Our Letter.......

Dearest Barb,

Thank you for bringing us so graciously into cyberspace. We are whole.

You lied to us yesterday -- you are smarter than you are old!

We think that this idea is useful in drawing out conversation among students who may not want to participate verbally in class discussion. We enjoyed having the freedom to "add" to the post by linking music, pictures, etc.

We loved the fact that your class came up with the rules (or netiquette). Because the whole conversation is student-driven, these are very much "best practices." The revision you saw in your students by saving posts. This very much fits into the best practices category. We did wonder, though, how poor netiquette is handled?

Book clubs and questions about assignments seem like great extensions and adaptations of this project.

Could you offer some additional info on time management? This is so cool, that we see ourselves getting sucked into it and burning dinner (like JoAnn did last night - at least she ate).

Do you have any tips on reluctant bloggers, or variety of blogging, duplicate, and so on? Do you come across situations where students just "agree"? Do you have tips to draw out substantive comments and not just "I agree" comments.

We also wondered about facilitating discussion on the blog, making sure that the students have read the work independently and aren't just paraphrasing other students' posts.

Thank you so much for your smart, experienced, presentation.

Heaping love,

JoAnn Satzinger
Susan Martin
Shelly Maledy-Martin
Ashlei Woelk