As I have written about in prior posts, my students are writing in collaborative blogs and have also created individual netvibes accounts. I, too, have a netvibes account, and have been using it as a RSS feed host for my students blogs.

I’m exhausted, so not a lot about this, but to say that I really like seeing all their posts in one place. Other times when I have asked students to create blogs or have their own forums, I would have to go to each individual site. Though we would talk in class about creating interconnectivity among the blogs or forums, having to go to go each site to see what was there often worked against that idea. Now, however, because I can see all of their ideas converging into one writing space, I can begin to more readily see connections among their ideas, places where discussions of the texts overlap and contradict one another, how the discussions of their professional, personal, and educational interests merge. This new space allows for the perception that there is a more seamless ecology of ideas flowing through the blogs, mapping their ideas as they emerge over time.