In giving some further thought to the idea of actively blogging as part of my ED 429 class, I’ve come to the following (probably temporary) conclusions:

1. I’m going to require blogging. That will probably necessitate some way of evaluating students’ blogging activity. My inclination will be to break the semester up into four four-week quarters and require a post during at least three weeks of each four. That way, students can’t satisfy the blogging requirement by doing a lot of meaningless blogging at the end of the semester just to fulfill a requirement.
2. I probably won’t evaluate the quality or content of the blog as long as the entries meet the minimum requirement of making relevant comments about class activities.
3. I’m going to allow in-class time for student blogging. I’ll give the students time to blog about an activity in terms of its utility for them as future teachers, questions or comments about the activity, and any other thought that comes to their minds. I’ll blog along with them.

I’d appreciate any comments that you all might have on evaluating blogs.

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Welcome to my iTeach blog. My goal is to keep blogging as often as possible this summer. I intend to reflect on using blogs as a communication tool with the goal of having blogs fully integrated into my ED 429 class by fall. I’d like to have my students create and add to a weekly blog that they use to reflect on issues related to class topics.

Some questions occur to me. How do we evaluate blogs? Do we need to evaluate blogs? Should we take class time for blogging? (My inclination is “yes,” but I might need to experiment a bit.)

Other questions?