Teaching with Blogs

So i'm almost at the midterm of a new class i'm teaching called Social Issues in a Networked Society
I must admit that i am impressed with some of the thought provoking pieces created by my students in their blogs. Each week my students are required to blog about their use of networked technologies and then to analyze their use of the tools from three different paradigms. At first the students were merely writing about the tools they used such as email, ebay, evites, goolge and so forth without any reflection or evidence of critical thinking. What has worked really well with the blog format is that i comment about each of their post every week.

The comments allow me to give personalized feedback to each student and helps me to shape their writing so that they are now able to write deeply reflective blog entries. In class on tuesday one of the students mentioned that he was surprised at how well he is learning the material in this class because he is forced to sit down and write about it every week. The rest of the class nodded their heads and several others made similar comments. The blogs are due on sunday afternoon at 2pm and i have made the blog worth 20% of their grade, equivalent to their midterm exam. I honestly believe the students are engaging in a deeper learning practice by blogging rather than cramming for next weeks midterm.


here is a list of positive features of  classroom blog use

• Student Feedback - i am able to give direct, personal feedback directly to each student every week
• Student evaluation - i am able to see if my students are understanding the course material by reading their blogs
• in Class examples - I use things they write about in their  blogs as examples in class when i am explaining a new concept or to review previous concepts
• Paper topics - I have used the blogs to help the students select their paper topics in class. For example one student frequently writes about online dating sites and an other often writes about downloading music.  When i asked them to select a paper topic neither of them could think of a topic, when i mentioned to them that they could write about either of those two topics they couldn't believe it.
• student/teacher conferences - by writing weekly comments to the students it feels as if my office hours are being utilized by every student. We are able to have ongoing dialogues throughout the semester on a very personal level.
  
• Knowing your students - i know about the acadmic goals and interest of each of my students because they blog about how technology impacts their major. I also know that one broke-up with her boyfriend through facebook, one is shopping online for a motorcycle, and another is "spinning online game"
  
• Teachable moments - When students write about their experiences they provide you with many teachable moments. For example, one of my students had her credit card number stolen and she wrote about it in her blog. That week's lesson was about computer failures and information security, her credit card experience was a perfect teachable moment for the class.

Later this week i'll post an example or two of some of the other projects they are working on. Let me know you think especially if you are using a blog in your class.