Check Out the Class Blogs
I have set up team blogs for members of my class. This term the focus is Understanding Grammar. Here is how the set-up works: I created seven blogs, naming them Writing Commons One, Writing Commons Two, and so on through seven. Blogger lets me invite others to join my blogs. So I divided the class into seven groups and invited four or five students to each blog. Then Blogger sent each of them an invitation. Once they accept the invitation, they are members of that blog and can post entries by going to http://blogger.com, signing in, and then choosing the post link.
Blogger gave me a choice of templates for setting up a blog. Just as I used variations on the name of my own blog, Writing Commons, for the student team blogs, I also used variations on the same template for the team blogs. My tech TA, Kaitlin, figured out how to change the colors on the templates and did that on all seven blogs for me. But using one color scheme would work, too.
To start the conversation on the team blogs, I posted several questions. Students can respond to any of them they want. The assignment for the first week was to post one response to the questions on the Lisa Delpit article. There were some problems with lost invitations and lost passwords, so that did not work perfectly, but overall, the process went well. The assignment for the second week is to read the postings of one's own team and respond to at least one post. Then also read the postings of one other team and post at least one comment. Comments are posted by clicking on the Comment link at the end of a particular post.
People who are not in the class are able and welcome to post comments on any of the blogs.
Readers who would like to see what the students have to say can look here:
http://writingcommonsone.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonstwo.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonsthree.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonsfour.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonsfive.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonssix.blogspot.com
http://writingcommonsseven.blogspot.com
Scroll to the bottom of the postings to see the prompts I gave for the assignment.
posted by Vicki TB @ 5:25 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hi Vicki and students in Understanding Grammar,
I'm excited to see that the team blogs have been set up. I've looked through a few of the questions, responses, and comments on responses. I like how the blog environment is encouraging a rich discussion.
I'll be following this as the term develops, but so far so good.
Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate your taking the time to look at my class's efforts. I just finished reading through the comments that were made on the first postings, and I found the conversations quite lively. I was also impressed with how supportive students are of each other's career aspirations.
I think the group blogs could lead to some interesting pedagogical developments. So far, so good!
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