Writer’s Block Demolition Site

Firstly, (or should I say lastly?) I would say that I’ve never written in a genre like this before, which is a bit weird. It sorta brings out a cut-throat side of me, which may or may not be a good thing. I definitely think this genre lends itself to a critical pedagogy, and I can see using it in a classroom so students will learn how to look at the way different writers and politicians present their sides of an issue.

I also learned about Google Reader through this assignment (oh my goodness, I almost put “threw” right there!), which was eye-opening. I started out using the reader just to find articles on tracking, but now it also has a couple of my favorite blogs, too. It’s actually a pretty cool application, and will probably come in handy for future research projects and the like (not to mention getting day-to-day information).

My main topic for this blog was tracking in high schools. I was able to look at the issue from different sides and got input from scientific sources as well as educational sources (okay, I hope they all were educational, but you know what I mean!). I think that in the nation today, tracking already gets a pretty bad rap. People are more eager to move away from tracking and find alternative ways of meetings students’ needs, but there are still problems out there, to be sure. We definitely need more teachers with the dedication and innovation needed to deal with students of multiple capabilities in the same classroom…it just takes a little more work.

All in all, this first blogging experience of mine was pretty cool. I don’t know whether I’ll keep on with blogging myself, but I am glad I learned about the RSS function and I’ll probably be using Google Reader for awhile. Blogging is an interesting genre which brings out a unique type of writer, and I’d be interested to see what future students might do with it.