Task 3

In terms of what I noticed about blog writing in general, it seems more inter-connected. By that I mean that it is hard to just read a part in isolation, since one post references another and so on. I was surprised to find that the language was more grammatically correct than I expected. I thought it might be more text-speaky. I've always thought of blogs as what whiny people with too much time on their hands do, and I didn't see how they'd be professionally helpful. I'm getting a better sense of that now.

The blog I found the most useful for my purposes was the Woodward site on EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE. It provided a great template of how to set up a blog on a book. It seems like the kids were using class time to do many of their posts, since they were all around the same time during the school day. Many of them commented that it was such a relief to have a change of pace, after sitting through discussion classes all day. I just wish I could find a general description of the requirements for the kids - how many posts in which categories.

I'm thinking of doing a similar thing with A SEPARATE PEACE, which we will be starting in a few weeks. Once we have our netbooks, it will be much easier, but I suppose we could set up in the lab. I wouldn't want to totally give up discussion, but I would like to incorporate blogging in lieu of discussion sometimes - I am especially curious to see what the quieter kids have to say.