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Teaching with blogs
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In the age of Twitter, is the blog obsolete? Well, I hope not -
we're obviously rather partial to blogs around here!
There is something to be said for the longer form of the blog,
especially as a teaching tool.
Blogs are great spaces for reflection (on the course, an assignment, a site
visit), for experimentation (to try writing in the voice of a character, to
showcase work in progress), and for collaboration (comments, the ability to
easily add and share links). Additionally, blogs can be stand-alone assignments
or used as part of the preparatory writing process
for other course items, like term papers. Of course, blogs aren't the only
places to do any of these things, but - depending on your course, your
objectives, and your learners - they might be a place that makes sense.
This is a nice article about how to get the most out of
student blogs and instructional blogging. As the article points
out, getting comments on blog posts is what elevates them from web pages to
interactive discussions. In order to get discussion going, some professors make
commenting a requirement (similar to the discussion board commenting
requirements may online courses have). Why use a blog, then? According to the
article, students report that "blogs facilitated learning from one another,
and helped them learn new electronic media skills that could be applied in
other settings."
Here is a more concrete step-by-step guide to getting started with blogging with
students. This list outlines the basic steps, but leaves it up
to you to chose the best platform and set the appropriate parameters.
Last, these are some resources for evaluating blogs. We've
written about rubrics before,
but this page has great links to rubrics for blogs and for peer
commenting.
kate marshall | April 17, 2012 at
4:50 pm | Tags: blog, eLearning, highered, rubrics, teaching | Categories: regular
| URL: http://wp.me/p1XeZv-cXep7Z
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