How to Grade a Blog? My Thoughts and Opinions

There is not doubt, it's a tricky question: how do you grade a blog? Do you grade grammar and spelling, or do you look to the facts presented and what has been written? Who should do the grading, and what should be the requirement. I think to answer this question we need to look to what a blog is. As far as I am concerned, a blog should be your personal feelings expressed and displayed, but also supported with evidence. Personality and opinion should be the one thing that comes through after reading a blog, You should be able to read a post and know how that person feels about the topic they were blogging about.

What about mechanics though? Should grammar even matter, what about spelling? Surely that should count for something with the spell check button right there! If there is anything that we have learned from the upcoming generation of technology, its that unformatted and unstructured information can be more efficient if used properly. Should this be true for blogs? I don't think so. I think a blog post should be well edited and written. Spelling and mechanics should count, but not carry as much weight as the personality and factual context within the post.

Who should grade the blog? Personally, I think that collaboration and peer communication is a great thing, but posting a comment on a blog just doesn't fulfill that requirement. I think a grade should be determined by the teacher, and that after they are graded we should critique as a whole, go look though friends posts and see what they are missing, be it length, context, personality or relevance. This would help future blog posts receive a higher grade.

How to break down the grading? This is always a key question. Based on what I have written about in this post, I think that the following should be used as a grading mechanism:

• Personality and personal opinion is clear in post - 1 pt 

• relevant information is posted and all factual information is correct - 1 pt  

• Writing mechanics are well developed for the post - .5 pt  

• Thoughts and expressions are clear and post is easily understood - .5 pt

As you can see, the personality of the post receives more weight than the mechanics, but factual information and clarity of the post are still important and count toward the final grade of the post.