Conversations for blogging

I think everyone is pretty much onside with the concept and value of student blogging. 

It’s a modern mode of writing; most platforms easy allow for linking, pictures and images, and feature the best editing features for doing the task.  Nobody will argue that they include all the features of a full-blown word processor but that’s not the point.  They include just enough to get the job done.  And, as an aside, probably all the word processing capacity that you need for most documents. 

Instead of the 1-1 tradition of student writing, teacher marking, assignment done, blogging allows students to publish so that many others can read/hopefully comment and follow their thoughts.  As the days of June wind down, the ability to go online and read blog posts from the past year and reflect on growth as a thinker and writer is the stuff that make teachers salivate.  By design, it’s a portfolio that shows growth and pulls everything together.

The only challenge is “What do we want to write about?”

There are many ideas, lists, and blogging challenges available.  To that list, I’d like to suggest another source that perhaps hadn’t been considered and that’s just inspirations for conversations.  And, when you think about it, isn’t that what most blogging is about?

Conversation Starters is a wonderful place to turn.

The landing page has a number of conversation starters for just about anything.  “How to be more social” is a good collection of advice that easily applies to a online blogging persona.

But scroll a bit further and you’ll find a couple of sections devoted just for kids.  I really like the “Would you rather?” questions.

You know that you want to click on the “funny” link…

For this year, as the end nears, you may be looking for that last bit of inspirational writing.  Or, perhaps you’re going to go whole hog into blogging for next year.  In either case, take a look through here for writing ideas and inspiration.

You can never have too much of either.