DISQUS

I notice my own multiple personalities online a lot lately and find my professional presence dominates. I am more and more careful about not revealing personal information. I found Facebook a huge problem as friends, family and colleagues joined. The roles became too blurred.

I initially thought someone was scamming SlideShare because I knew I didn't have that many possible viewers. I felt humiliated when I found out it was SlideShare, as if they were making fun of my low number of viewers. I'm seriously thinking of removing my slides.

Individual problem vs systemic problem. If your system was pass/fail instead of graded, the process of transiting to intrinsic learning would be more easily doable. As long as students are rewarded/punished for marks, they are less likely to make that transition.

So let's go back to your problem, if you want students to be more reflective in their writing, they need to write about something that matters to them and that is what you need to identify. What are some of the big issues in virology? What makes or breaks careers? What impact can a virologist have on today's world? What is the latest news? If you can engage their brains and still meet their mark angst, they will begin to write, draw, video what matters to them.

Then twitter their blogs to med ed friends and get them to comment on what the student wrote. Amazing how outside types increase motivation.

The question that needs to be very clear in the goal setting is one of relevance "what do you want students to learn because they are blogging?" I might see blogging as a way to practice popular writing. Someone else might see it as a discussion tool where students comment on each others blogs. Someone else might see it as developing information literacy. I think lack of clarity about expectations often gets confused with assessment plans so the goals are mistakenly stated as the student will write three blog posts and six comments.

That fills me with such sadness to see the destruction of something that was so lovingly created and made to be beautiful.

Please submit this to the Active Learning Blog Carnival, a monthly journal of the best articles about actively engaging students in learning. I'm the editor and would love to include it. http://activelearningcarnival.blogspot.com/. Scroll down to last months carnival "Be It Resolved to Delight, Puzzle, and Astound in ... " and at the end of the edition there is a link to submit article.

I think you are making the common problem solving error of identifying the problem based on personal experience.

As our world of information expands, kids are expected to memorize/search for more and more facts and theories. Schools are spending less and less time on critical thinking/problem solving/creative thinking to accomodate the information overload.

So we have a generation that are very good at quickly finding discreet pieces of information and more limited in their ability to use higher order thinking.

I think this is quite a creative approach to involving people in blogging. Please submit this to the Active Learning Blog Carnival http://activelearningcarnival.blogspot.com/. Submit by going to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_2804.html.

I feel like I have spend the last 30 years fighting with the educational system both as a teacher and as a parent. I was lucky to have attended an experimental high school in the '60's that used a lot of media. I then attended a unique teacher training course in the '70's, only to discover that the vast majority of schools were obsessed with pen and paper, rote learning.
I consistently see teachers not giving students credit for what they can create, for what they can add to the educational environment. Are teachers so afraid of their students out teaching them!