Teacher in Development

A really great few posts { Blogging Rubric and Reflective Commentary } over at Ken Smith’s Weblogs in Higher Education around grading blog work in the classroom. I really enjoyed reading the ideas these guys came up with. What I especially thought to be cool:
1. Grading around audience
2. Grading around freshness
3. Grading around developing a “house style.” - I really thought this was neat. Voice!
4. Grading around how well participants connected and built community.

I post this for those who are trying to incorporate blogs in the classroom - grades, sooner or later, must come into the picture.

James, over at Palimpsest redux has a great post around purposeful blogging that I think speaks very well to this issue. Edu-blogging must be purposeful. (All blogging I think should be purposeful) but because of the school environment, teachers I think need to consider how to give student’s credit for blog work.

“Students should know exactly what is expected of them when it comes to blogs and the topics they blog about. I find this is a hard topic to nail down, especially due to my own personal blog angst over genre limiting. On the one hand, I just want to see students writing about what is important to them. On the other hand, curriculum rarely allows for this in some courses. Students don’t need another assignment or ‘to-do’ item just because the instructor thinks it is an interesting endeavour. What they need is a real learning experience, one they can get credit for (read: not one that is added on top of assigned work). The idea of expecting students to spend, no invest , time blogging meaningful messages without offering credit for that investment is, in my opinion, unrealistic.” (J.M. Purposeful Blogging…

Can I get an “Amen?”

Well said. I would also like to add here that the student should be a part of the assignment of value around their blogging. (See the entries by Ken Smith, his students had a big hand in the grades.)

Via Stephen’s Web:

Ben Crowell has a really interesting article exploring the concept of free books. If you’ve ever lamented about the rising costs of your school’s text books, or if you would like to explore digital options, check out this article.

“With the cost of college textbooks up 62% over the last decade,[1] pressure is building for an alternative model of publishing: the free book. Five years ago, an author had to be very persistent — maybe even a little crazy — to try the new approach. But now a whole new infrastructure is springing up to make it easier. “(Crowell)

The read/write classroom is about many things, but up near the top of “important things” is the ability of students to be able to hunt down information, connect with it, interact with and reflect upon it, and then write their own content as a result. Open source books are, in my humble opinion, a giant step for 2.0 teachers and students.

Related links you will find interesting:
The Textbook Revolution http://textbookrevolution.org/ - There’s an RSS feed if you want to monitor the site.
— For you ESL teachers out there, there’s even a section for you!

The Assayer - Ben Crowell’s collection of free books.