Comments on: Student blogs

By: Bernie

Bernie — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 01:23:19 +0000

Eszter—great idea. It’s nice to see such a variety of viewpoints. I teach high school English—and each of my classes maintains a “group” blog—where each student is an author.. Feel free to check out an example: http://criticsandbuilders.typepad.com/collegeenglish10 Because they are all on the same blog—students find commenting on each other’s posts less tedious.

By: ibar

ibar — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 04:26:42 +0000

Sounds like a great idea! Recently, one of my law school professors was discussing a libel case arising out of a blog posting (a made-up situation, I believe). Claiming technical illiteracy, he asked for a show of hands on how many students in the class keep a blog. Only one student raised her hand (out of a 100). But more surprizing was the confrontation between the student and the professor after class – the student claimed that a lot more people in the class probably kept blogs but were just too embarassed to admit it, and had she known that noone was going to raise their hand, she wouldn’t have done so either. Now I’ve never kept a blog myself (I prefer blog-lurking :), but I also didn’t really think that blogging is somehow embarassing, especially these days. I wonder whether your students are self-conscious about it? Either way, here’s an article about bloggers & press protections: Are bloggers journalists?

By: yabonn

yabonn — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 18:44:29 +0000

Palm, forehead, slap.

By: yabonn

yabonn — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 18:34:59 +0000

About search engines, a link that you may or may not find interesting : http://www.searchlores.org/ (i’m going to hate that if it ends in a double post)

By: yabonn

yabonn — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 17:57:48 +0000

By the by, i bumped into that the other day, that you may, or may not, find interesting : http://www.searchlores.org/

By: Farah

Farah — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 15:39:28 +0000

Funnily enough I’d been thinking of trying the same thing with a creative writing class next semester, so it’s good to see it in action. I like it. Some of the students have really used the space to think aloud.

By: Rich Puchalsky

Rich Puchalsky — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 15:24:01 +0000

Hey, maybe the warbloggers can have a prize for the first guy to go to every student’s blog and angrily demand to know why they haven’t posted the good news about the Iraqi elections.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 14:36:33 +0000

The feedback think can be frustrating. Maybe you could have a “neglected blog of the day” and give students credit for constructive criticism on that blog or entry. Get the better students more involved in moderation and give other students a reason to keep up involved in the blogs. It’s a great thing when you have the power to give some meta-direction to the blog.

By: Nash

Nash — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 14:07:14 +0000

Eszter, No I am the Nash of blog commentary and not the one taking your class, although I did notice that blog. I did comment on several of the blogs, and will continue to visit and do so as appropriate. One in particular seemed an excellent summary of that student’s thinking to date. I think it’s a great idea for a class.

By: agm

agm — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 07:46:52 +0000

Wait, let me get this straight. You are teaching an entire class of people to digitally procrasinate, for credit? Seems like that could cause some cognitive dissonance… =)

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 07:03:15 +0000

Nash, thanks. The class will go until early March. Did you end up commenting on any of the blogs? I’m only asking because one of the students in the class is going by the username Nash/Nashvegas (everyone’s using a pseudonym) and now I can’t tell if the comments were left by that person or you (or if you are that person taking the class:). Kieran, thanks for letting me know, I had no idea. I thought I was using fairly standard css specifications, I have no idea why it would be showing up in such a problematic manner. I have only tested the page in Firefox and IE on Windows XP.. it seems to run into some glitches on IE, but at least the menus are on the appropriate sides. I have added links to all the student blogs on nublogs.com so those who can’t see the links at therockblog.com can access them there.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 03:47:41 +0000

The main page you link to doesn’t render properly in Safari. The left-side navigation box is on the right, on top of the right-side box.

By: jet

jet — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 03:20:12 +0000

It looks like several of your students are quite insightful. What a fun class to be a part of.

By: Nash

Nash — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 03:07:37 +0000

Good suggestion, Eszter. Consider it done. How long will this class last?