Blogging is HOT

Blogging is a reflective writing activity which can be approached as a way to demonstrate Higher Order Thinking skills. Will Richardson describes this in his book and in this blog entry. As I pondered writing the entry below "Sky is Falling," it struck me how I wanted to tie together all of the various items I linked to there. This process of synthesizing, linking, and evaluating is demonstrative of the thinking skills we want our students to hone. Having them blog seems like a good educational approach, but they will need instruction and practice to do blogging well. I gave my eLearning grad students this blog rubric to help guide their process. The thing I love about blogging is that it creates this physical artifact that shows whether your students are 'putting the pieces' together. Are they really understanding the concepts? Are they drawing connections? Are they expanding on others' thinking?