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[cratha]

Hi.  Wow, there's a wealth of topics on this site.  Didn't easily find an existing thread related to my topic so here goes.

I am not doing distance teaching.  Instead,  I volunteered to supervise a clinical grad student in weekly readings with the goal of giving her course credit so she could meet Massachusetts state licensing requirement of having training in cognitive and affective science, broadly construed.  She and I picked out great, up-to-date articles on cognition and emotion and I thought we'd meet in my office weekly to discuss.

But she said that due to childcare issues, was there anyway she could email me weekly comments and we'd basically never meet? 

I said yes, but it'd have to be a blog. My idea was:  a blog would be better than email because of its public nature; she'd take is more seriously.  I also thought it'd be good to get comments possibly from anyone surfing the internet. 

Basically, the idea of a blog was an experiment to see if a blog would be a way to provide community for a student who was missing out on interaction from class mates.

But I realize eyeballs are scarce and there didn't seem an easy way to advertise the blog.

I googled around quite a bit but haven't seen anyone else doing this as far as I can tell, other than a few profs using blogspot as the discussion board for a physical or online class.

Here is one place where I announce the goals of the blog:
http://cogsciandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-directions-in-cognitive-and.html

The student has been taking it very seriously.  Anyone who wants ideas for cognition/emotion articles can see the blog and syllabus here:

http://cognitionandaffect.blogspot.com/

If anyone else has tried to use a blog to bring interaction to what is basically individual readings without meetings, feel free to share your experience.  I guess I do feel a little foolish that I thought readers would somehow find the site and comment, oh well...!

[sciencephd]

Hi.  Wow, there's a wealth of topics on this site.  Didn't easily find an existing thread related to my topic so here goes.

Well, actually you advertised this blog in a previous post.

[octoprof]

A blog o' warts?

That's a lotta warts.

[neutralname]

You might be getting some hits, but no one in their right mind is going to comment.  Generally speaking, blogs are not good places for academic discussion.  And here, who would be interested in joining in with a grad student's blog? -- other grad students probably won't, because it won't help them, and undergraduates don't need to, so they won't either.  And with this blog, the light blue small font text against a dark blue background will give most people a headache after one paragraph.  

[octoprof]

Grad stud...

[womanofproperty]

OP, I think I see where you're coming from, but I also think you're casting the net too widely.  You need to identify an audience (other grad students in cognitive science at your institution perhaps?) who will find this sort of exercise interesting/useful. 

I also thought it'd be good to get comments possibly from anyone surfing the internet. 

I'm not sure this is a good idea. 

And I agree with neutralname that

the light blue small font text against a dark blue background will give most people a headache after one paragraph.