Discusses blogs, a short form of "weblog" or Web-based diaries or personal journals that are appearing on the Internet. Focuses on their description and background, basic use, educational applications, and advanced features. (Author/VWL)

Explores the journal writing of Henry David Thoreau. Asserts that his journals are an excellent example of writing to learn. Notes that students can benefit from emulating Thoreau's approach to journal writing. (MM)

Discusses the act of "talking to oneself" as an important component of learning and of seeking balance, direction, and meaning in life. Discusses what a journal is, cognitive view of learning from class journal, a "depth psychology" view, and applications in classroom. Concludes that journals are valuable educational tools. (Author/ABL)

Reflective journal writing helps individuals garner information about themselves and construct larger meanings. Techniques include freewriting; list making; describing one-minute in-depth, writing dialogues; and envisioning the future. (SK)

Presents annotations of 12 items from the ERIC database which demonstrate that journal writing can be an effective tool for teaching reading and writing at elementary and secondary levels. (RS)

Offers seven approaches to integrating foreign students and recent immigrants into the culture of the school and classroom. Discusses the meeting of the minds, growth through participation, mingling languages and literatures, a cultural-heritage project, sharing food and stories, new friendships through journals, and ideas for involving parents.…

Assists students in recognizing rhetorical situations and in participating actively by instituting semester-long anonymous correspondences between unacquainted students in separate sections of freshman composition. Notes that students achieved greater sensitivity to rhetorical situations and an awakening of resistance. (MG)

Discusses how teachers and parents can help children turn everyday experiences into topics to write about, whether in the form of personal journals, autobiographical essays, or poetry. (MDM)

Suggests that the practice of ethnography in the spirit of Clifford Geertz's "thick description," and the thinking that this practice demands, can give college students both a tool for inquiry and a sense of their positions as authorities in the writing process. Defines thick description and discusses how ethnography works in a…

Surveys the popular and professional literature on incest to show that creative writing can be useful to adult survivors of incest both as a self-help technique and as an adjunct to therapy. (SR)

Responders to a journal may include peers, instructors, and oneself. Responders must balance direction and freedom in assisting the writer. Methods include descriptive personal response, holistic assessment, and partial assessment of passages selected by the writer. (SK)

Provides the framework that was used to incorporate journal writing into chemical engineering courses. Presents examples of student writing to illustrate the benefits of informal writing. (JRH)

Offers a peek inside the journals kept by a well-known language-arts educator, which he uses as a repository for his thoughts, drawings, articles of interest, notes from conversations with others on his own work, the work of others, and education in general. Shows how the journal is an "audit trail" of its owner's learning. (SR)

An elementary school foreign language teacher reflects on her first year and a half of being a Spanish foreign language in the elementary school (FLES) teacher. Highlights challenges, frustrations, and positive aspects of the job. (Author/VWL)

Takes a "snapshot" of a senior Literature class to see how all the participants--including the teacher--developed greater sophistication in their reading skills, while simultaneously cultivating their pleasure and appreciation of more challenging texts. Explores other aspects of the "interpretive community" of the classroom,…