Next semester, I'll be teaching creative writing (poetry) again, and this time, I'm going to ask the students to keep their work on blogs that will be linked to my blog at 21classes. Here's the link to the course blog--I'm just starting it now, so don't expect ruffles or flourishes until January. I chose 21classes because I wanted a platform that would link student blogs to mine and which would give me some administrative control over the students' blogs. Also, I wanted everyone to be using the same blogging program since I don't want to turn over too much time to blogging technology "how-to's."
Because the class meets once a week, I want to develop some out-of-class activities that engage the students as a writing community. Last semester, I began using a blog with them, but I limited it to a course blog on which they would do the commenting, and I wasn't too happy with it. It seemed like the comments were forced and there were few interactions among commenters, something I'd noticed when I'd used a class blog in a mythology course I taught last year. My other hesitation has been that I simply haven't been able to find a blogging platform for free that I've liked. I don't want to pay to house my course blogs (so, goodbye, Typepad), and I haven't been happy with Blogger lately, so I've sauntered over to 21classes. We'll see how it works out.
I hope it does. For one thing, teaching a course that meets once a week is akin to a hybrid in terms of face time. If I want my students to become comfortable with each other, I've got to provide a place for them to come together privately. Since the focus is on their own creative writing and their comments to each other, I want it to be as private as possible--don't want any lurkers or spammers (may not be able to get rid of the second--we'll see)interrupting the growing dynamic. Additionally, I want this blog to be the course space, as opposed to Myspace or Facebook, so that the students can bracket their energy and attention to the task at hand, which is writing and revising.
Sure, they can link to the outside, but at least for the first half of the semester, I want to be our own private community.
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