Using Blogs in the AV Classroom

I'm not 100% sure how to implement using blogs in my AV courses. While I can think of a lot of ways we could use them, I'm not sure how to implement them with the Engineering students -who can be very unsure of themselves when it comes to things visual! I would need to make sure that their blogs were in a secure place, probably more secure than Blogger, as some of the students like to stay under the radar when it comes to information being public or in the hands of Google. However, the IT Program has it's own website with forums, so perhaps I could set up a private forum there for the AV students only. It would be one method... but I like the thought of blogs being something that can continue past a single course. Something more permanent and open would provide students with the opportunity to keep in touch with each other and with students from other semesters. We could have a massive, social, blogging, AV network!

I'm not as sensitive to having some chosen public information online so I thought I'd try creating one for the AV Courses. Audio/Video @ MU blog for the AV courses: http://avcourses.blogspot.com/   My hope with this blog is to remove the area of our course Blackboard site where I currently post interesting AV technologies and to move it to this blog where I can share and "geek out" with past and present students.

I did have another thought on blogging that I plan on discussing with my TAs next week. In the IT Program -for the direction we'd like to start heading- we are trying to create more content that is available online for the students. We're also working on creating levels of support for students, starting with knowledgeable workers in our labs, then knowledgeable course TAs who can provide student support inside and outside of class time, and finally Instructors whose priorities are to design up-to-date courses, provide instruction and implement courses, and to work on large collaborative projects for the benefit of IT Program students. I could easily see my TAs creating their own blogs for communicating with students about things as simple as changes to their lab office hours, to observations they've made about problems they're seeing students have and solutions to those problems, to sharing interesting AV things they find, or even their own work. This would build a good relationship with the students and provide an extra level of support. Students could even post works in progress to get feedback. I think this is implementable by the end of next week! I'm curious to hear what the TAs think to this idea and if the students would use it.