Blogging the Research Process: A Blog Post Rubric

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm trying to incorporate blogging in the research process in the hope that it will result in a better final product. I'm thinking that by requiring students to invest more in the note taking process through blogging, that they will be better informed and feel more confident when writing their drafts.
My students spent last week gathering articles on a topic of their choosing that deals with a problem in society. They displayed these articles on their individual weblogs through an RSS box. This week they are being given the choice between using traditional note cards, or incorporating their research into five blogs. I have given them a sample article to blog about, but the directions are coming from me on this and not them.

For the next step, they will have to choose the direction their blog posts will take. This will obviously be based on the articles they have gathered. I will also be presenting a rubric to them that I hope I can use in other situations as well. You are welcome to use and adapt this rubric (I've adapted some of the language from the New Jersey HSPA Language Arts Rubric). All I ask is that you give me some feedback on what worked and what didn't so that we all can develop an evaluation instrument that might prove useful in the classroom.