This is the first time I've used Blogger in over five years.
I'd started my blog here in May of 2005, but after I'd successfully recruited some co-authors (Lokman Tsui and Jason Tocci), Lok got us set up with a WordPress site. That's where we blog today: ShoutingLoudly.com. (Since then, Lok recruited Dave Karpf, and he writes so much more often that it's really more his blog than any of ours.)
Now, though, I'm back, and it's to use Blogger as a teaching tool. This coming Spring semester, I'll be teaching a class at Hunter called Internet and Society. A big portion of students' grades (20%) will be based on four blog posts of about 500 words each. We will use Blogger as the default publishing platform because, well, it's just so darned easy.
I think all college students--let alone students with this class on their transcript--should learn to write well online. Because there are a lot of really helpful geeks out there, however, they don't all need to learn how to register a domain name, write HTML, etc. etc. Writing online is now really easy. Writing well, however, is a different story.
In our class, we'll be discussing the web as a medium on an analytical level--not teaching web design. (We have a two-semester series in web design, and many other digital media production classes, in our department.) To reach a solid understanding of this medium, it's vital for students to understand at least the basics of writing for the web--and writing in a professional voice, knowing that their writings will be public.
If you're reading this, I'd love to hear your feedback. Have you ever taught somebody else to write online or had somebody try to teach you? What should I emphasize and what can I let slide? What should I be prepared to help students with the most?
I'm looking forward to this experiment.
