Laura,

This is fascinating.  The aggregation of the blogs makes this
approach very promising, since students can easily keep track of each
others' blogs.  Thanks for sharing this!!!

I will definitely consider switching to blogs from EZBoard (which
doesn't suffer from many of the D2L limitations for discussion
boards).  But blogs may still be easier for students.  So please give
us another update toward the end of the semester!

PEACE
Kerry


On Sep 9, 2006, at 6:48 PM, Gibbs, Laura K. wrote:

> hi everybody, now that we are 3 weeks into the semester, I thought I
> would share a quick update about the blogging experiment I tried this
> semester. thanks to the INCREDIBLY simple Bloglines blogging service,
> this experiment has turned out to be extremely successful, far more
> than
> I had even hoped for.
>
>   --- students find it much easier to blog than to use the
> Desire2Learn
> discussion board (in particular, they are finding it much easier to
> include images, which was one of my main goals in switching to blogs)
>
>   --- students are EXCITED about blogging (several of them have
> created
> a separate blog for their own personal use, or to use for the other
> activities they are involved in, for example:
> http://juddintraining.blogspot.com/)
>
>   --- I can share student work by linking to it in class
> announcements,
> emails, etc. (Desire2Learn discussion board posts are not linkable)
>
>
> if you are interested, I've published a brief comparison of Bloglines
> and Blogger.com here:
> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/OnlineCourseLady?id=27
>
> and if you would like to see what some of the student blogs look like
> three weeks into the semester, here are some typical examples:
> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/abevins
> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/andreajae
> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/katiemoon
> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/stevenbattles
>
> if you are interested in trying a blogging experiment yourself,
> I've got
> detailed instructions for both Bloglines and Blogger at my support
> website: http://www.bestmoodle.net/ks/
>
> I hope everybody is having a great semester! GO SOONERS!
>
> Laura