Can I give a shout out?

My right-hand-side blog list is currently longer than the sum of my last seven posts. (As soon as I upped this post, that last statement lost all its truthishness.) Mostly that means that I've added most of my students' blogs to my blog list. It also means I'm doing a lot more reading than writing right now.

I'm already impressed by what this semester's crop of students is doing with their blogs, and most of them have less than three posts. I'm going to run through some of the ones that have caught my eye so far, give some students their propers. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the good blogs that my students have created; it's just a short list.

I have to start with Justin's poorly-titled Zack's Gamer Blog. Justin must have read my mind before creating his blog because it's a very video-game-centric blog, replete with Halo music and Star Wars: The Old Republic news. I think Justin really tapped into the baseline goal of the internet: to encourage geeks to communicate with each other.

Ellen posted some nice fifth-grade level riddles, for any riddle fans. I'm a sucker for a clever riddle.

For some reason, I really like the look of this blog entry from Jessica. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for storybook days, but the different-colored opening letters for each paragraph really made me happy.

Emma posted a pretty good story on Friday. She also already has some non-class-related followers, which is good to see. I like it when my students invite their friends and/or families to read their blogs. If only I convince my mother to read mine.

I told most of my classes that they should use a feature of day/week like I do, so they could get into a routine. Nicki has ambitiously decided to post a picture every day. So far, they're all pictures that she's taken, which is pretty cool. I hope she keeps it up. The daily post is a little daunting.

Generally speaking, the first introduction that I have with these blogs is their titles. A few of my students have come up with pretty sweet titles. I really like Melanie's Blog: Mel, for some reason, and it looks like she's carrying that titling schematic over to her individual posts. Alex put a Chris Farley reference into his blog title: The Motivational Blogger...Blogging in a Van Down by the River. Very classy. I also like Julia's bling blang pow. Plus, she references Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick's blog.

There's a bunch of other good titles, but there's some highlights.

So, far a good portion of my students seem really interested or even excited about blogging. I just hope it continues.

A couple other notes:

Disney bought Marvel. That might be blog fodder for Wednesday.

The Batman: Arkham Asylum review is up, and it is glowing.

Event of the Week:

College football starts Thursday night with, amongst other games, South Carolina at NC State. Secondary EotW to Saturday, when all sorts of college football aims to happen, including (5) Alabama at (7) V. Tech.