Reflection on Blogging

     I created this blog, Mr. Coates' History Class, as a tool for a hypothetical eleventh grade US History II class, and, over the month that I worked on it, I curated articles as if the classroom's units were spanning the years 1948 to 1963, focusing mainly on US history but including international events when appropriate. I personally wrote five longer form blogs, and included three written by friends who were writing as if they were my students. I also posted four shorter entries, with links to videos and podcasts, often ending with prompts that my pretend students would write. My blog also included a poll, a contact form, links to more resources, a section for upcoming homework assignment reminders, and an easily navigable directory of past articles. In addition to these sections of the blog itself, I also created a teacher twitter, @coateshistory , which I used as if I were teaching a course that used this blog and I posted on it whenever I had updated the blog.
      This was easily my favorite assignment for this class (and perhaps any of my classes) this semester. I really enjoyed getting to design a blog, getting to write articles to a student audience, and enlisting my friends to write articles and to comment on mine (check out the comments on some of these entries to see what I am talking about, specifically the Eisenhower farewell address entry). I had had some previous experience using Blogger, as I used to run a film blog using it, so it was great to try new things within a comfortable framework. I would definitely try to do something similar to this if I found a class I thought I could integrate it well with, and I look forward to this prospect. The only problem with Blogger, and it was not a very big one at that, was that I could not play with the layout or format as much as I would have liked. I am happy with what I ended up with, but at times I was frustrated as I tried to change the way things were laid out and I found myself not being able to do it.
        My advice to future students taking this course is to have fun with this project - if it starts feeling like a lot of work, try something else. Only write a blog if the prospect really excites you - while this was a joy to create it also was a lot of work, as I had to do research for each entry and ask several friends to get involved, and I had to be able to work around their schedules. I also had to work on it pretty consistently over two months to get an authentic blog feel - it would not have done to have posted all the articles at once. Experiment with different tools - the internet has several options for whatever you are trying to do. Be careful in writing your rubrics - that was the hardest part of this, in my opinion, as I was having trouble conceptualizing what my project would end up looking like. Be clear in the language you are using and do not trap yourself into doing things you might not be able to do.
   Thank you to everyone who read, in my course and outside of it. I look forward to returning to history blogging someday soon.