Teaching creative writing - need help

I'm new to ning and want to start using it in my college creative writing classes. I've been searching on here but haven't found much info about teaching creative writing. Here's what I want to do and I'm looking for ideas/suggestions on how to best set up my ning site. I teach three classes and want them to have their "group" in ning. I only want students from the same class to be able to view each other's work and critique it. I want discussions and comments to all stay inside their own group/class. The main thing we do is peer review. I want a way for the students to post their pieces and have their peers comment. I want the comments to go with the pieces, not all over the place like on the comment wall and then there's no way to tell which comment goes with which student's work. I'm also looking for the best ways to utilize the ning features. For instance, how are you using the notes feature in your class? Or any of the other features? I'm really struggling with just setting up my ning and getting everything in place for fall semester. Can anyone help?

Tags: creative, writing

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joe Fatheree on July 15, 2009 at 7:27pm

Last spring I created a ning for my film class. Each week I post a digital journal assignment and asked my students to comment on it. I also used the site to showcase student work. The ning offers a lot of possibility. You can view my site by going to the following url: http://ahafilms.ning.com

We are in the process of uploading materials for the coming school year, but you can get an idea of what we do.

The first part of the site is public. However, down on the bottom of left side of the main page I have created a link to a private ning for my class for the 2009-2010 school year. The private log in gives me the ability to have a safe collaborative environment embedded in a public space. My students do a lot of creative writing assignments during the course of the year. The ning is quickly becoming our digital classroom. Please let me know if I can be of further help.

-joe

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Song on July 17, 2009 at 1:27pm

Hi Joe,
Thanks for sharing your site. Such amazing work on there! Very inspiring. I also would like to use videos as prompts to inspire my students to write. I think we share the same idea. I want to make a part of my ning site public so that I can showcase the students' writings but I also want a private area as their "classroom." I will be piloting a class that's completely online, no face to face meetings. These are college students. I need a place to post lecture notes, power pionts and videos for students to view. Then a space for them to post their work for only their peers to comment. All this has to be done in the private space and that's what I'm struggling with. I wish I could put the forum feature inside of a group or the blog feature inside of a group to make them private. I'm still finding my way around all the ning features, it's just overwhelming. I like how you used the events feature for assignments. I'd like to do the same thing but I'm teaching three classes and I want a separate events feature for each class but I can't really utilize that feature. Each class has their own assignments and due dates. These are the kind of issues I'm coming up against, just the nuts and bolts of building the site to meet my needs.