Technology in Academic & Student Affairs – Page 11

More on Da Chen Blogs

I’ve been reading the various blogs related to Da Chen’s visit to our campus. Many students on campus (including at least FYC and ALS students, and likely others) are given a writing assignment based on Da Chen’s work. The blog titles chosen for many of these blogs are Da Chen specific. Here are some examples. (And, if you visit each you will see that the vast majority have only the one post.) My favorite is DaChenGoState; never miss an opportunity to show that school spirit!

This catches my attention because of my recent interest in the concept of teaching our students to be “net savvy” (as well as our staff and faculty). Will these students use these blogs for other purposes? Do they not understand how to set up a blog? Maybe they understand and are only blogging for this one course requirement and don’t intend to use the blog again.

I should note that are a number of other posts on blogs that have more traditional blog names (usually the name or unity of the student). But the number of Da Chen-specific blog titles really caught my eye and has me wondering just how much our first-year students understand blogging.

Way Back Machine

Use the Way Back Machine to see archived versions of old websites. In addition to being fun, this can be a useful tool if you forgot to make a copy of an website before redesign.