speaking of blogs…

The technical glitches seem to have been worked out. I am beginning to look at the students’ research blogs and comment. This is the exciting part for me about the blog; I can really get involved with their research work while they are still doing it and still have time to change. As for Plastic Plate, the class blog, the students are still not taking advantage of it as much as I wish they would. But it takes time for new technologies to become “everyday.” We now have a list of who will summarize the class each day.That should help.
And on top of the new technology, I think the idea of creating community for themselves, of helping each other with this class, THAT is a new idea for many of them. One of the students said to me “I am surprised that we are using blogs for this class. I thought blogs were bad.” When I pressed her about what she meant by “bad” she said in her high school they weren’t supposed to read them or write them. There is a persistent sense among my students that blogs are personal and personal is not “academic” or “rigorous” (and therefore not good–where have I heard that before??) I am trying to show them the variety of blogs out there. I am trying to show them that blogs are just tools–fairly flexible tools–and it’s all in how we use them. We ARE using them in academic ways.
We had a really interesting discussion about the definition of “academic” in class on Thursday as we worked on the Academic Essay–Close Analysis of a Story. That word cuts two ways–we mean by it “serious, in depth, rigorous” but there is also the expression that something can be “purely academic” meaning NOT important or not applicable to real life. As they adjust to college life, it is interesting for them to question assumptions old and new.