Blogging (Blogs @ Baruch):
Each student is responsible for initiating at least one post on our course blog. This post must be at least 200 words. Respondents (i.e. readers who offer a comment on a post) to the initial post may offer responses that are shorter than 200 words. Your post should not be merely a summary of the assigned reading. Rather, try to analyze the reading in a way that opens up that text for discussion (for instance, by concentrating on a particular theme, or a quotation, or a scene, or a character’s actions, etc.). Alternatively, if the assigned text raises questions for you, pose one or two of those questions as a centerpiece of your blog. Foregrounding one’s confusion about a text is likewise a fantastic way to generate online discussions (and, perhaps, share answers). You may also want to compare the assigned reading to another text we have read. Please feel free to be creative and incorporate images, video, audio (or any other appropriate multimedia material) in your posting. Try to think of your blog as a way to express your ideas about the reading assignment, and of drawing your classmates into an online discussion that helps illuminate that text and expand the way(s) in which you think about it. Each student is responsible for initiating one blog and being a respondent to at least four blogs throughout the semester. (I keep count 🙂 ).
Blogging Protocols:
Although our blog is online, it will be private. The aim in doing so is to promote a safe place for you to freely express your thoughts and practice your online writing style. Our goal is to create a space for respectful, considerate, and thoughtful discussion and debate. Thus, please make sure that what you write, as well as what you might link to, is not offensive to anyone in our classroom, or in the hypothetical blogosphere. Blogs are often informal, though some tend to be more formal. While I want you practice your formal writing style (complete sentences, correct spelling and grammar, standard English, etc.), I also want you to feel free to experiment with more informal styles (using sentence fragments, slang, a conversational, colloquial tone, etc.). However, please avoid swear words and language that might come across as offensive. Since our professional lives also encompass our online presence, I urge you to use your posts and comments as an opportunity to begin (or continue) shaping an online presence that promotes you as “a thinking person,” one who engages with the subject(s) at hand, and does so in ways that help you evolve into a person adept at fashioning a public online presence.