Prepared is best, but underprepared is always better than overprepared.
— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) February 19, 2014
Newman and I had our students create blogs this year as a way to practice formative writing that accounts for an authentic audience and prepares students for success in summatively assessed writing. For example, if we were ultimately going to write a compare/contrast paper, students would first practice the skills of comparing/contrasting on their blog.In addition, a key part of the blog assignment is giving students a chance to think about their learning. The blog functions as a place to practice writing, but it is also used to post summative assignments and reflections. In this way, the blog captures a student's work for the class in one place, provides an authentic audience, and requires other design decisions as students consider the genre of blogging.
Basically, the blog acts as a platform for formative practice and as a hub or portfolio for publishing a student's work from throughout the year.
Our students have done some pretty amazing work. They've designed blogs that show genre awareness, they've practiced the skills for a unit in various ways, and they've created some strong final assessments.
The truth is, though, that if you would have asked me last summer if I thought the blogs would look like they do and that we would have been able to do all of the things mentioned above, I wouldn't have had any idea what you were talking about.
