I’m thinking about using blogging for the first time in at least one (maybe two) of my classes. I want to have all the students in the Intensive Writing class use blogs–but not as journals in the diary sense, strictly–more of an emphasis on critical reviews–something they’ve read or seen, with a weekly (or more frequent?) required post.

I looked at the free blogging services, and Xanga looks like the most user-friendly and bell-and-whistle-ridden. Ideally, we should be hosting the blogs at the college, but that’s a step for the future.

Then I started thinking about my Comp. I class–and the portfolio experiment I wanted to pilot (as a substitute for the much abominated departmental final exam). I was trying to figure out how I was going to design a template, and get a hosting server (maybe using Blackboard?) setup to make these e-folios, instead of the cumbersome paper folders I’ve used in the past. Then at the MERLOT conference I heard that McGraw Hill (I was going to use their textbook, anyhow) has a system called FolioLive! which seems to make all of this much easier. My McGraw Hill contact doesn’t really know anything about it…but she is going to refer me to someone who does.

We’ll see how it all turns out!