Student Blogs?

I haven't been able to get my student blogs off the ground yet. There are two issues to consider. First, I need to have meaningful assignments that I can put up on a regular basis. This requires a considerable effort in terms of time and ingenuity. It isn't that easy to come up with ideas that actually require a blog and couldn't be done more easily in another format. Obviously there are things I want students to view on the internet at some point in time, but we haven't got there yet and assigning students to view content on the internet in and of itself doesn't require a blog response. The central challenge is to use blogs to foster strudent communication & collaboration. I may need to re-think my original model and go toward a voluntary blog assignment for now, allowing each student to set up his or her own personal blog. My original idea was to have a class blog and allow students mainly to respond to questions I post. That no longer seems a workable format, given already the time I spend planning and setting up labs and so on.

Secondly, there's the logistical matter of introducing students to the blog concept/format and training them in how to use it. This is actually easier if I allow students to have their own blogs. One problem with the original idea was that comments are uneditable, which gets to be a problem since I want students to work on grammar and spelling and the like.

In writing this post, the solution is becoming clearer. I will work on helping students set up their own blogs on a voluntary, extra credit basis. Then teach them how to use it, what it's purpose is, and allow them to submit certain types of homeworks in blog format. I'll think about how to encourage comments between students, and offer feedback as well. Stay tuned...