Blogging Biology Lab Conclusions

One of the big experiments this year has been pushing most writing for my biology and anatomy classes on to student curated blogs.  It has been a really great experience and something that I think has enhanced the classroom learning experience.

I still give copies of labs, and students write on them in class, but when the lab is done they get out the chromebooks, and type up their conclusions on the their blog.  What's even better, students are excited during lab time and take pictures of their experiments and embed those into their blog.

Here's a student example from a recent DNA extraction lab.  http://ronitsbioblog.blogspot.com

When students are finished, they submit the url of their link to our learning management system, Canvas, where I can see and grade all of their submissions.  This has allowed me to utilize rubrics and peer evaluation, grade assignments quicker, and students get to keep copies of the labs as tools for studying.  The one draw back I've found is that some students are slow keyboarders, so it takes these students longer to type the conclusion than handwrite them.

Here's what I see in the speed grader view of Canvas of a student submission.

The blog is really becoming a digital portfolio of work completed.  Scrolling through nearly a semester's worth of work, you can really appreciate the hard work they've put in and they get to showcase to the world their learning journey in my class.

I'll showcase more of our blogging on future posts.