The Experiment Begins...

I have long wanted to create a blogging assignment that invites students to share their experience regarding reading and writing in significant ways. In the past I have had students engaging in blogging enviroments by writing reviews of music, movies, and all manner of commodities. Some students have blogged about their personal lives. And others have created guides to their favorite hobbies and passions, while still others have used their blogs to preach particular versions of their truth. What all of these blogging assignments have had in common is their purpose: To engage in writing for a real-time audience about topics that matter to the students so that we emerge from this process with the sense that writing and literacy is an integral element of our lives. Our present iteration of this assignment asks students to make just one blog post per week after listening to a half hour (or an hour) of audio from one book they will choose from a list that will be provided during our class. This specific blog will be used as a space where students in the class can discover links to their classmate's blogs so that they can read and interact with the work of their fellow students.