In my last post about mid-terms, I mentioned that my 1101 students had given me some important ideas about how the rest of our semester should go. With that in mind, I'm going back to them again with a problem we are having in our class and hoping that in this space we can help each other out.
My students are not regularly responding to each other's blogs. I even gave class time for this on Monday and flipping through blogs last night to add my two cents, I noticed that there wasn't much responding there.
Responding to other's writing is a large part of this class and something that I really hoped the blog space would help with, but some how it's not.
Experience tells me that when my students aren't doing something that I've asked them to do, it's because they don't see the value of it, and if they don't see the value of it, it's because of something I've done or not done.
So . . . in a grand experiment, I'm using my own blog as our writing into the day and a place to practice some responding and think about the value of it.
As I'm writing with the students, I'm thinking back to our discussion on Underlife earlier - and the responses to mid-terms on that. This response thing seems to me to be all bound up in the idea of being a "stduent" - doing the assignemnt, or being a "writer." Hmmmmmm
ReplyDeleteWe think that our 2 groups happen to respond to each other often but some of our responses are short. We think they are short because we either just agree with everything they said, or they didn't write that much to respond to. Maybe we should try to explain why we agree more and ask more questions to each other. - Hayley, Conor, Colter, Chelsea
ReplyDeleteCaitlyn, Maressa, Amanda, Bryanna:
ReplyDelete-We don't really take the time to see what the others responses are. It's better to actually verbally communicate with each other because we believe we can get our points across better. Also, if we can't relate to the readings it's difficult to respond.
Posted for Epiphany,
ReplyDeleteI'm still getting used to it [responding on blogs], but blogging is fun only when others respond or else it would just be an online journal/ diary.
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ReplyDeleteSome of our group members don't find responding to the blogs very useful. Also some of the problem is that some of us are just lazy.
DeleteBrian,Deshaun, Darnesha
Sydney Altonji, Taylor Scruggs, Brenden Bakst:
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, we do not respond if the blogs are posted late or we cannot find them. We may forget to do it as well. Also, we have trouble figuring out what to say. Some of us are not quite used to the blogging process.
I think its confusing when we have to respond to everyone's because we are all doing different topic for our projects so we don't really know what we are looking for. And with all the different times that everything is due it gets a bit of overwhelming. For example, I, Jonathan (hi Miss Cindy), am always confused on if I'm supposed to do an assignment on my blog or google docs. And when it says due Wednesday if it's supposed to be due on wednesday or by 12 pm Wednesday. I just feel like it would be easier if everything was just due at one time and one place.
ReplyDeletekatie ryan jonathan and kat ^^^
ReplyDeleteWe as a group thought it was good that you brought up this topic because we think having other group members respond to our blogs and responding to their blogs helps us grow as a writer. Getting the feedback helps them improve by looking at a different point of view or critical thinking. We think people just don't want/care to do it or they just dont have the time with all of the other work they have from other classes. Since you brought up the topic we think people will take it more seriously now and focus on responding to every blog post by our group members.
ReplyDeleteBy: Keenan, Joyce, Emilie
What I'm seeing in your answers here is a mixture of "we just don't have the time," to "our group members need to get their stuff up on time," to - "we are posting in too many places and it's confusing" However, the overall consensus seems to be that it would be a somewhat valuable thing to do from at least some of the class, though I see that I need to do a better job of explaining/ modeling why it would be helpful to read and respond to a piece that has little if anything to do with one's actualy topic. Lots for me to think about here.
ReplyDeleteTHANKS Gang!