Monthly Archives: March 2010

Blogging as e-Portfolio

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Jeff

  • Power of open portfolios: blogs are public and allow comments from professionals in the field
  • Blogs are portable, can be carried after graduation

Carla:

  • Paradigm shift
  • work on teaching philosophy throughout the program, not just all at once at the end

Problems

  • technology entry level was too high with Dreamweaver – weekly support needed
  • Private Web space = no conversation, no visibility, diminished opportunities

Blogs as portfolio was a solution that just “fit”

First-year students blogging

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  • among the objectives in the class – using the media?
  • wikipedia is like porn in the minds of first-year students. result of what they’ve been taught in high school.
  • part of the wikipedia exercise – improve articles based on further research
  • different expectations for college written communication
  • one powerful feature of blogs – a way to expand critical discussion outside the classroom (or content or defined activities in a digital classroom)
  • broadening student participation for students who are intimidated to speak up in class. I can see a parallel even online – students may feel shy or restrained in some way in a class or group discussion, but when publishing in their own space, they may explore topics in a different way.
  • Uses Pipes to construct rss feed for the whole class.
  • Students must be made aware of the public nature of blogs – only share what you’re comfortable with! They do get more comfortable with it as they see their fellow students’ writing.
  • There is a rubric based on Bloom’s digital taxonomy that can be used to grade blogs
Challenges
  • getting students to tag correctly
  • participation
  • due dates needed
  • “the Facebook effect” – students expect it to be easy