Vetting Comments Strangers Post to Class Blogs

Vetting Comments Strangers Post to Class Blogs (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)

I always enjoy telling my students when I start noticing comments that people who aren’t in our class start posting comments on the course weblog or individual student weblogs.

Sometimes the poster is someone who took the course in the past and is recalling with fondness (or horror) a particular assignment. Other entries attract comments from other people on the Internet who happen to be interested in the same subject.

Here is an example of such a comment (posted to a 600-word blog entry that discussed the nature of heroism in Huck Finn) that I don’t bother to approve:

im writing a paper why is huck the hero??

But here is an excerpt from a 700-word comment (posted to a student’s entry about Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”), which I did approve:

My take was that it is blindingly obvious that he is a first draft of perfection, but like the Misfit, a flawed one. He talks the talk, but Jesus never said anything about the heart as a car or anything mobile – it was a mustard seed that grew IN PLACE, like a house, like the Kingdom of God.

See Also:

• Approving or Ignoring Comments on Old Student Blog Entries
  
• Blogging Now Begins Young