Blogging and Being Blogged

Today was the second Blog Check for the students blogs. Last week the checks revealed that many of the newbie students had spent too much time playing with the complexities of designing a blog instead of posting the lessons and connections of the lessons to the project at hand. This week, for some unexplained reason, they spent more time redesigning their blogs than writing their posts connecting the lessons to projects. When the grade were handed out this morning.....Oops! Deer in the headlights....

arthurmcarthurs.blogspot.com

The afflicted were the students new to the course. The repeat students played with their design the first week or so, then settled into working on the post to tie the lessons to what was happening with their topic. The newbies have gotten caught up in the bright lights of technology. MY lesson?  Prepare the students ahead of time to look at the rubric, compare what they have done with what is expected, and perhaps show examples of good and not-so-good blogs.  I have my own blog for my project [I do a project every semester along with the students so they can see research happening] but not many took advantage of it as a template for what I expected. There's another lesson in that, I just haven't figured it out yet.