Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!
Formulate a set of principles that you would use to teach students about good online citizenship. What would your principles cover in terms of IP? Defamation? Courtesy? Privacy?
What policies or guidelines set out by your organisation will you have to take into account when using blogs in class? Are there rules about how your organisation is presented to the world? Will you have to make your organisation anonymous?
Think of a project or assignment that you would use blogs for in class. Consider how you will manage the risks associated with putting the assignment into the blogging environment. Will you shut everything down? Will you educate students in good online behaviour and monitor things closely? Are you prepared to oversee student blogs and to moderate where necessary? How quickly can you, as an administrator of a blog, remove offensive or potentially compromising content?
What do you know about the risks associated with being online? What fears do you have? How are the issues of privacy, security and copyright related? Have you heard of ‘Creative Commons’? How safe to do you think your students’ current online behaviour is? How safe do you think your own current online behaviour is? (You might be suprised … how hard do you think it is for a dodgy type to find out your mother’s maiden name?) Is what you know based on evidence, research and reasoning, or just gut feeling?
What are you hoping to learn from this module? Your objectives can be the same as mine, but is there anything else you are expecting to learn?
Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!
Write up a class blogging plan, taking into account the ‘dos and don’ts’ of class blogging. Write up an assessment rubric. What will you be measuring? Writing? Technological competence? Appearance of the blog?
How do you currently assess students’ work? Will that change in the blogging environment or is what you’re looking for still the same? Will you have to assess new things, such as website design or succinctness of student posts?
What are you hoping to learn from this module? Your objectives can be the same as mine, but is there anything else you are expecting to learn?
This work by Megan Poore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia License.
