…in my class this semester so far.

So I know I’m supposed to be working on my VCR post and my BB post for our radical teacher article, but I have all these thoughts on teaching with blogs that I feel I really need to write so I don’t forget them.

1. Due to our engaged critical attention we have given to feminist blogging I have been really feeling positive about my course blog for this semester. I think our diablogs here on It’s Diablogical have really helped me to feel really confident about the power of blogging and how it can serve as a valuable site for teaching/learning. Yesterday I actually did a brief mention of the subversive use of links/tags for my class to ask them to fully engage with these tools and I described linking and tagging as ways that we might be able to hold different types of conversations within the space of the blog. Someone actually asked “what do you mean by subversive” and I gave some examples of the types of things that we have thought through together. So exhilarating!

2. I have a much different approach to blogging since we started these formal diablogues and I think it might be helpful to write about the processes of evolution in relation to blogging/facilitating blogs. For instance, as I have taught a version of Chicana Gender and Sexuality Studies which had a course blog at the U a few years ago those assignments and ideas that I’ve posted to that blog are completely different than what I am doing in my current course blog on the same topic. I actually had this moment yesterday when I was working on their first directed reading response where I thought – I really want to show these two clips to my students but I’m afraid we won’t have time since I’m going to be discussing a lot of the readings we have for this week. – Brilliant idea emerged where I would put the clips on the blog and ask them to respond to them as part of their reflection. You can see the assignment here. The ways I am using blogs and asking students to create a tag cloud are also different than in the past where I didn’t even have tags as options for students! To me, tag clouds also add dynamism to blogs that in not having one totally makes the other one seem so static! The tag cloud I’ve created and asked my students to help create is really awesome. I guess I’m just kind of impressed in seeing the different topics that are emerging and seeing La Llorona on a blog makes my Chicana heart warm and happy!

3. I just feel really proud of my course blog and the ways that I have asked my students to engage on it. They are really running with it despite seeming a little new to (and feeling a bit overwhelmed by) blogging. I am remembering this chart of learning and retaining information from class that I saw over the summer in a session on note taking where the presenter said that revisiting your notes once a week helps you better retain what you learn. I see blogs as a place where you can revisit and read or explore new things constantly to help activate your own thoughts on a variety of topics/issues. In fact, I see this as related to our discussions on the ways that blogs are blurring the boundaries of space/time in that even though you might be discussing something new in the present on the blog you can always go back to things that happened in the past and in discussing this one can move that conversation back into the present. This was all from one of my students asking if it was ok to go back and comment on other people’s posts from a couple of weeks ago which I loudly encouraged YES! Do it, that is what you should be doing!

Ok, that is all for now, I am just really excited by the connections that I’m seeing/my students are helping me see/and you’re helping me see through our diablogs here and the course blog I am working on with my students.