Blogging (Blogs @ Baruch):

For the class blog, each student is responsible for

1. Initiating one blog (of at least 200 words) that other students in the class can respond to. If you initiate, or host a blog, you are also responsible for jump-starting class discussion that day by discussing some part of your blog or some question/questions that you posed in your blog.  
2. Being a respondent to (commenting on) at least four blogs throughout the semester. Your responses/comments to a blog post may be shorter than 200 words.

Each student will be assigned a reading for which she or he must post a brief response on our course blog and moderate the online discussion that ensues. Here are the requirements for your blog response of 200 words or more:

1. Your response should not be merely a summary of the assigned reading. Rather, you should analyze the reading in a way that opens up that text for discussion (for instance, by concentrating on a particular theme or pointing out a pattern you noticed when you read).
2. You should also use quotations from the text in your post. You can use quotations to support an idea, to demonstrate something you observed in the text, to point to a noteworthy line or phrase you find worthy of discussion/close reading–or even to note something you were uncertain or confused about.
3. At the end of the post, make sure to pose 1-3 questions you want the class to think about for the next day and discuss in class. I encourage you as well to ask questions about lines and parts of the text that confuse you or that you want other students’ feedback on. You should bring up these questions in the next class as a way to jump-start discussion.

Aside from those requirements, feel free to be creative: You may want to compare the assigned reading to another text we have read or to something you’ve read or seen outside of class, to bring in relevant historical information and context (as long as you cite it, by linking to where you got the information and giving the name of the writer/text) or to incorporate images, video, GIFs (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.

Blog hosts should post by 5pm the day before class; respondents should do so before class begins OR while we are still discussing the text in class generally.

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.).