As part of our journey, we have explored how we can build an audience and obtain quality feedback for student writing. This has taken us down the road of posting success criteria to allow the audience an opportunity to think critically about the text in relation to the purpose for which it was written. This has proved to be successful, but very much starts to step on the toes of what is trying to be achieved with Mahara.
During the ICT PD team discussion, we had a chance to discuss the way forward for the use of the class blog. It was agreed upon that Mahara, rather than a class blog would be the way forward for publishing student work that requires feedback in an academic/mechanics/success criteria sense. Instead, the class blog will carry out the more traditional role of a blog (short for web log). The class blog will be more about commentary, opinion and response. Posts could be about what is happening in the classroom, what is going on in the world, thoughts about what is going on around the school.
From the perspective of trying to create authentic audiences for student writing, this type of writing if done properly has the capacity to open strings of discussion between the student and audience through the commentary, opinion and response of the audience itself. This of course gives purpose to the students' writing. It also creates a teaching opportunity for students to learn how to write as an audience member, effectively using blog writing and the etiquette involved as a genre in itself.
Food for thought. What do you think team?
