I admit, during my high school years I had a blog, along with a few of my friends. Naturally it was mostly filled with idealistic ideas that could never be and the annoyances of teenage life, with the odd addition of examples to my being awesome (in my own point of view at least).
After much thought on the matter, I do recall in grade 8, we were tasked with keeping a journal, with time giving in our form class to add to it. That was mostly filled with a detailing of the days events, and no real opinions were properly given in case our teacher disagreed with them on the off chance they actually read it. This really was a rare occasion, and as such most of the students became confused by the idea of it, we had enough on our plates, and if it wasn't to be assessed, we didn't particularly care.
Looking back I can't quite decide if I wish they had explained it better, or actually assessed us on them. For this task the assessment seems a very reasonable idea, but I can't help but think this is only because my point of view has changed so much from that 13 year old boy I was. Back then we didn't know why we had to write them, what they were really meant to be about or what our teacher was looking for.
However even as I write this I am thinking of ways to use that in my future classes. Knowing that I would need to be clear in what I would be looking for, that it would be ok for the students to state opinions, that the specific way they wrote isn't what I would be looking for, I would be looking for the ideas they generate, the thought patterns that pop into their minds when they put thoughts into writing. It would be a tool to not just see what is important to them, but also to see how they think!
But then, as I write that, I should point out how distracting I'm finding that capital letters also appear slightly more bold than lower case. But maybe that's just me?
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