Students and Blogs:
jill/txt:

"...student's weblogs counted for 40% of their final grade..."

"...I'm planning to set aside time for blogging in each class and giving the students very specific tasks in their blogging time, because I want them to have enough experience with this way of writing and working that they can find out whether it's helpful to them."

My Comments: Jill speaks about there being 3 types of students (in her experience): 1) those who take to blogging enthusiastically 2) those who have difficulty seeing the point of it, and need lots of encouragement and 3) those who begin very negatively and continue to reject the idea of blogging:

For the second type, she says : "...you need to devise specific blogging tasks and actually spend class time blogging."

...and for the third type: "There definitely are people who don't get much out of blogging. But then, there are people who hate written exams or oral presentations, there are people who learn best from discussions with friends and others who learn best from reading or doing. Exposing students to more different ways of learning and thinking and expressing oneself can only be a good thing. There should be a point at which they can opt out of the ones that don't work for them, though."