The shape of student journals to come

We will be keeping journals (or working files) in Comp 1. Nothing has been shown to improve writing skill as much as daily writing. Some classes have used the $.09 spiral notebooks, some have used the 3 prong portfolio folders, and too many have gone rogue and turned in some sort of 3 ring monstrosity that makes transporting them ...challenging. I went into this in detail in the first educational blog I wrote for. In them we will keep daily writings, handouts, drafts of essays and some homework.

I taught a graduate class at KU that posted journal entries online in personal blogs. The results impressed people who evaluated me - but there were challenges.

A professor writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education makes a provocative case for posting all journal writing online - his class found fame and fortune and learned something along the way. He says:

By changing their homework assignments from disposable, private conversations between them and me (the way printed or e-mailed assignments work in students’ minds) into public, online statements that became part of a continuing conversation, we realized very real benefits. The very first semester I began asking students to share their homework this way, a popular e-learning newsletter found and liked one of my students’ essays and pointed its readers to the student’s blog. When the visits and comments from professionals around the world started coming in, students realized that the papers they were writing weren’t just throw-away pieces for class – they were read and discussed by their future peers out in the world. The result was a teacher’s dream — the students’ writing became a little longer, a little more thoughtful, and a little more representative of their actual intellectual abilities. And this benefit came by simply asking students to submit their homework through a different channel. They were already going to write and submit it; I was already going to read it.

Blogs can be private - by invitation only - or public (which is more fun). And you can add video, photos, links and such.

Whatever our classes decide - the journals should be in a uniform format. That maximizes my time reading and responding and minimizes confusion and hassle.