Ditigal Writing: Sept 9th post

I have used blogs in a few different contexts--

1.) When I taught IM204: Research Methods at St. Cloud State in Spring 2006, I had students create small group blogs with 5 members in each. Since the class was also for a diversity requirement I thought this would be a good way to have discussion outside of class. I gave the class topics and had a leader for each cycle who was responsible for posting early in the time frame. They were required to leave two comments--I think they had two weeks for cycle of posts. In review I do not think I emphasized it enough in class--it sort of seemed like an extra thing so there were varying levels of participation (e.g. some really short posts). There were some interesting discussions and I did get the opinions of a few students who did not speak in class. If I were doing it over again I would have it be more part of the grade and probably have a practice round with me giving feedback to clarify expectations for posting and comments.

2.) My previous job was at Capella University-an online University with mostly adult Masters and PhD students. The Library created a blog-mostly for marketing purposes and to get around the delay in posting new content to our website. We each had one day of the week we were responsible for posting. I was surprised that students did find our blog and posted comments. After about 6 months we were one of the top blogs in the University and were an example for other departments. Check it out at: http://www.capella-id.com/library/. I enjoyed the group nature of this blog--you did not feel the pressure of posting fresh content all the time.

In the future-I would like to create a blog for use with the Writing Studies department faculty and instructors at the University, of which I am a liaison to, to exchange teaching tips, FAQs and other ideas on integrating the library and information literacy into the Writing courses /curriculum (especially First Year Writing). There are many instructors and grad students teaching one section of First Year Writing and since there are many new teachers each year I think it would be helpful to have a place they can see what has happened in past semesters and get ideas from other First Year Writing instructors. Of course the challenge is how to get the instructors to participate. Any suggestions on what a librarian/media specialist could do to get you to use a resource like this?

I think blogs enhance communication because they are so public in nature and low threshold in terms of money, set up time, and IT saavy to use. Also the comment feature allows for dialog between the author and the readers. The challenge is in connecting the blog with the appropriate audience--which in a school setting seem ideal--the parents in the Goochland County, VA example in Hendron's book are a great example.

In this course I want to learn more about ways to include information literacy into using digital technologies to teach writing. I want to learn ways to help instructors to integrate digital technologies and to help other librarians, in turn, help faculty in a variety of disciplines. I also want to learn about assessment strategies and examples in both the K-12 and higher education.