Endings and New Beginnings. . .

Dear Blog, here was my beginning in August, fall semester, 2008:

Hello, here I am at my computer (as usual) exchanging ideas and drafts and feelings with students--late into the night. Let's add to our late night date blogging! The purpose of my blog is to save fleeting ideas that develop out of teaching/learning sessions whether in class or online. I am experimenting so that come the spring 2009 semester, I will have developed a blog project for English 112 students who will also develop and share their blogs during the course of the semester. I've just completed the development of English 111, a course that establishes the foundations of writing from sources and of information literacy skills. English 112 will continue this development but will also take flight with our experimenting alternative, 21st century communications. (Text messaging anyone? How might this genre be examined and discussed in a writing class?)

At midterm, f08, here is my ending. . . and introduction to a new beginning spring semester, 2009. I began this blog to experiment what is a blog and how I might be able to structure a blog project for students in English 112? I found my resource! Joyce Barnes (Assistant Coordinator: JSR Center for Distance Learning) sent a making-sense article that will become the basis of this semester-long writing project.

Reynard, R. (2008, October 1). Avoiding the 5 most common mistakes in using blogs with students. E-learning Tips. Campus Technology. Retrieved October 25, 2008, from the World Wide Web:http://campustechnology.com/articles/68089_2/.

From the 5 pointers, I will follow the suggestion that blogs are private: a blog is not a discussion forum, nor will students' entries be publicly shared. However, near the end of the semester, I will ask students to upload a favorite posting to the class discussion board and comment on what they have learned from the semester-long blog project.

Time will allow for only 5 postings, which are built into the syllabus at regular intervals, as Reynard suggests. Useful learning outcomes for a blog project are that students synthesize the ideas developed in the postings to arrive at new knowledge, that blog writing--as all writing--is discovery.

What strategies would be built into the assignment to invite students to ponder, to analyze, to discover? Might students pose a question to investigate? A blogged research project--dependent on primary research--observing, note taking, analyzing, summarizing.

What about my designing of a template for a blog posting, one that would lead students through a process of observation, note taking, summarizing--and then reflecting on the meaning of the activity. "What have you learned? What new questions do you have?"

I wonder if my blog, dear blog, would offer such an example? I have been investigating my classroom to observe how the assignments and the classroom activities are playing out--and getting some surprises along the way, leading to more questions.

Time to say 'goodbye, dear blog': one note before we part: I did construct a text-messaging unit! Colleagues give it a thumbs up! (Will the students come S09?)