Wahoooooo! We're off and blogging, getting er done!

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• Hmm... while some blogs excel because they carve a rhetorical niche, others excel simply from good writing. Since many of my students are writing students (creative writing or journalism), many use their blogs as a way to keep up with friends, practice their poetry, to sharpen their non-fiction essays, and so forth.

  Several students who had been blogging socially for years found it difficult to adjust to the more formal requirements of academic blogging. But since most of these students already like writing, they were eager to try out the new environment.

  I don't teach education courses, but I do ask my upper-level students to write blog entries that they themselves might actually want to read. Thus, instead of titling a blog entry "Homework Exercise 1-1" or "Anagogical and Grotarthian Blablahbla in the Flimdipics of Hogarthian Rectitude #2". Thus, students focus on writing an informal essay that just happens to work in a reference to Plato or whatever the assigned reading is. I don't ask my lower-level students to do that, but the students who like blogging, and who want to get comments from their peers, quickly learn from experience that any blog entry that sounds like homework is going to look boring to the casual surfer. I'm surprised at how many comments our blogs get on Friday afternoons and Saturdays, when I imagine most students are relaxing.

  I've never taught with Blackboard or any other similar CMS, so perhaps I wouldn't be the best person to offer comparative advice...
  I suppose the best strategy is to emphasize blogging as a kind of discovery draft. I encourage students to think of blogging as a way of hashing out their ideas before they come to a class discussion; and then I inform students that I will expect them to contribute something meaningful and sustain a class conversation for several minutes when I ask, right at the beginning of class, "Warren, what's your agenda item?" So students blog in order to prepare for the class discussion. I have students blog their oral presentations as well, which is a good way to get their peers to comment (or link).

  I see that you included a blogroll as part of the student's grade... I didn't investigate to see what parameters you put on that assignment, but other than pointing the first batch of blogging students towards the instructions they needed in order to personalize their blogs, I don't make any assignments that cover the blogging templates or design. While I do teach Writing for the Internet, I consciously steer away from design as a major subject, since inevitably a few students will focus on the design to the exclusion of the content.

• I think my English Education students often feel the same way. We're blogging at Grand Valley State University. If you get a chance, check out http://2worlds.blogspirit.com, which is home base for two English education classes.

  So far, my biggest concern has been the question of purpose--the best blogs have a clear purpose and rhetorical stance. My question is how to get students to write purposefully within the classroom context, without making it too artificial (as in Blackboard threaded discussion). Any insights would be appreciated.

• How clever!