Blogging Class

Casting Out Nines wrote about a blogging class that he would be teaching during Winter Term. He asked for suggestions. Here’s what I commented:

One thing you could look at would be posts. As mentioned above, you would need a rubric to decide grades. You don’t want a bunch of one line posts. Or simple link posts.

I wouldn’t want word count posts either. (That’d be like those 500 word essays the students always turn in that are total fluff.)

One thing would be to look for a certain number of several types of posts:
1. Link posts, where they discuss a topic they found on another blog.
2. News posts, where they give their opinion or background info, on some news.
3. Personal posts, where they tell something about their lives or their schooling.
4. In-depth posts, where they are expected to have research done on the post. This could be on internet/blog topics or something else that they are interested in.

You would want reasonable grammar and spelling, but not necessarily to focus on that. I try to spell everything I write correctly, but I sometimes misuse grammar on purpose. I wouldn’t be able to do that in a formal essay, but I would consider a blog entry as I envision them, to be a bit more informal.

Another possible idea is for them to find a blog that they find interesting and read through the blog’s archives, writing about stuff they find there. Or maybe commenting on the ideas in them. This would let them see how a particular blog, or blogs, has changed and, hopefully, matured over time- or not.

I would love to get to teach a course like this. I hope you enjoy it. It sounds like it could be quite fun.

Someone said that they didn’t like the idea as a course because what use is it for your child?

But I think it would be a GREAT English class. Writing, immediate feedback. Give folks part of their grades, maybe the equivalent of quizzes, on their comments on other people’s blogs. (Those in the class. Or if they comment somewhere else they’d have to send the URL and the comment to the teacher.) I think this would be a fun, useful class for a creative writing course or a history class or a philosophy class… I admit I can’t see how a math teacher would do it as math, but…

If I ever get to suggest a topics class, which is what this is, that’s what I’d want to do. Real life writing.