Well, today was it: along with peer review of students’ “middle” drafts, we launched the small-group student weblogs, linked from the main page of The Vast UMass College Writing 113 Online Empire. Forty students, two sections, eight weblogs named after — well, um, that’s their little weekend extra credit project, and I’m figuring they’re all more than smart enough to find this place, so I’ll keep my mouth shut for now. For me, it felt like a fine and productive day for both sections, with none of the usual add/drop week mad panic to get everybody up to the same speed. As I’ve noted before, a day in the classroom — even when it goes horribly — almost always feels better to me than a day when I’m not in the classroom.
I pitched the weblogs as not necessarily mandatory, suggesting that keeping a private paper journal that only I would see as being OK, too, but doing my best to make a persuasive case for the beyond-a-grade value of public writing and interaction. Today’s initial entries are already up, as well as a couple comments (!), which I didn’t even require yet. So I’m pretty psyched. Next week, we’ll start a discussion of what makes a good post and a good comment, and start trying to put our conclusions into practice.
For right now, I’m gonna listen to some 80’s hair metal and have a couple glasses of wine to celebrate a good day in the classroom.
As for my students who find this place: you’re plenty welcome here, of course, and I’ll ask you to understand that I’ll only talk about the class in general terms, and never mention — even anonymously — specific people here. It’s important to me to see your writing and your privacy respected, and I’m never going to talk about you behind your back. If you ever have any concerns about what gets posted here or on your weblogs, please don’t hesitate to talk to the Writing Program’s director or ombuds officer, who will have the administrative privileges to correct any problems on the weblogs, and who can also express their concerns to me without divulging your identity.
So, now: let’s do this.
I really value what you are saying about blogs and privacy. It seems to me that students shouldn’t be forced to blog unless they are comfortable with it (or unless they willingly sign up for a course that uses blogs). Do you find that the texture of what students write in their course blogs is different from what they would reveal in a paper or conference with you? I’m just wondering if blogging doesn’t put the brakes on some of the conventions of blogging, and if students become self conscious about what they are writing. Since this is my year of thinking about computers in the classroom, I’d really like to hear what you (and others) think.
I respectfully submit the cozy UMN writing province. 🙂 We started up the blog on Friday, and they’re getting the hang of it very quickly. For context: The wild rice posts are in response to this article, and a couple of students looked at Hit & Run and wrote about this post.
Thought I’d ask here, rather than barging in over there, Mike: would you prefer we steer clear of the student blogs? Nice naming scheme, though I didn’t know a couple of those genera of trees myself (Sophora? Then I looked it up).
Joanna, we’ve just started, so I’d have to give it a few weeks before venturing any hypotheses about the texture of their writing. As far as privacy goes — yes, I feel that in a course that’s a requirement for all first-year students, it would be unfair of me to mandate public writing for all students, and contrary to one of the aims of the course, which is to get students comfortable with a variety of types of writing. The UMass Writing Program theorizes writing as taking place across a number of continua, including low-stakes writing (such as freewrites) to high-stakes writing (graded final drafts) and highly private writing to highly public writing, and I find that thinking in terms of such continua usefully informs my pedagogical practice.
Neat stuff, Clancy — can I link to the UMN Writing Province from my course weblog? And I have to say, Ms. Ratliff, that I’m shocked — shocked, I say — to see you using proprietary, non-open-source software for your course weblogs. What’s the world coming to? 😉
Chris — definitely, feel free to leave comments. I hope that students might get a kick out of knowing that people outside the classroom are taking an interest in their writing.
Sure, link away! And yeah, laugh it up; I know you’re enjoyin’ the hell out of that dig. 😉
(Hey, you’re not allowing HMTL in comments anymore? What gives?)
Chiirrrrpp!!
Heh. Yeah, so quiet you can hear the crickets chirping. Guilty as charged. 🙂
Well, I posted tonight, and I’m trying to get back on a more regular posting schedule. The cold and the start of the semester just kinda derailed me a bit.