Webography—Using blogs for peer review in writing class.

Website 1
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47
The article on this web page was contributed by Mollie Crie, an educator with 22 years in the classroom, who currently teaches for Bedford County Schools in Forest, Virginia.
The content is very simple as a general introduction of the educational benefits of blogs, including using blogs for students to practice peer review and improve writing skills. Besides giving consideration of the risks of using blogs, the author also informs the readers of procedures of preparing student for blogging and steps for getting started on blogs. Although not directly related to writing class, it offers basic information and instructions which are helpful to teachers who want to start using this technology for their own purpose. This website also provides links to some blogs presenting more ideas for using blogs in education, and some first-person accounts of blog use in the classroom. In addition, this web page was created in October, 2006, which means relatively updated information.

Website 2
http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/edtech/teaching_showcase/brown_bag/archive/fall05/sandvig.html
This website supplies a brief written introduction of a presentation , together with the indexed video of the presentation given by Christian Sandvig, a fourth year Assistant Professor of Speech Communications. In his presentation, Christian Sandvig talked about the role that multimedia blogs play in managing and encouraging students in their writing process. He shared his experience of using blogs to make the course writing intensive but within a manageable workload of grading, peer review being one of the features. His presentation covered both pedagogical and technological aspects, which is convincing, informative and reliable. In addition, links to article about educational blogging, related report about the presenter, and advanced tool are provided. Since this website is created by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both its look and its content are academic with easy navigation. The date does not matter so much, as this page is an introduction of a presentation made in October, 2005.

Website 3
http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/resources/acl/e2.html
This web page is from a handbook developed and edited by the Washington Center's Evaluation Committee. The article related to the topic is entitled Writing Portfolios:What Teachers Learn from Student Self-Assessment, written by Kim Johnson-Bogart, who wonderfully describes --through her students own words-- the power and benefits of peer review. It's worth noting that Kim Johnson-Bogart, in addition to teaching students how to do peer review also instructs them to write reflective essays of the type she quotes from. This combination—close reading and commenting on peers' writing and close examination and reflection on one's writing and writing work done in a course gives students useful tools for becoming aware of how writing works and how they work as writers. The idea of writing portfolios can be well borrowed into blog peer review. An academic handbook as its source, the page has a plain look without either any distraction or any links. However, the date and the introduction of the writer are missing, which are regarded as important information.

website 4
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall05/fernheimernelson.html
This website is named Currents in Electronic Literacy. It is actually an e-journal of the Computer Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas, whose aim is to point out emerging trends in the field of electronic literacy. This particular page provided carries an article entitled Bridging the Composition Divide: Blog Pedagogy and the Potential for Agonistic Classrooms written by Janice Wendi Fernheimer and Thomas J. Nelson. The article focuses on how writing teachers might use the new genre of blogs. In addition to the consideration of “how the quasi-public, semi-private generic attributes of blogs trouble the traditional divide in writing instruction between expressivist and social constructivist theories”, the writers also discuss “a model for using blogs in the writing classroom to promote intellectual community and agonistic engagement in the proto-public space of the classroom”. They value the implications of using a single, multiply-authored class blog as the central interface for the writing classroom. A Works Cited page is provided and there is a link to another credible site Computer Writing and Research Lab, but the page is no longer accessible through the link. The particular webpage as well as the whole website is easy to get around and the research is reliable.

Website 5
http://tlc.ucalgary.ca/resources/library/itbl/improving-writing-through-peer-review/improving-writing-through-peer-review
This website is created by Teaching & Learning centre at University of Calgary. The webpage recommended here supplies an article Improving Student Writing through Peer Review, which is quite relevant to the chosen topic. The significance of the article lies in the consideration of facilitating the peer review process electronically through several ways including blogs. More importantly, the article gives an example to demonstrate how to conduct peer review online, and how to have student authors follow up the feedback they receive. The background of the web page is artistic but not distracting. Links about peer review and online tools for peer review are provided but some fail to work. The information of the writer is missing; however a link for emailing the webmaster can be found. Since the content of the article is part of teaching strategy series of the Teaching and Learning Center of University of Calgary, it is reliable and worth reading.

Website 6
http://www.chu.edu.tw/~wswu/publications/index.htm
The page is from the homepage of Michael Wu, a research assistant of Chung Hua University, Taiwan. It lists all his publications, among which two articles are closely related to the chosen topic—The effect of blog peer review and teacher feedback on the revisions of EFL writers (2006), and Using blogs in an EFL writing class(2005). The first article is an exploratory study to investigate EFL adult learners’ reactions to peer review and teacher feedback in EFL composition class, with both the peer review and teacher feedback given to learners’ blog. The second article discusses the advantages of blog in an EFL writing class and gives a preliminary report about students’ reaction to the use of blog in two English classes. Besides, explicit instructions to set up a personal blog are given. Since the writer is a college teacher who specializes in oral communication and English writing, his research and publications are of help to other language teachers and worthwhile to read. All the links on the webpage function well and the content is well-organized and neat-looking. The last updated time is 2006/11/14 08:40.

Website 7
http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/issues/october2006/index.html
This website is created by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Learning Technology (LTTC). The above webpage is one issue of the publication of LTTC—Learning Technology. This is a special issue on “Blogging as an educational technology”. All the articles focus on how blogs can be used to enhance teaching and learning. It might be useful for those who want to facilitate teaching with blogs. There are a wealth of links of online tools, example blogs, and cited sources. All the links work well and fast. Attached link for email is behind the name of each writer. The webpage of articles is reader-friendly, but other pages might cause nervousness due to the red font on black background on the left and right column.