Since the introduction of a new course in Multimedia Writing at St. John Fisher College in 2012, students have been required to blog with analysis and commentary on news from the social media/ multimedia/digital journalism environment. Students are instructed to briefly summarize the news story or other item that the post is about, especially why it is an interesting or important development in the world of social media/multimedia. The instructions also call for including a link so that anyone interested in exploring it further can go to the original source.
In previous semesters, this has been done in a "closed" blogging system, through the college's Blackboard online class support system.
Students have frequently questioned why they were not blogging in a more open environment, and so one of the changes in the course this year is to do exactly that -- in this blog.
