Cream of the the Cream / or Crème de la Crème/ or Schlagobers dazu- Best Blogs!

Crème de la Crème

Literature students have completed the first round of their blogging before they hone their skills and prepare to embed these blogs into their Literature ePortfolios. This has engaged students at first, second and third years completing units in “Introduction to Literature”, “Nineteenth Century Literature” & “Shakespeare and the Renaissance”. The activity has provided a different, more creative way for students to engage with the literary text. They have written letters to the authors, imitated authors’ styles in short poems and prose pieces, taken part in the events of a story by impersonating a character, offered informal critiques of author’s messages and styles, and created short web resource modules for authors and topics. Along with all of these they have embedded their texts in images, videos and sound bites. Most importantly they have been keeping an eye on each other by way of peer reviews, praising each other’s work, suggesting subtle changes to poems and prose pieces and generally listening to the interests of others in their own subject of study and even venturing out to listen to the interests of those completing other literature units. The jury is out on the extent to which this exercise/experiment enhances more traditional ways of engaging with literature: academic essays, exams, tutorial papers. This is of course experimenting with the possibilities of the new technologies available now, that were never available even five years ago. So I will be very happy to hear (by way of comment on this blog) whether this experiment is working and what might be done to improve its working. For the time being here are the best, most innovative literature blogs so far this year in all the three years mentioned. These are truly the King Island Cream of the Cream. Enjoy (you will, no doubt, have to seek permission to access any of these blogs which have been set up as private- for obvious reasons):