1. Elizabeth Franklin Lewis University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy May 12-13, 2010 Promoting Creative Thinking Through UMW Blogs

2. History of an advanced writing course in Spanish: Evolved from advanced Spanish grammar course that was WI to advanced writing (still WI) that fulfills the “process” portion of ALP general education requirement

3. Goals: To improve every student’s writing in Spanish from use of grammar and syntax, to tlexical choices, and the development of a more sophisticated style encourage a deeper engagement with writing and with language provide students tools for life-long learning in Spanish support students’ individual career and personal goals foster creative solutions to problems UMW Blogs helped me do all of the above!

4. The class blog: http://span413.umwblogs.org A place where the class worked as a group workshop model examples of Spanish grammatical and lexical concepts in action instructions and examples for individual blogs

5. Individual blogs Portfolio model Final project on topic of students’ choosing (pages) Daily/weekly work (posts) “Entradas”—developed ideas for project “Ejemplos de gramática”—grammar in action “Vocabulario”—a running list of useful words in Spanish associated with the project Organized these 3 sections with categories Literatura y dicatura en Chile Bienvenidos al restauranteespañol Salvador Dalí y Federico García Lorca El mate en la culturaargentina El mundo de Otto (Haiku) La Guerra del Narco de México El burro versus el toro

6. Future of the course: Although I have in mind ways to improve the course, I plan to continue using the blog-portfolio format. It helps students develop the various components that create good (or at least better) writing in Spanish and connects those parts together better for them It provides them with important tools that will enable them to continue growing as writers and thinkers on their own Blogs foster active and creative thinking and learning in students and make their writing more relevant and meaningful.