What Blogging Can Do For You

Personally, I never looked upon the idea of blogging as something necessary or vital to life (okay, I had a 'livejournal' account, but trust me, pawing through those entries will not keep you on the edge of your seat). However, when I took Allen's English 1100 class last semester and the first assignment was to create a blog and use it to share ideas about poetry and other aspects of the class, I was surprised with how nicely I took to it. Blogging soon became a way to get to know other members of the class, discuss topics we hadn't gotten around to in our class meeting, and find insights and ideas that otherwise would never have entered my mind. For example, when our assignment was to journey through online poetry archives and post thoughts about our favorite works, another student and I ended up having a "Billy Collins Day." We soon exchanged thoughts on our favorite Collins poems and passages, which gave us both a new appreciation for the work. The same thing occurred when I was putting together my first paper for the class, about imagery in Adrian Henri's "Death in the Suburbs." Using my blog, I could get feedback from everyone and start to put my thoughts together. The nice thing about blogging is, when you get great ideas from other people, you don't spend the next week trying to remember what was said, because it's right there on your comments page.

I think that blogging can integrated into the classroom in countless ways. It makes a great discussion forum, and I love the idea that in addition to talking about something in class, ideas can be expounded upon in the blog setting and then looked back on at a later date. Great concepts are never really lost when everything is documented online.

Last week's discussion about literature circles, for example, made me think of blogging. The question arose of how the teacher should moderate the lit circles to ensure that work was being completed and that the students were getting the most out of the literature. In my experience with lit circles, the meetings were entirely outside of school. No one was teaching us the novel; we had to find our own ways through it, and form our own ideas and discussions. It was up to the students to account for themselves and each other. This is where blogging comes in. Rather than taking notes for each group meeting that, let's face it, would be written only for the teacher to see and check for credit, not content, a blog could be used to document ideas discussed at each meeting. Every lit circle could have one, and the entries could contain thoughts on various themes and ideas expressed in the novel. It would benefit the group by allowing them to scroll through the summaries of every meeting and making it easier to see the most prominent themes and important aspects of the book, whereas the teacher could view the blog and actually get a feel for the meeting, even leaving them comments for feedback, becoming both a moderator and a contributor and letting ideas flow in whatever direction they may. An added bonus is that these blogs would be available for members of other lit circles to see as well, acting as sort of an "online book review" which could even, dare I say it, spark interest in other students to read said book!

So maybe this 'blog blog' became a little longer than I intended, and I shouldn't have been so judgemental toward blogging in the first place.

Thoughts on the New Class

Everyone keeps asking me what I think of English 5970, whether they are interested in how I feel about being in a 5000 level class as a freshman, or what I think of the actual course itself. Overall, I'm pretty excited to be involved, and I feel that everything I pick up while taking this class is going to help me in some way in my future. Being a freshman, years away from having an actual classroom of my own, most of the subject matter will have to be filed away for much later use, but it will nonetheless be extremely beneficial. Just kicking ideas around during class discussions makes me excited and fills me with countless questions and possibilities as to how I will use technology in my future classroom.