re: Writing in the 21st century

I believe that blogging is a very innovative way to teach writing and Internet awareness in the classroom.

As a blogger myself, I blog to share my ideas with friends, keep my relatives (who live all over the world!) up-to-date with my happenings, and often, just to keep notes for myself. Blogging helps with my self reflection and thinking, and sometimes it gives me new ideas. These are reasons I keep blogging, and I believe that as long as it's a meaningful task, students will enjoy it as well. It's something they're relatively familiar with (working in the Internet), it's fun and gives them ownership (they now literally own a blog!), and hopefully it will give them a better understand of each other and help with creating a positive classroom environment.

Because blogs can be read by virtually everyone on this planet (and maybe....... even beyond???!!!), bloggers have to be very careful with what they want to put in their postings. What do they want to let others know about themselves? Do they want to post secrets? Gossip? Hurtful comments?

So, we as teachers, have the responsibility to, not only teach the "how to"s (though, in some cases, we are the ones being taught!), but also the students' own responsibilities and safety as they post in the virtual world. What should be blogged? What are some online rules bloggers should know? How can students protect themselves? How can we keep track of the students' online activities (or should we??), especially during a time when technology moves way faster than we can keep up with? I guess these will be our on-going challenges as we work with blogging activities.