To engage students in the development of online exegetical research blogs, teachers of sacred scripture can follow a simple three-step method.

1) Have students sign up for a free Motime* (www.motime.com) blog on which they will post the materials they gather over the course of the semester.  (Do this yourself right now through the window provided above.  Click here for an example.)

2) Create an index page (like this one you saw previously) for the class through which all student blogs might be accessed.  You do not have to use student pictures, but that kind of visual representation will strengthen student identification with one another throughout the semester.  To do this:

        a) Collect the Motime addresses from each of the students

        b) Create a page for the address links through a blog of your own creation, your pre-existing webspace, your purchased webspace,** or your free webspace***  (Go ahead and use one of these four methods to begin creation of a student index page -- there should be a place on it where you can put links and post a short project rationale with a link to a full description of the project with whatever amendments to it you want to make.  You might perhaps even post a link to our online example.  When you have your page created, type the URL (web address) here and click 'post' -- the site will appear at the bottom of the page with the sites of others who have completed this before you.  Come back later to check out more.

3) Using the online course template (Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle), create an external link to the index page for easy access.  If you do not use an online course template, just publish the link to the index page to the entire class using your traditional method of conveying information.

*Motime is just one of many as the page on blogs has already demonstrated.  I originally had LiveJournal linked here because it was one of the most versatile I had seen.  I thank Fr. John Paul Heil for letting me know that it did not offer a means by which to upload PDF files for faculty or students who wanted to post their exegetical work while preserving Greek and Hebrew fonts (as demonstrated at the start of this workshop).  Motime allows on its free site for the upload of up to 5 mb of multimedia.  If one needs more than that, one can just create a second Motime.com blog and link to it from the first.

** GoDaddy.com is the best site I have come across for cheap, no-hassle webspace -- it offers 5 gb of space for just over $3 a month -- not that you will use all that for a small index page, but you will have lots of room to grow.  For help in your web-building endeavors beyond this simple project, you might contact ResourceForge, a site hosting company that has a teaching vocation to ensure that all its clients understand how to be producers of their own sites.

*** 50megs.com is a great site for free webspace, but, like any other free hosting service, you have to put up with banners unless you pay $2 a month to get rid of them.  At that price, though, you might as well pay another $1 a month for GoDaddy.

Name: Sebastian Mahfood
URL: http://www.kenrickparish.com/formation
My_Index_Page: Post