Thursday, September 13, 2007

Students and Blogs

My student groups are now keeping a blog, so I felt obligated to resurrect mine. Many of them seem sceptical about the concept of blogging, and perhaps this experiment will be a pedagogical disaster, but I'm hoping it will help them communicate within their group. Also that at least some of them will enjoy it and start writing. I believe, like many composition instructors, that the way to learn to write is to write, a lot, kind of the practice makes perfect school of thought. A blog is a new way to do an old trick, and maybe it will engage a few of them. As a person that never managed to keep a diary, completely lacking in any kind of confessional motivation, and sadly not a lot of introspection as well, things like blogs are hard for me to get excited about. But I don't want to make the mistake that many instructors make and assume that my students are like me. Some are and some aren't. And we'll see how this takes off.