This blog has been designed for my class, SPN 401-Senior Seminar on Contemporary Narratives of Latin America (Fall 2011), with the goal to collect my students’ thoughts in one single website. Students’ entries reflect their writing assignments in relation to literary works and theoretical readings addressed in the course.
As an instructor, I like to innovate with technology and experiment new ways of facilitating students’ learning. This blog is an attempt in that direction.
I have decided to substitute the traditional journal entry/reaction paper assignment in print by the present online submissions of students’ critical thinking. In this way, the professor is not the only one with access to students’ critiques, but students in the course can also have immediate access to their peers’ thoughts.
This format then provides students with the option to react and respond to their peers’ postings thus, extending the intellectual debate beyond the classroom setting. Students’ blogs, as I have recently learned, have also have been accessed by people in other points of the planet and this visibility makes their writing assignments more exciting!
Students seem to be enjoying this cyber-writing more than the traditional paper version; they have expressed their preference for this new form to fulfill the writing component of the course.
¿Cierto, chicas y chico?
Saludos cordiales,
Dr. Hilda Chacón