I'm really curious why so many compositionists don't seem to think that blogging is being driven by response. It seems like they think that blogging is done for the self, for the heck of it...
And while that may be true, I think that blogging is also at least partially driven for and by comments.
After all, there are people (mainly the young people that are being talked about in these articles) that one day drop their serious discourse and whine "If you don't leave me notes/comments, I'm not going to post anymore" or "If you don't comment on me, I'm going to delete you from my friends list" (that one I see from adults a lot) or "People left me rude comments, I'm leaving the blogosphere!" after which they nearly immediately create a new journal under a different name.
People write to be heard, and I think that THAT is perhaps a connection that can be tapped into in class more than people writing to write. And maybe that point has been made somewhere and I either missed it when my dog pounced me or simply haven't read the article that states that yet, but I think that might be how I explain using blogging in my classroom to my students. It's a way to get heard. And if you've never done it before, then here's a chance in class to try it out and maybe someday you'll use it for something that you really care about.
I'm also inviting my students to post news articles and start discussions (pretty much about anything, but I'm moderating) via our shared class blog for extra credit (I grade on a point system, and this has done well before). I don't add in the extra credit till the end, and if you have late or missing assignments it doesn't count, but that seems to be a good way to get them involved in some sort of community discourse (I've done it with message boards, I'm curious as to how it will work on a blog).
Annnnd the students are whining during their test. So I'll bbl.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment