Addressing Course Issues
Blogs can be an effective way to address class issues outside of the classroom and use class meeting time to focus more closely on more complex issues. An effective way to do this is by keeping a “professor’s blog.”
On the course website, a professor includes a statement about his "professor's blog" that anyone else is welcome to adapt.
“I am maintaining a blog for this course as well. The sorts of things I expect to write about include: additional thoughts that relate to class material, thoughts I have that may delve more deeply into a particular topic, perhaps some recent experiences I have had that illustrate how IT is being used, and something interesting that I read.”
During the first two weeks of my summer session 2005 course, I posted entries about an article I had recently read, an entry containing tips on how to make full use of the blog by including such features as text formatting and links, how to approve comments added to ones blog, and inserting images to add to the visual appearance and enhance content.
Another use of maintaining a professor's blog is to model good blogging behavior. Because I ask students to contribute blog entries that further our knowledge of our subject material, adding them to my professor's blog is a useful way to show students what an appropriate entry looks like.
