Featuring some great student bloggers

I'm very fortunate to have a terrific group of freshmen (and a couple of sophomores) in my brand new COM 103 Media Literacies class this spring. This is a class that has just been developed as a core general education class as one option students can take to address the need for critical reading and writing; other options include ENG 102, ENG 103 and SSC 103 (a new class on writing for the sciences).

Students have been assigned three blog entries so far: the first to introduce themselves, the second to address the question of "What is Media Literacy?," and the third to reflect upon the degree to which each of them feels that he or she is a "digital native" (after reading some excerpts from Mark Prensky, Henry Jenkins, and John Palfrey/Urs Gasser's writings).

So far, the bloggers leading the pack are Taylor Cone and Claire Moore. Taylor actually has two blogs--one she's had for a while, a pretty cool Tumblr blog, and a new one for this class. I was amused (and very happy) at how she found herself blogging about blogging when she wrote:

Schoolin January 19, 2011

So I’m at the library. Just made my second blog post for my COM 103 class, aka the coolest class known to man. Basically I get to “interpret” media and write about it on my personal blog all for a grade. Can you say awesome? Cause I can. And dang, that’s freaking awesome.

Claire's blog I'm Just Sayin'... is off to a wonderful start, with a natural storytelling style, good attention to the readings, and most importantly a thoughtful application of the readings to the real-world of her dad and his 8th grade class. She made some good revisions since class yesterday, too, and shows that she's a quick study when it comes to learning to insert photos and hyperlinks.

Sam Morton's blog post on Media Literacy featuring Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris is pretty cool too. Keep it up, COM 103 bloggers!