Blogging with Students

I am trying something new this semester: blogging with my students.

Which is funny, given how quickly this blog fell apart.  I apologize for that, but I really do have a problem when it comes to working on things consistently.  I love starting new projects, new ideas, and then inevitably they seem to fizzle out as I lack accountability or just lose interest in the project.  That’s what happened to this blog.

However, I have taken to blogging with my students, just on a different platform.  I think now I would like to start transferring those blogs to this one so I can share more of my writing with my fellow teachers, my fellow writers, and my fellow teacher-writers.

I got the idea from a colleague of mine.  She was using blogs as a part of her reading grade for students and shared the platform with me: Kidblog.  I wanted something that would keep the blogs in one place and allow me a good deal of control over what they were publishing.  I was also in the market for new ideas to make my College English classroom feel like a more authentic writing space for students.  I decided I would test it with my Spring students and see how it went.

It’s been amazing.  They have done a total of four blog posts so far and I really do see their writing improving from blog post to blog post.  It is a more relaxed writing space for them to explore any topic they wish.  The accountability method is also easier on me, since Kidblog sends me notifications with each publish and each comment.  It’s certainly better than collecting notebooks every other week.  Another aspect I like is that the feedback they are giving each other is SO much more authentic than the weekly circles I did with previous groups.

I would say the only downside is that I set it up as a very closed group.  I would love for them to be able to write or interact with blogs from other classrooms, so perhaps that is something I can explore more this next semester.

As for this blog, I will try to start using it more.  It will probably become a space to transfer my blogs from the classroom on Kidblog, but also a space to start sharing my writing from my #TeachWrite support group.

I know they will hold me accountable!