Should we continue blogging?
To be honest, I only have one problem with blogger.
The learning intentions behind using blogger include teaching us how to use blogger, encouraging the quieter students to speak up, allowing us to write for a bigger audience - and them giving us constructed criticism to improve our writing and responding skills.
However, when we actually do start blogging, which of these intentions are actually fulfilled? From my experience of blogging, many of these intentions were not achieved because of the lack of response from the "quieter students". We are not encouraging students to participate more if they refuse to try. As were some group members - simply responded with a "good job", "nice structure", or "I agree with you". This makes it extremely hard to expand on the conversation and connect beyond - especially if they don't respond to my response to their posts. Hence, I don't feel that my writing skills have improved by much, in fact, I believe that my writing skills have improved more from the in-class peer-edits rather than the response I receive from my blog group members.
Personally though, I think with the right system, we can work this problem out. I would suggest grouping the students with similar skill abilities would create more interesting discussions. But I do understand the downside of this resolution is that those groups with perhaps less skills in this area will not benefit as much since there might be less discussion and the responding skills will lack.
Nevertheless, other than this issue, I have nothing against blogger.
I agree with many of your observations and I lime the thought you have put into the suggestions considering our learning intentions. However, you might not be aware that some of the quietest kids have been the best responders - one in particular was first to respond quite thoughtfully to this week's blog question. Thanks for opening the conversation here Linda.
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