Matt Jadud, a CS prof at Allegheny College, has a great post up about the hows and whys of getting students to blog. Luke is going to be doing the same thing with his students this fall. I preach a similar sermon quite often, and think it’s great to see more profs saying the same thing. It doesn’t matter what you are teaching, getting your students into the habit of regular reflection on their learning is important. And the best way to encourage them to do this is to model it for them. Are you blogging your own teaching and learning?
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One Comment
One other aspect I really like about maintaining a blog and using it as a communication method with my students is that I feel like it makes me more of a real person to them. They get a good view into my personality rather than, say, if I were to write a formal academic textbook.
For instance, in one of my blog entries on what I consider to be useful shell commands, I mention cowsay and sl. I had a student e-mail me saying they had goofed around with both commands after seeing the entry. I’ve seen his laptop, it ran Windows. That means he somehow found his way to a Linux box and thought to check out something he read in one of my posts.
Was cowsay relevant to any of my lectures? No. Did it drive interest in something new for my student? I’m going to be optimistic and say yes.
It also gives a good insight into my tech related projects and interests. I know many professors are looking for students to get involved in their research and projects. A blog is a natural marketing (not my word, I think Matt used it, but it’s a great term) tool for driving interest in these projects.
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[...] Matt Jadud outlining some basic tenants of a blog in a guide for students. It also got picked up by David Humphrey which highlighted that it’s important for teachers to serve as a model for this sort of [...]
[...] Regardless of how contribution is measured in the end, we have to start by contributing ideas and seeing how the social process evolves. We need to encourage our students — and ourselves — to find connections within this framework just as we used to encourage attendance at job fairs and networking events. Since I can’t ask my students to do what I can’t or won’t, I’ll devote a few minutes each day this year to writing. And, just in case you’re a student of mine and I have just bullied you into starting an online portfolio for your project, here’s a link to a great post about starting to blog. [...]