Among the problems cited by educators in teaching critical thinking skills to students are the lack of access to primary sources of information, the inability of students to experiment with thoughts and concepts before committing to them (on a test for example), and the difficulty students have getting multiple, valid outside reviews of what they are thinking. Weblogs are a solution to these problems. Weblogs allow teachers to guide informal classroom activity and to see student’s work before its time for the test or final paper. Students gain a vehicle for creatively experimenting with thoughts and concepts and easily accessing, cataloging and storing outside information related to their interests.
This kind of speaks to this private/public debate and echoes Greg’s desire for the privacy of drafting and experimentation. The more I think about this, the more I’m tending to agree that the messy stuff should probably go on behind closed doors while the public part of the Web log is reserved for finished (for now) products. I think with the incorporation of such access levels in the new Frontier, I am starting to put together a pretty coherent picture of what that will look like. Too bad I won’t be able to implement it until next fall…
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