plan of attack: various blog activities (Sept. 23, 2008)
A couple key ideas concerning classroom blog use and activities are reiterated in the readings for class:
1. Blogs can be teacher, individual student, or classroom based.
2. To blog is to write (Hendron, 173). (I disagree...blogs can be filled with pictures, podcasts, and video feed).
3. Blogs are for the public. To create a blog is to write for an audience.
4. Blogs do not equal scholarly writing.
5. Blogs provide an alternative space where conversationally shy people might find sanctuary.
With this in mind, I have two classroom blogging activities that I hope to try out in my future literature courses:
1. The Critic's Circle: I envision this blog as a classroom-based blog with me (the teacher) as the moderator. The purpose of the blog is for students to write literary critical reviews, respond to other students' literary reviews, and read/respond to professional literary reviews. In my education, I had little exposure to book reviews. However, I feel that critical literary reviews can offer perspectives and viewpoints that non-critical readers overlook. Furthermore, I believe reviewing books can provide an outlet for students to express their feelings and thoughts about the text in a pro-active way. Since the public can read The Critic's Circle Blog, students will need to back their "feelings" with persuasive evidence. In addition to reading/writing their own reviews, students will also need to post one professional review per week. Students will need to comment on why they chose this review and how it might change their reading of the text. Students will also need to read and comment on their fellow students' submitted reviews and choice professional reviews. Hopefully, The Critic's Circle Blog will encourage students to get more involved in the reading, see themselves as valuable reader participants, and provide a venue where reading and writing is purposeful.
2. Scrapbooks: For this activity, each student will create their own blog. These blogs are personal in nature, but the content will be reviewed by myself and other student through blog links. In this way, students will need to monitor their own scrapbooks in order to appropriately respond to the blog prompts. Basically, the scrapbook blogs respond to the literature we are currently working on in class. Instead of using the blogs to write reflections on the book itself, student will make outside connections to the text. For instance, in one assignment, students will be asked to find pictures via the internet of what they consider a character's house to look like. If a character lives in Paris, students will need to find pictures that demonstrates/expresses what daily life in Paris might look like. In another assignment, students will need to post a selection from the text followed by a link to a video, picture, website, or article that they feel relates to the selection. In response to both these activities, students will need to comment on their peers' posts. In this way, students will share connections, challenge viewpoints, and understand a text in new ways. Assignments related to the Scrapbook blogs are really endless and endlessly creative!
In terms of my final project, I hope to explore one of these two lesson plans further. I will be sure to post what I've come up with!
1. Blogs can be teacher, individual student, or classroom based.
2. To blog is to write (Hendron, 173). (I disagree...blogs can be filled with pictures, podcasts, and video feed).
3. Blogs are for the public. To create a blog is to write for an audience.
4. Blogs do not equal scholarly writing.
5. Blogs provide an alternative space where conversationally shy people might find sanctuary.
With this in mind, I have two classroom blogging activities that I hope to try out in my future literature courses:
1. The Critic's Circle: I envision this blog as a classroom-based blog with me (the teacher) as the moderator. The purpose of the blog is for students to write literary critical reviews, respond to other students' literary reviews, and read/respond to professional literary reviews. In my education, I had little exposure to book reviews. However, I feel that critical literary reviews can offer perspectives and viewpoints that non-critical readers overlook. Furthermore, I believe reviewing books can provide an outlet for students to express their feelings and thoughts about the text in a pro-active way. Since the public can read The Critic's Circle Blog, students will need to back their "feelings" with persuasive evidence. In addition to reading/writing their own reviews, students will also need to post one professional review per week. Students will need to comment on why they chose this review and how it might change their reading of the text. Students will also need to read and comment on their fellow students' submitted reviews and choice professional reviews. Hopefully, The Critic's Circle Blog will encourage students to get more involved in the reading, see themselves as valuable reader participants, and provide a venue where reading and writing is purposeful.
2. Scrapbooks: For this activity, each student will create their own blog. These blogs are personal in nature, but the content will be reviewed by myself and other student through blog links. In this way, students will need to monitor their own scrapbooks in order to appropriately respond to the blog prompts. Basically, the scrapbook blogs respond to the literature we are currently working on in class. Instead of using the blogs to write reflections on the book itself, student will make outside connections to the text. For instance, in one assignment, students will be asked to find pictures via the internet of what they consider a character's house to look like. If a character lives in Paris, students will need to find pictures that demonstrates/expresses what daily life in Paris might look like. In another assignment, students will need to post a selection from the text followed by a link to a video, picture, website, or article that they feel relates to the selection. In response to both these activities, students will need to comment on their peers' posts. In this way, students will share connections, challenge viewpoints, and understand a text in new ways. Assignments related to the Scrapbook blogs are really endless and endlessly creative!
In terms of my final project, I hope to explore one of these two lesson plans further. I will be sure to post what I've come up with!
I like the idea of the personal scrapbook blog. The sad part is, I'm too chicken (perhaps too lazy) to go for it because I would end up spending about 2 weeks teaching some of my kids how to run the thing. I'm really hoping that I can ultimately build the classroom community enough to get them more comfortable helping each other out with that, but at the moment they are either too impatient or too embarrassed to do it themselves. I did try a teacher run blog...very rudimentary...but it worked pretty well! The only problem is that I have to go back in and erase last names because the kids DON'T FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!
ReplyDeleteIf you ever get the personal blog scrapbook up and running, please let me know. I could use some inspiration!