A bang or a whimper?

Our class blog has got a new name and a new direction.  The name change is not very revolutionary, nor very original – we’ve gone from Autumn 2010 to Winter 2011 –  but the direction maybe is (for us anyway) and is one I’ve been feeling a bit hesitant about.

The class itself finished at the end of last term, and maybe I should have gone for closure then, choosing to go out with a bang rather than a whimper (as Lindsay Clandfield suggested in a comment). But for selfish reasons I chose to keep the blog alive.

I want to use the blog to experiment with creating online tasks and with the dynamics of a purely online teacher/student relationship.  I know that most of the students will be too busy to comment or contribute, though some will probably follow from a distance by email. But I also know that some of them are keen to continue.

When I came back from my holiday I was beginning to regret our decision.  I was pretty convinced that rather than a whimper I was going to get stony silence.  But as I waded through my emails on my first day back, I came across one from our blog.  One of the students had written and published a whole lesson.  She’d included an image, a reading, a video clip from a TV news programme and a link to a lesson on the BBC website (from a first time blogger on her third post that’s pretty good).  I was impressed, and inspired (click on the image to see her post).

So on Sunday night I posted my first weekly blog task – a holiday photo diary. A very simple start, taking small baby steps, but I’m hoping some of the class will post something too.  We did a lot of photo sharing on our face to face course, I’m hoping this’ll be a way to nudge some sharing on the blog.   We’ll just have to wait and see.

And if anybody reading this has a class who’s doing the same,  please let us know. Or if you’re thinking of doing the same and would like to join us, please do!  You’d be very, very warmly welcomed 🙂

 

 

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