I’m in the thick of week two. I’ve begun another course to complete this journey and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right at this moment. To top it off, my daughter took a nasty hit to the nose at softball this week and ended up with a broken nose. Breathe, I keep saying, breathe! I can do this. She’s gonna be just fine because she’s one tough cookie.
So it’s interesting this week that the focus is on blogging, introspection if you will. I’m struggling with trying to figure out how to set up Word Press to handle Multiple pages instead of one long running journal, I can’t figure out the way to do the intro page for me, I am desperately in need of sleep and I think things will look better later. But the set-back early in the week has put me behind, so I’ll go back to it over the weekend with a fresh mind and perspective.
About Blogging as an Assessment Tool, which was this week’s module, I was intrigued with the idea of using blogs in the classroom for a whole range of purposes, from sharing resources to allowing the students to reflect on what they learned throughout the week by being “scribe” for the day. Mena Trott’s video, Mena Trott on Blogs was a poignant conversation on what happens when one opens them self up to the world of blogging. Mena actually phased out one of her blogs because of the nasty feedback she received about one of her posts. This raised questions about monitoring the classroom blog for unsavory behaviors and setting carefully structured uses for blogs. This gives me much to think about as I look forward to the realities of a more active online presence.
A Post Script: After reading several other comments in the discussion board in class, I realize I am not the only one with the Word Press page issue. What I want to do doesn’t exist, at least not in the free version. Grr. Now off to bed.
pmorlock 