Week 4, Post 3: Blog Heaven

After perusing people's blogs, write a couple paragraphs in your own blog about how you think we might structure the blog process in this course.  Questions to think about:
What makes a "good" posting for you as a writer in your own blog?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? 
What make as "good" posting for you as a reader?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? What kinds of comments would you like to receive on your blog? What kind of comments would you like to give others?    
And finally the thorny question: How should we evaluate and grade the blogs?

I'm not sure I'm even qualified to suggest how blogging should be structured, frankly, having only begun blogging with the start of this course.  As a writer, it varies widely.  Sometimes I have little to say about a topic; gazing at a few other blogs, though, can often stimulate my flow of ideas.  At other moments -- for example, after reading TDOC -- it wasn't easy to turn off the spigot.  At times like these, I'm thankful for a forum to "dip my oar in the water."

For me, a "good blog" has posts that tend to answer the prompts and take the conversation in a fresh direction.  For example, Julie Wilson's post on TDOC struck me as uniquely strong and well-informed.  Chloe's are often a succinct distillations of the materials read with a couple of stimulating questions, and they're quite open and inviting; that is, her use of bullets makes it all reader friendly. 

So far, I've gotten some comments on my blog that are simply comrades checking in, some saying that they like what I've posted, some trying to take the conversation in a slightly new, challenging direction.  I find each of these beneficial in its way.  It's nice to be greeted and saluted; I for the purposes of the "academic conversation," it's great to have someone like Will Loving pick a slightly novel direction after reading my post.  I try to give comments along those lines, too, when visiting my colleagues' blogs, hopefully starting some two-way feedback.

I tend to agree with the student (Chloe? Jennifer?) who suggested that we ought to be included in the grading end of it by weighing in with specifics on what we learned from the writing end of it.  This hadn't even occurred to me, but it makes total sense, and seems in keeping with student-centered approach in materials like Goens and TDOC.  Included in the grading rubric, there ought to be some reward for effort expended and unique viewpoints contributed as well.