6. Creating a community

Blogs make ideal class journals, certainly a solitary experience for the student. At the community college, where a student may work multiple jobs and have a family to take care of, giving the student a journal assignment where he or she must reflect is always beneficial. But the students also need to make connections between what they are learning and the experiences of the other students. As Ferdig and Trammel (2004) point out, “knowledge construction is discursive, relational and conversational in nature. Therefore, as students appropriate and transform knowledge, they must have authentic opportunities for publication of knowledge.” Learning requires a social context. How do we bring all of the blogging experiences together online?

A central blog for the class acts not only as a model for blogging but as a linking point for the students. This central blog acts as a course webpage and is a classroom hub. It is used to post assignments and solutions to problems that come up in class or online. It also contains useful links to the textbook webpage and research materials. It also contains a class roster with a picture of each student. The picture is then linked to that student’s blog. This helps the student (and the instructor) remember the names of the students and makes it easier for others to visit the blogs of other students.