Political Blogs
My experience with blogs began about five years ago, and was limited mainly to the political “blogosphere.” I began reading these blogs in an attempt to find an examination of world events and political issues that was more aligned with my own thinking than the traditional sources of news. I never moved beyond reading and commenting on these blogs, though, that is, I did not post my own entries. These blogs are liberal blogs that look at current events through a politically progressive lens.
www.dailykos.com
www.atrios.blogspot.com
Entertainment Blogs
I stumbled across this fictional blog on live journal. As part of The X Files fandom, these authors have taken fan fiction to a different level with this blog. They are blogging from the perspective of fictional characters, and their readers are commenting as if they are speaking to the fictional characters – as friends might comment on each other’s blogs. Please, no snarky comments on the high level of nerd one must be to find such a thing.
http://truthontheroad.livejournal.com/
Training Blogs
As part of my training for a half marathon and marathon, I came across a number of blogs that focused specifically on training. Some were “experts” sharing tips, training plans, and so on, while other blogs were “regular” runners sharing their training issues – workouts, successes, and struggles. The link below is a page that links to many blogs about running.
http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/blogs/0,,s6-243-364-0-0,00.html?cm_re=HP-_-Blogs-_-Blogs
Blogs in the Classroom
I think that aspects of all three of these types of blogs could be incorporated into the classroom. The political style blog would be a good way for students to comment on and connect to issues the class is examining. As a class community, we can look at events in the story from a specific point of view. When we read Huck Finn for example, it could be interesting to look at events in the plot of the story from a news/journalistic perspective, or from a community perspective. One of the coolest features of the political blogs is that the author can put out a call for action to his readers. He can say something like – here’s this story that the media isn’t telling you about – we as a community have to do something about it. If students could think about the issues or themes of a book in this manner and connect these things to current/community events and service, it could do a lot for making fiction relevant to their lives. The fictional blog/live journal is also a way to get students to interact more deeply with a text. Journaling from the perspective of a character OR talking to a character in the live journal format (as the Mulder & Scully live journal does) would be an immediate and personal interaction with characters. The training blogs offer a more ‘meta’ approach to learning. If we can look at working on a specific set of skills in the classroom the way that an athlete looks at training and then blog about the challenges, successes, and methods use to meet mastery in those skills, students would be asked to have a greater awareness of their learning process. I think all of these tasks resemble things we are already doing in our classrooms, but on paper. I know we are connecting to current events, writing from characters’ perspectives, and doing reflective journaling. Doing these things online is a way to connect the students to each other more directly, and meet the new learning needs we’ve been discussing for the past 6 weeks in this class.
