First blog with my math students

I just had my math students blog for the first time this Tuesday. Part of this was to introduce themselves to Mr. Abshire's students, and part of this was to answer prompts tailored to their classes that I posted. You can find these at http://macmathclass.blogspot.com . I learned a good deal about what works and what to do better next time. I talked with Doug Abshire about this before and he clued me in to how to turn on and off comment moderation. I decided to leave it off and have students post as anonymous, but leave their first name and last initial in the post. I then turned comment moderation on after the class. Next time, I would give the students more direction and examples of excellent work. Some students did a great job of answering the question thoroughly, but I was not explicit with what I wanted and I therefore got many responses that were extremely short and relatively pointless. I read the posts that Mr. Abshire's students left and they were more what I was looking for. He told me later that he gave the students examples of what he was looking for. So, I learned the hard way that my students will give me just what I ask for, and if I want more I need to be very specific. I graded this initial post as by full credit for a post and no credit for not posting. Looking on the global learner blog, I notice that others have come up with a rubric for blog postings. I intend on being more specific and using a rubric next time.