Everybody blogs for class these days it seems.

I don’t remember exactly which post got me to include the Chronicle‘s ProfHacker blog on my Google Reader feed some time in the last couple of weeks, but I’m very glad I did. So glad, in fact, I just stuck it on my blogroll.

Their suggestion to use TripIt for travel planning seems like it’s going to be a godsend. However, what really strikes me today is just how many of the posts there are devoted to blogging in some way or another. [There’s this one, or start here and click some of the many relevant links in it.]

I’ve actually required blogging in one class for four years now. It’s a graduate class funded by a Teaching American History Grant that sent teachers to historic cities on the East Coast. It struck me as the best way to get people writing while they’re on the road. [If you’re interested, you can see the results if you start here. Links to student blogs run down the right side of the page in the blogroll there.] I actually started this very blog you’re reading so that I could better instruct those students in the mechanics of blogging.

That grant has now ended. I hadn’t conceived of using blogs in any other teaching situations. Reading ProfHacker makes me think I need to revisit that assessment.

It seems that other folks require student blogs, have class blogs that students must contribute too, and perhaps most importantly use WordPress instead of Blackboard (and since I detest Blackboard I can’t think of anything else in pedagogy right now that I more whole-heartedly support).

All suggestions for ways that I can take advantage of this new found willingness to experiment with blogging in class again will be carefully considered and thoroughly appreciated.