S&F Online in the Classroom

Faculty—Consider using The Scholar & Feminist Online in your course!

This Issue

In addition to the general guidelines provided by Barnard for use of editions of the Scholar & Feminist Online in the classroom, we came up with several additional guidelines for using blogs in the classroom:

1. Make a blog to continue discussions outside the classroom, or have your students create a blog for credit.
   Creating a blog is easy—there are several websites available that provide step-by-step guides for creating a blog. One popular site is www.blogger.com. In order to ensure that your students use your class blog regularly, you may want to offer class participation points for commenting. If your students create individual blogs, be sure to check them regularly, and also make sure that they link to and comment on one another's blog posts (see Shira Tarrant's essay for more suggestions of successful blog use in the classroom).

2. Use the blog roll we have provided in this edition to enhance class discussion.
   Find out what people around the country—and around the world—are saying about feminist issues. Blogs provide an excellent source of information, not only about current events, but about classic debates in feminist theory: the activist/academe divide, the sex wars, race, class, sexuality, and almost any other topic you can think of! In many of the blogs listed in our blog roll, you will find a list of topics on the right or left side of the main blog page. Use these links to find the topic that you are discussing in class. This is a great way to find out how issues are being perceived both in and outside of academia.

3. Read about one professor's experience using the blog in the feminist classroom.
   Click here to read about Shira Tarrant's experience using a blog as part of her curriculum. Tarrant offers useful insights and suggestions into what worked, what didn't, and what she would do to ensure that students take full advantage of the Blogosphere for feminist learning in and outside of the classroom in the future.

General Suggestions

General suggestions for using S&F Online in your course:

• Include an article (or art piece) from the journal on your syllabus

• Schedule a live chat between your students and a pre-eminent scholar, artist, or activist who has contributed to the journal and who is relevant to your syllabus

• Challenge students to write an essay or create a multimedia installment for possible publication on a "student" area included in selected issues related to your course

• Have your class participate in an online discussion about possible meanings and purposes for a new kind of feminist publication

• Develop a course web site that functions as a "mirror site" in which students respond to questions raised by an issue of the journal that relates to your course

The Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Research are at your service to help make the journal part of your course. For additional information, please e-mail The Barnard Center for Research on Women. We look forward to working with you.