searching for a way to modify Kate's idea. PowerPoint came to mind, not only because it is another digital writing tool that we studied and practiced last year, but also because one of its slide choices, "Title and Content," seemed to lend itself well to how an annotated bibliography is set up. In addition, another slide choice, "Two Content," might lend itself well to doing a summary annotation on the left side and an evaluative annotation on the right side.

I can also see students perhaps uploading their PowerPoint bibliographies into something like SlideShare or SlideBoom or SlideRocket and "publishing" it on the web.

I'll report back on how this works out.

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #3

Will I have my students keep and present a final portfolio of their coursework? Yes, definitely.

How will I have my students keep and present their final portfolios? Their individual blogs? The course wiki? Individual wikis? The "eFolio" from the State of Minnesota. Ugh! I don't know. Yet. Perhaps I should let them choose? Or would that cause too many headaches?

What will I have my students include in the portfolio? The answer to this one is easier. Our English Department at Anoka Ramsey Community College already has a portfolio process and committee -- and I have participated in this process in the past, but not consistently. If my memory is correct, the current portfolio process for English 1121, our college-level first-year writing course, asks for the following:

1. A cover letter or introductory piece, which also serves as the reflective piece.
2. An essay of the student's choice, preferably expository or persuasive, with all drafts from first to final.
3. The argumentative research paper, with all drafts and with all cited research sources.
4. An in-class essay.

A student can, of course, include more, but these are the minimum requirements.

I see now that some things are going to have to be modified if I'm going to have my students do this "digitally," especially the last two items.

For item #3, including all cited research sources shouldn't be too difficult -- most of this should be possible with hyperlinks. And, if a source is not "online," hopefully we'll be able to attach PDF files somehow. And, even better, I ask my students to highlight in their sources the material they cite in their paper, and they should be able to use the highlighter feature in Adobe for this! If nothing else, I can have my students do what I had to do for Professor O'Brien's "Struggling Adolescent Readers" course: they can send to me a compressed/zipped folder containing all their documents.

For item #4, this will be trickier. The intention behind the in-class essay is to see what a student can do on his or her own, without multiple drafts and without peer feedback. Partly, it exhibits a student's writing fluency, and partly it is a plagiarism check. To have students write this on a computer, or online, does present some challenges to both of these purposes, since blog posts or Word documents can be easily changed, after the posting or initial draft, and it is pretty much impossible to prevent this ... and useless, hopeless, unnecessary, etc. ... to "police" it.

Including other digital projects -- such as VoiceThreads or SlideRockets or YouTube videos -- should also be easy. Hyperlinks can be created and copied, or HTML code can be embedded.

Ultimately, for me, the first decision seems to be the "form" the portfolio will take ... blog, wiki, or eFolio?

And, ultimately, for the students, the reflective piece will hopefully be the most important.

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #2

What have I learned in class, and how have I changed because of the class? Wow! This post could be lengthy, but much of it I covered in the previous post, so I'll just add a few more comments here.

This class was the perfect class for me at the perfect time. First, both "fortuitous" and "serendipitous" come to mind as I try to describe that day back in August 2008 when I decided to check the UMN course schedule one last time. I don't know how I had overlooked the course before; I don't know if the double-numbering (5475/5330) threw me off, or if the 5330 description wasn't added until later on. However, I do know that the certificate program I am in did not leave a lot of "wiggle room" in terms of electives; perhaps that also partially blinded me, until I decided I might be able to petition for a change, which I did.

Second, I am grateful to be on sabbatical, to have the time to devote to the course, to be able to find my way about the course and all the "digital tools" without the distractions I would have if I were teaching at the same time. I don't know how my colleagues/classmates in this class, who are also teaching, can do it. I'm sure they're doing just fine, but I've never been one who works well with many things going on all at once.

Finally, this class provided the structure and learning environment I needed, especially for this particular topic. I don't know if I would have taken on "Digital Writing" on my own, and I don't think I would have learned as much if I had tried to do it on my own. But I do know that my comfort level -- with technology in general, and with the "digital tools" we've covered in particular -- has risen immensely. I feel I will be able to return to the classroom in the Fall of 2009, not only ready to include some of these things in my courses, but also able to introduce them with a fair measure of confidence.

I do know, however, that I need to do more thinking and brainstorming about specific applications of the digital tools I have learned:

• What, exactly, am I going to ask my students to contribute to the class wiki?
• How, exactly, am I going to ask my students to conduct peer reviews?
• Am I going to ask my students to blog, and, if so, about what?
• I know I'm going to include an "interactive presentation" as part of my course, but what is going to be the assignment, or the topic, for these presentations?

I expected that this course would answer many of my questions about technology, and about teaching with technology -- and it has. It has even answered questions I didn't know I had. But, equally importantly and frustratingly, it has raised even more questions that I still don't know the answers to. But this happens to good teachers, right? It's the not-so-good teachers who neither ask questions nor seek to answer them -- the "cruise-control-set-on-retirement" teachers. And, unfortunately, they are out there.

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #1

Well, it looks like I've written 35 or 36 posts since I began this blog back in September! Wow! Time sure has flown. And, I can't believe I've written that much. I had figured 1-2 a week for the 15-week semester, which would be about 15-30. Well, I guess it's close. (Too many "wells"? I'm still not sure if I've found my "tone" or "voice" yet!)

The first major thing that comes to mind when reviewing my posts is something Alyssa R. said to me in class a few weeks ago: "These blogs sure are public." When I asked her what she meant, she replied that someone from SlideRocket had found her blog, and her post about SlideRocket, and they had left a comment for her. Like me, I think she thought no one would find these blogs except our classmates. But someone had found hers! Then, just a day or so later, I saw a comment to my podcasting post, and Chuck Tomasi (one of the co-authors of Podcasting for Dummies) had left a comment thanking me for using and mentioning Podcasting for Dummies in my blog! Then, a few days after that, the SlideRocket people had also found my SlideRocket presentation and blog post, and had left a message as well. Of course, it's all about recognizing "product placement" and advertising, but it's also "cool" to think that these blogs are "out there, and lovin' every minute of it," as Kramer once said on Seinfeld.

My best blog post? Maybe the two posts about American Literature, and comparing my course to a course Donald Ross is currently teaching. But why are these the best? Maybe because they were not assigned for my Digital Writing class. (Which is where we want our students to also end up, eventually.) But also maybe because I'm really enjoying my sabbatical and having the time to do things like this, to take this Digital Writing course, and to sit in on another course that I enjoy teaching. So, I don't know if the two posts are necessarily "good" because of the writing itself but because I enjoyed the creation of them, the experiences which led up to them.

Likewise, my "worst" blog post ... perhaps the one(s) having to do with podcasting ... because I struggled, at first, and partly throughout, with the podcasting activity itself, with figuring out Audacity, with take after take, with finding music, with editing. But by the time I was looking for music, and editing, and using the envelope tool, I was actually starting to have a bit of fun.

So that may be the "key" for me, the criterion that I would use for evaluating my blog posts: Which activities gave me the most frustration and struggle, and which activities were fun (or even became fun as time moved along)?

Frustrations:

• Podcasting (recording and editing audio) ... the first three-quarters of it
• Vlogging (recording and editing video) ... I don't actually consider what I did to be a vlog ... OK, it's definitely NOT a vlog, I do know that ... and it took a long time ... but again, the fun came later, when I got the "hang" of iMovie ... and it was fun to use video of my cat and creatively connect it to writing ... and it was fun to actually post something to YouTube!
  

Enjoyments:

• Creating the WritingMinnesota wiki
• Bubbl.us
• Flickr SlideShow
• VoiceThread (x2)
• SlideRocket Presentation
  

These were all "new" tools for me, they were fun, I had to be somewhat creative (although I'm not creative at all), and I tried to always connect it to my teaching, although often in somewhat goofy ways. But, hey, it's a start ... and I might even have the courage to show these to my students as "rough models."

And that's what I have to keep doing: reflecting on HOW AND WHY I might have my students use these tools. Yes, I want them to have fun, to be motivated and engaged, but I also want them to be writing and to be improving their writing. And I want to be confident that these tools are indeed helping them to do that.

Connecting My Reading Course to My Digital Writing Course

I found an interesting quote, when I was reviewing my notes in my Reading course, for my final paper, which I thought applied to my Digital Writing course as well.

Donna Alvermann, in her "white paper," "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" (2001), offers the following analysis:

Without critical literacy instruction that is sensitive to youth’s and adults’ needs, however, little may be gained from venturing into these environments. For example, in a study of two girls’ out-of-school instant messaging (IM) practices, Lewis and Fabbo (2000) documented the girls’ intricate manipulations of friends and social situations as the two adolescents simultaneously went about constructing their own identities, seemingly with little critical awareness for how the chat/IM technology might be manipulating them and their literacy practices. Adults who worry about young people’s identity constructions vis-à-vis the new technologies would do well to examine the parallels and disjunctures between their own such constructions and those of adolescents (Hagood, Stevens, & Reinking, in press; Lewis & Finders, in press). For in doing so, they may come to understand better the futility of asking young people to critique the very texts they find most pleasurable. For such a request, as Luke (1997) has adroitly noted, would likely “cue a critical response which can often be an outright lie…[because while youth] are quick to talk a good anti-sexist, anti-racist, pro-equity game…what they write in the essay or what they tell us in classroom discussion is no measure of what goes on in their heads” (p. 43).

This calls to mind my previous post about asking students to analyze and evaluate a blog or a website. Will their analysis be critical, in-depth, and honest, or will they just be telling me what they think I want to hear? Will this be a problem with any inquiry-based project? I definitely need to give this more thought!

Work Cited

Alvermann, D. E. (2001). Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents. Executive Summary and Paper Commissioned by the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

Analyzing Readability in a Blog or Website

This was the suggested blog post/topic assigned for my digital writing class on Nov. 18, 2008, in preparation, I think, for our creation of interactive PowerPoint (or SlideShare, or SlideRocket, or VoiceThread) presentations.

However, instead of doing the assigned post first, I jumped right into the creation of my interactive SlideRocket presentation, which has already been posted on my blog (see past posts below), but I thought I'd return to this post, if only for some reflection on the assignment ... since I don't think I'm going to actually do the assignment!

I think that this would be a great assignment to give to my college students, but I think the key ingredient for the assignment would be to make sure students have clear criteria for analysis and evaluation in mind before they go out in search of a blog or website to analyze/evaluate, but especially before they begin the actual analysis and evaluation. And, like I've done in the past, discussing and creating/developing this criteria together as a group is a better use of time than me just lecturing to them about what to look for.

I don't remember, now, if we discussed potential criteria for analysis/evaluation in class, but I remember that our course text, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and Other Digital Tools, includes a nice discussion of this topic. My intial thoughts about criteria include:

• General, overall structure of the blog or website: top banner(s)? sidebar(s)? construction of the main body--one column, two columns, three columns, etc.? bottom banner(s)?
• Specific construction within these main structural components
  
• Use of colors
• Use of fonts
• Use of "graphics"--still images, and/or video, and/or other graphic-design features
  
• Use of "sound"--music, voice, etc.
• Use of text
• Length of text
  
• Readability of text
• "Interactive" components--comment sections, chat rooms, surveys, quizzes, games, etc.

This assignment now seems somewhat similar to two other assignments I used to give:

• A "rhetorical analysis" of an essay, focusing on how the "techniques" used in an essay (usually narrative or expository)--such as structure/organization, examples, details, introductory strategies, conclusion strategies, syntax, diction, style, tone, etc.--helped the writer accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.
• A "critique" of an argumentative/persuasive essay, primarily focusing on Aristotle's "three appeals"--ethos, pathos, logos--but also on other argumentative/persuasive strategies used by the writer to accomplish her/his purpose for his/her audience.

Yes, yes, I know: fairly straight-forward and very traditional assignments--and, students would say, both challenging and "boring." And not at all "digital" or Web 2.0.

I think a "blend" of the old and the new will be where I start, when I begin planning my courses and assignments for next year.

My Professor's Audio Feedback on My Blog

I can't get this to open in my email, so I'm going to try this:

Click here to listen to Dr. Richard Beach's feedback and evaluation about my blog. He's a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. The course is CI 5330: Teaching Digital Writing.

The 12.5 Rules for Writing -- 2nd Attempt

I know, I know. This is the same image as the previous post. I know. But since I had a technology glitch yesterday, I thought I'd try it again and see what happens.

This time, I tried using DashBlog again, but I took the image from Rachel Tholen's blog, just to see if that would make a difference. And. Ugh. It happened this time too. DashBlog not only captured the image I wanted but it also captured a video--and, again, the video was in a DIFFERENT post. Why, oh why, is it doing this?

However, this time I must have deleted the code correctly. I went into the Edit Html view again, and I was just as careful as I thought I was yesterday, but I paid attention to the closing code, and I think I got it right. There was NO error message when I went to publish. Yeah!

The 12.5 Rules for Writing -- 1st Attempt

I originally saw this image on Rachel Tholen's blog and really liked it. However, in this attempt to capture the image to blog about it, I took it from Leeshi's blog. I tried using "DashBlog" to "Grab an Image." But what happened is that it grabbed more than just the image I wanted; it also grabbed a YouTube video or a VoiceThread that Leeshi had put up--in a different post. I then tried to go to "Edit Html" in Blogger to delete the code for the embedded video, but apparently I also ended up deleting the closing code for the image. I ended up getting an error message when I went to publish the revision. However, when I chose the Compose view, rather than the Edit Html view, the post published successfully. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED! Ugh.

Anyway. This image of the 12.5 Rules for Writing would make a nice introductory image to a course blog or a course wiki. Ironically, there's nothing here about digital writing, or about digital writing tools, but the composing process--and all the rules--are similar in all writing situations.

This image also reminds me of when I first started teaching college composition, back in 1992, as a teaching assistant, and all the things we TAs had our students do. Getting into a routine. Making lists. Having an implicit thesis in a narrative essay. Experimenting with different styles. Having writing implements and materials always handy. Doing an observation on campus. Where did all the "basics" go? With increasing interest in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and the ever-increasing technology tools, somehow I think the "basics" got misplaced.

This relates to an earlier post I wrote, the one about Freshman Comp. no longer being a "Service Course." There are so many different approaches to a college comp. course, it's hard to know which is "best." It's even harder when one sees advantages and possibilities in different ones. And combining the best of different worlds isn't always possible. Sometimes, I think it'd be easier if I had a single-track mind, where I "knew" one approach to teaching was the best, and I didn't let any of the others distract or lure me!

Possible Activities for Blogs in the Classroom

I’m supposed to develop some activities for how I might use blogs in the classroom, but I think all my initial ideas run straight into the warnings given in the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008). For example, the authors quote Sandy Hayes:

“’It’s not about learning how to use the tools . . . it’s about understanding how to use the tools to learn’” (p. 8).

One page later, the authors add:

“We need to consider how students perceive their uses as more than simply completing writing assignments for teachers—now on blogs or wikis rather then [sic] in Word. Clay Burell (2008) warns that blogging can easily become ‘just another way to turn in homework.’” (p. 9).

Similarly, the authors quote Anne Beaton:

“However, I felt that my students were essentially experiencing a typical classroom task via a blog—an electronic substitute” (p. 101).

So now I’m left wondering: Maybe it’s a learning curve. Maybe I need to start with whatever ideas I have, see how they work, then modify and improve upon them. But it’d sure to nice to start off with wonderful ideas that will work splendidly every time. Of course, I know from experience that this is well nigh impossible. So on to my initial ideas.

In English 0950, for example, since it is a developmental-level college writing course, perhaps start out the semester with the idea of blogs, perhaps even assign some of the chapters in Blogging for Dummies, and have students set up their own blogs. Then, rather than continue on with teacher-assigned readings, have students explore the course anthology and find five readings that they are interested in. This next part sounds the most like the “blog-as-teacher-assigned-horror,” but I could have the students write five posts, one for each reading they’ve selected, briefly summarizing and then perhaps arguing why other students should explore the same reading. All these activities would help them setting up their blog, get them reading, help them with writing fluency, get them to think of their audience as they write, and get them responding to and thinking about each others’ posts.

My next idea also seems very teacher-driven and really just another spin on a typical classroom activity, though this time in the electronic medium. Once students have drafted an essay, rather than the usual in-class peer reviews (which never seem to work the way I want them to, and which never seem to result in all students getting great feedback), the students would copy-and-paste their drafts into a blog post, and then their “writing group,” perhaps now called their “blog partner(s)” (grouped in pairs, trios, or quads), would read their posts/drafts and provide feedback through the comment feature.

This seems only a novelty, however, which might produce one round of good feedback, or which might improve over the semester. However, Hendron, in RSS for Educators, offers something similar to this idea in Chapter 9, in “Lesson 2: Keeping a Fine Arts Portfolio” (pp. 163-165). I think the key here would be to get students to comment on the comments they receive, something I don’t allow them to do in class in their small groups, thinking that they would start “defending” their paper (they should be seeking to understand the comments, asking questions for clarification, etc.). However, with the blog, maybe it would be different. I would, of course, tell them not to defend their paper but to seek clarification, or to initiate some sort of dialogue. This, of course, might require that I have the writing group read the drafts/posts again, including the comments, and to comment on the comments to their comments. If you can follow that!

Lastly, for English 1121, our college writing (or FYC) course, I’m not sure yet about blogs for that class. Since it is the class focusing on argumentation and research, perhaps a class blog and/or a wiki would work better. But I still need to find out more about class blogs; hopefully, that will happen in class on 9-23-08. The Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book has already given some good examples where class blogs and wikis are used for argumentation and research assignments. And the Hendron book, in chapter 9, offers “Lesson 4: Let’s Review” (pp. 168-170) which seems like an ideal assignment for this course. The critical review / critique could be of a movie, book, or musical recording, as Hendron suggests, but it might also be of an argument (the focus of the course), whether written, oral, or visual, whether academic, political, social, or pop culture.

NOTE TO RICK BEACH: I would still like to learn about “track-backs” in blogs, wherein the blogger cites and links to other sources within his/her own blog. I know you covered this a bit last week, right at the end, but a little more time on it would be great! How is it best done? Is it copy-paste, or a hyperlink, or both, or what? It is especially mentioned on p. 103 of your book.

First-Year Composition: A "Service" Course No Longer?

In continuing to think about the first chapter of the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, pp. 1-17), I am starting to make "links" as I begin to recall my past readings in College Composition Theory and Pedagogy.

One "theory" or approach to First-Year [College] Composition (FYC) is that it is a "service" course--not in the sense of service learning, although some people include that approach, but in the sense of being "in service" to all the other courses in the curriculum. In other words, students should learn in FYC how to do the kinds of writing that they will encounter in other courses in college.

On the other hand, another approach is to focus almost entirely on the "writing process"--whose proponents include, if I'm remembering correctly, composition scholars like Janet Emig, Peter Elbow, and Donald Murray. In fact, as I was reading this first chapter, a quotation from Donald Murray kept coming to mind--and I'm PARAPHRASING here:

As writing teachers, we cannot possibly know what kinds of writing our students will encounter later on in their college careers, let alone what kinds of writing they will encounter in their lives outside of and after college. Thus, we should help them to understand the writing process itself, guide them through the steps, all its ins and outs, foster their use of it in any writing situation. Then we will have truly helped them, for any writing project will be better if writers follow the writing process to plan, draft, revise, edit, and proofread their writing.

I could probably find the exact passage if someone asked.

But this relates to this digital writing class. We cannot possibly know what kinds of digital writing our students are already doing, in and/or outside of school, nor can we even begin to guess what kinds of digital writing they will be asked to do in the future--or even what new digital writing tools will be used in the future. Thus, we should continue to stress the writing process as we ask them to use various digital writing tools.

But this will conflict with those, both in the English Department and in other departments, who feel that FYC should be a "service" course. If Biology, or Math, or Health, or Political Science does not use blogs, or wikis, or podcasts, or whatever, are we in FYC "wasting our students' time" helping them to use these things? If digital writing becomes a focal point in the class, we won't be able to cover Reviews of Literature, or Annotated Bibliographies, or Lab Reports, or whatever. What happens then when our students go, unprepared, into these other classes?

Student Blogging and Plagiarism

In the Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing (draft copy, 2008, pp. 5-6), the authors quote Gunther Kress:

If I am thinking of composing a text, I can take the resources for that from anywhere--usually described and misunderstood as cut and paste, and not as real writing or composition.

My worry here is that this IS what some students do, and they don't see a problem with it. They cut-and-paste text from the web into their own documents, without any attribution phrases or citations (from a particular documentation system), and are then shocked when I fail the paper for plagiarism.

I am beginning to understand, now, in this class on digital writing, why and how they can think this way. With YouTube and social-networking sites, this is how things are done, and they don't think anything of it. A video--or anything else--is linked to quickly and then passed on. The original creators might even be pleased that their work is being passed on to a wider audience and may not worry about correct attribution.

But here comes, then, discussions of specific discourse (or other) communities, and specific conventions observed by different communities. Academia values attribution and citation. Knowledge is created, disseminated, and built on. But previous work is acknowledged.

Web 2.0, or the Read/Write Web, does not seem to value this acknowledgement, or seems to value it in a different way. We are not only "consumers" of the web; we are now also "producers." And with this instantaneous "switch" in role, from reader to writer, we seem to immediately respond and/or create, and attribution can get lost.

Using Blogs in Life and in Teaching

I have just set up my blog using Blogger. Now, how might I use it in my everyday life? I’m not really sure. With the exception of a photo of my cat, I did not set up the blog, in terms of its title or its “mission statement,” to be about my everyday life. I could see setting up a different blog to be about my everyday life, or using the “labels” area to identify personal items, but I think a blog should stick to one focus. I haven’t seen many blogs, but the best I’ve seen are very focused on one topic. The worst are the very personal ones, those that the “Blogging for Dummies” author calls “navel-gazing” blogs.

I can easily see using the blog for my teaching, especially for “reflective practice,” and this is how I set up my blog. I took a class with a well-known composition scholar, Chris Anson, about 9 years ago, he has since left the U of MN, and there I was introduced to the idea of reflective practice; I have been a proponent of it ever since. We benefit when we continually examine and question what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. We benefit from talking to others, listening to others, and watching others. This is how I hope to use my blog: to record my reflections and observations about my teaching, and about the teaching of others.

I can also see using my blog to record how my own classes went each day, but more for me than for my students. I can see some students using my blog as a way to keep up with class without having to attend class. But the point of the blog wouldn’t be to record lecture notes or discussion points. It would be to record what happened, what went well, what didn’t, what surprised me, and how I felt about it. On the other hand, perhaps a blog SHOULD be used for that other record, for students who legitimately cannot make it to class -- weather, illness, etc. They could at least get a snapshot of what happened on a particular day, and they could post a comment or question for me or someone else to respond to.

Another benefit I can see with a blog is helping a writing teacher to establish a habit of actually writing him- or herself. Writing teachers should be writers, but we often have too much else to do to have time to devote to our writing: preparing for class, meeting with students, grading papers, serving on committees, etc. Having a blog could help with this, especially since it is encouraged that blogs be updated on a fairly regular basis.

I’m not sure how I will use blogs in my teaching, or if I will have my students develop and keep blogs themselves. That’s why I’m in this course, to help me figure out what’s out there for digital writing tools, and how and why I might use them in class. Having students keep a blog seems analogous to having them keep a journal, and I was never crazy about that idea, even though it was to encourage fluency and the habit of writing. However, it never seemed to work out that way: students often did it just because they had to.

I enrolled in this course, as I said above, first, to help me figure out what’s out there for digital writing tools, and already I can tell I have a lot to learn: blogging, IM-ing, Ning-ing, wiki-ing, RSS-ing, vlogging, etc. Second, I need to think about how and why I would use whatever I choose, how would it help my students, how would it fit into the course, how it could be genuine writing instead of some artificial part of the class that students must do to get their grade. Lastly, I do hope that I will start to write more frequently, and to make time for reflection, and I think blogging will be a great help with that.

Wow, this does sound like a “mini-essay.” Oops.