Purposeful blogging and the Grade
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.)
I am reading all your posts with much interest. I am a teacher of human development at a community college in California. I was wondering if you have ever read the work of Paulo Freire and liberation pedagogy. If not, go find Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I think you would like it.
I am always trying to make my classes as student-centered as possible. Certainly the community-building I do and the open discussions we have makes this happen. At the same time, I do have to cover the material in the textbook during the course of the semester. It is heavy material, most of it developmental psychology. I find that, taking as much stress out of the class as possible to make it a positive affective learning environment really helps. I facilitate the students through applying the book material to their own lives, by giving assignments that encourage story-telling and probing into their own pasts and families.
The learning is very personal and I share my own stories to illustrate concepts in the book.
Even as little as (I think) I do, it is very liberating for my students to learn in this way.
Have you read Ira Shor’s books? I recently finished my master’s thesis on “Healing the Wounds of the Banking System: Using Liberatory Pedagogy in the Community College Classroom” so I am very into this subject.
This is my first post to a blog, so I’m feeling a little shy. I will keep reading, and post more myself.
Thanks for the good work you are doing in the world.
Comment by Ms. Pam — December 22, 2005 @ 1:54 pm
Hi Ms.Pam,
Thank you very much for your comments, and welcome to the blogsphere! I hope to see your blog up and running!
I have heard of Paulo Freire, from reading other blogs, but I’ve never read his stuff. From what I’ve heard from others, his work seems like it will be mighty interesting.
I would really enjoy learning more about how you are developing communities in your classroom. I am in the process of planning how to get something like that going in our Professional Development program. Would you mind sharing what you’ve done and more…of interest to me..how did you do it? And how much do you get involved?
I am eagerly awaiting your comments, and I really hope to see you blogging soon! I bet you have a lot to contribute!
Comment by Aaron Nelson — December 23, 2005 @ 7:26 pm