Creative Writing Through Blogging

Blogging can be used as a tool to improve writing skills, particularly, creative writing. For some time now, I have felt that our focus of formal writing assignments while important, stifles opportunity for creative writing. Attempts at daily journal writing often give way to more pressing matters and are soon dropped altogether. Setting up a blog and requiring students make a daily entry can easily solve this delimna , students could take a brief moment during class to write an entry, during homeroom, when they have a spare moment during another class, and of course at home.

Initally I could post simple writng prompts, quotes,or pictures and ask sudents to comment. Ideally we could move on to students posting their thoughts on everything from curren news events, pop-culture, poetry, the ideas could be endless. Studentd could themn move on to commenting on their peer's entries. Of course some guidelines would have to be in place to ensure that only positive or constructive comments/criticisms will be writtten. The studnets could even come up with the specific guidelines.