To resolve any lingering confusions or ambiguities about your blogging responsibilities, I have gathered statements from three different documents:
1. (from Oral presentations assignment): All members of the class will post to their blogs once a week, usually a response to one of the stories read during the week. Topics are open, but one good suggestion is to begin with an idea that came up in class and extend it, offering your own thoughts and taking the discussion of the topic a little further. Thus, your individual responsibility will be to read all stories, serve once as an analyst, once as essayist, two or three times as commenter, and post to your own blog weekly (except in the week for which you are an essayist).
2. (from Short story project #2 assignment): As you read new stories in your search for the perfect contemporary short story, I encourage you to post short responses to
them as part of your weekly blogs commenting on our assigned short stories.
3. (from the course syllabus):
The primary forum for written work is your blog. You are required to post weekly blog entries relating to the literature studied in the classroom. Your blogs will receive a grade, accounting for 30% of each quarter’s grade. Blog entries should be approximately 500 words in length (please indicate word count in parentheses at the end of each entry). I will not, however, grade by length alone; rather, quantity will be one of four criteria, along with regularity of entries, style, and originality of content.
Occasionally I will ask you to respond to particular prompts or questions on my blog, but often there is no set topic for your weekly entries. Rather, I ask you to find an element of the assigned reading that interests you and discuss it thoughtfully. This comment may take many forms, a few of which are suggested here:
• Discuss a character’s actions, words, personality, moral values, or humanity.
• Comment on the writer’s style, use of language, tone, irony, or imagery.
• Consider a topic or idea raised in class discussion, trying to go beyond what has already been stated.
• Raise and discuss a question about the text under consideration.
• Discuss the importance or meaning of a key passage or scene from the reading.
• For longer works, show how a scene or passage develops a theme or pattern identified in class.
•Make a comparison between a scene, character, or idea from the literature and something from another source or from your own experience
• Use an idea from my blog or from that of one of your classmates as a point of departure for your response.
• Locate relevant research material on the web, post a link to the site on your blog, and discuss your choice.
1. (from Oral presentations assignment): All members of the class will post to their blogs once a week, usually a response to one of the stories read during the week. Topics are open, but one good suggestion is to begin with an idea that came up in class and extend it, offering your own thoughts and taking the discussion of the topic a little further. Thus, your individual responsibility will be to read all stories, serve once as an analyst, once as essayist, two or three times as commenter, and post to your own blog weekly (except in the week for which you are an essayist).
2. (from Short story project #2 assignment): As you read new stories in your search for the perfect contemporary short story, I encourage you to post short responses to
them as part of your weekly blogs commenting on our assigned short stories.
3. (from the course syllabus):
The primary forum for written work is your blog. You are required to post weekly blog entries relating to the literature studied in the classroom. Your blogs will receive a grade, accounting for 30% of each quarter’s grade. Blog entries should be approximately 500 words in length (please indicate word count in parentheses at the end of each entry). I will not, however, grade by length alone; rather, quantity will be one of four criteria, along with regularity of entries, style, and originality of content.
Occasionally I will ask you to respond to particular prompts or questions on my blog, but often there is no set topic for your weekly entries. Rather, I ask you to find an element of the assigned reading that interests you and discuss it thoughtfully. This comment may take many forms, a few of which are suggested here:
• Discuss a character’s actions, words, personality, moral values, or humanity.
• Comment on the writer’s style, use of language, tone, irony, or imagery.
• Consider a topic or idea raised in class discussion, trying to go beyond what has already been stated.
• Raise and discuss a question about the text under consideration.
• Discuss the importance or meaning of a key passage or scene from the reading.
• For longer works, show how a scene or passage develops a theme or pattern identified in class.
•Make a comparison between a scene, character, or idea from the literature and something from another source or from your own experience
• Use an idea from my blog or from that of one of your classmates as a point of departure for your response.
• Locate relevant research material on the web, post a link to the site on your blog, and discuss your choice.
