4.3 The Group Blog
The Group Blog is a sub-species of the Class Blog. Rather than combining the voices of all of your students, it instead facilitates small group work and team-building. Some potential applications of group blogs:
Peer editing — Most writing courses encourage students to become good readers and editors as well. Instead of devoting in-class time to peer editing, create small groups, then ask each student to post his or her rough draft on the group blog. The other members will then offer feedback and suggestions for revision in the comments section.
Teamwork — If you ever use teams in your courses—say, in the creation of a business plan or in a research project—then create a separate blog for each team. The blog can function as a diary of their progress, a note pad for the documentation of ideas (good and bad), a repository of links to outside resources, and, most simply, a convenient mode of communication. You might even consider asking teams to present their final projects online.
How to: The process for creating a group blog is exactly the same as that for a class blog. Depending on the level of your students, though, you might consider appointing a leader to each team/group, who will be responsible for actually creating the blog. Doing so will save you some work and will also allow each team to individualize their blogs (by choosing a unique name, template, etc.).
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1. history of blogs
2. anatomy of a blog
3. how-to
4. active learning
5. professional development
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