For your weekend reading pleasure, my Internet & Society course blog links to 25 students’ class blogs. They are required to blog about their readings (which already leads to some interesting posts), but additionally, several of them have gotten inspired to blog about class-related (and sometimes unrelated) topics above and beyond the required assignments. From interviewing grandparents about their radio uses to reflecting about their obsessions with IT they have covered lots of topics.

Extras have included discussions of the “What Would Jesus Blog” movement, the Facebook banned at a university, Tuvalu’s .tv domain name (also discussed briefly in class once) and frustrations with software installation. One student blogged about a run-in with someone regarding a copied identity on MySpace. Blogger ELVIAJERO has a series on Weekly Musical Leanings. Another student blogged about an upcoming movie that a friend is producing. Some students also get inspired to add images to their posts, which adds a fun component when you’re reading through a couple dozen of these blogs. (And yes, they are careful about not hotlinking and using up others’ bandwidth.)

In case you’re wondering about the curious blog names, I encourage students to blog without their real names for privacy (and in compliance with FERPA guidelines).

I’m sure they’d be delighted to get some comments from people outside of class so if you have a moment please stop by and say hello. That said, many of the comments on the posts are closed due to spam protection we have implemented on their blogs. We use both the auto-close comments plugin for WordPress and an additional spam guard to protect against unwanted junk. I recommend both if you’re a WordPress user.