Creating the first blog entry

My reflections and insights on the progress of my class blogging activity are recorded below.

Instructional Challenge: One of the reasons for undertaking the blogging activity is to have students practice writing for a particular audience. They need to keep in mind the perspective of the reader and what kind of information they would find interesting.

Observations: The junior students have completed the paper blogging activity and providing each other with comments on the content and design of their blogs. This was a great way for students to focus on the quality of their writing and the kind of information they could include to capture the attention of their audience. We discussed how to create a great post and how to create quality comments. While students did a good job of providing feedback on the design and content of the blog it became obvious that they will need more instruction on the art of commenting, specifically how to use a blog as a means of facilitating a dialogue between the writer and the reader. Subsequently, we looked at some examples of student blogs and what the author did to encourage conversations with their readers. Below are some examples of the paper blogs;

One Direction Blog

Selena Gomez Blog

Lessons learned: Interestingly enough I ran into some administrative challenges that I had not anticipated. I provided the students with a class code so that they could create their individual accounts according to the convention I had outlined. I did not anticipate that the students would memorize the class code and continue to use it to create additional accounts when they re-visited the site (in some cases 3 or 4 times!!). I now create the accounts myself and provide the students with the information to log in.