I haven’t been blogging here much lately because other than the jewelry book landing back on my doorstep, I have been working on school stuff for the fall. That includes making lots of blogs for my classes. So I have been blogging, just not here!

I have been using blogs for awhile as on-going class assignments for a few reasons. First, it is a way to allow my students a chance to express their opinions. A great deal of the writing I teach is analysis, so while technically they do give their opinions, most feel like they aren’t since they can’t use first or second person (I and you) in their work. So on the blogs, they can let it rip, as long as it as least half-way grammatically together.

Another reason to use the blogs is it gives them tiny writing assignments on a regular basis, just 4 to 6 sentences. Added up over the semester, I think it makes a difference in their thinking. They are limited in the length of their responses, so they have to be selective with their words. They have to actually write complete sentences, so they can’t just slap up any old pile of bologna too. It has to be grammatically correct bologna at any rate.

Finally, it helps them connect to each other a little since it creates a virtual conversation. I don’t treat it like a message board, so they aren’t required to respond to each other, but often they do after they start relaxing and get into it a little.

So far, weblogs have worked well with my full on-line and my blended (a mix of web and traditional) classes. I did try it last year with one traditional class, but I just could sell it that well. Students were too used the idea of walking out of class and away from the subject. To ask them to get on-line and write their thoughts was too much for most of them.

This year, out of 6 classes I have only one totally traditional class. This means 5 blogs, folks! Some of it I can recycle, but some of it I had to add to and tweak a little. I have found some great on-line resources too, especially for my technical communications class. In particular, I have used TED.com and embedded some pretty cool videos over there that relate to what we are studying. Students are more visual than every these days, so being able to add a video to my blog posts and then connecting that to reading material has been a big winner for me, especially when some of the videos include celebrities like Jamie Oliver or Mike Rowe.

If there are any teachers out there who would like some TED URLs, feel free to email me and I’ll send them to you or maybe even post them here, though I have a pretty long list!