Some reasons Not to use a Blog for my next class

Here are some reasons that I think that a Blog may not be a good idea.

1. Not all students are tech savvy, and those who aren't will have problems setting it up and using it
2. Blogs are so personal that marking can only be subjective. How do I assign a grade to an opinion?
3. Student Blogs may turn out to be isolated without classmates comments. Do all students plan to comment on each others Blogs?
4. With 130 Blogs to mark, what is a resonable time allowance for this?
5. Is Blogging really Active Learning or is it just another self-directed learning strategy?

Some reasons to use a Blog for my next class

Here are some of the reasons why I think it is a good idea.

1. Students are tech savvy and this will be easy to do
2. They take ownership of their Blog
3. With resources available on the Web, research is relatively simple.
4. If there is adequate feedback, the students will be encouraged
5. Marking can be done all the time, anytime, and fairly easily.

Welcome to my Blog!

For my assignment this week, I decided to discuss using a Blog as an evaluation tool and a way to enhance active learning.

From reading the material Susan posted for week three, I was surprised how Blogs have changed over a few years. It appears that they are very well received by the active learners of today. The technology doesn't seem to bother them.

My idea is to get all my Marketing students in January to create a Marketing Environment blog which will be worth 10% of their final grade. I will ask them to set up the Blog, much like we were asked by Susan, then get the students to comment on examples of the marketing Environment they have seen during the semester. The examples will include Natural, Economic, Human, Political and Technological.

One of the challenges I forsee will be, that they don't tend to read the newspaper, where many of the examples can be found.

More thoughts later.......