Blogging in the Classroom

"Given the fact that blogging exposes students to a wider audience for their writing, we can hypothesize that students might attend more carefully to online writing opportunities (as opposed to papers submit- ted to an instructor). In the case of the writing prompts that ask students to read and reflect upon specific texts, it might be expected that students will read these texts more carefully when they know their interpretations will be online and therefore accountable to a larger audience." - Blogging in the Classroom

"Grades are of course a superficial way of showing students what we value. Direct and immediate descriptive feedback does more than a single letter or number can." - A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs

I thought the readings for this week were really interesting. I really liked this quote from Blogging in the classroom because I think it proves a very good point: if our work is to but viewed by not only our teacher but the whole class, then I think it subconsciously makes students put more effort into their work. On the other hand, I think that having assignment for other students to view can cause some trouble with "borrowing" ideas if a student just wants to get an assignment done. 

My second quote I thought brought up an interesting point. We talked about this in class, but I think it is worth mentioning again that it is so hard to grade students based on if work is considered "good". I do like the idea, though, of how professors comment back on the blogs and provide feedback that way rather than just assigning a letter grade. I value this interaction and feedback more than nothing at all.