The Weekly Blog Post: a How-To Guide

Weekly Blog Assignment

What makes a good blog post? For our purposes, a good blog post is one in which you use this form (public, social, informal writing) to come to new insights and understanding of the course material and how you might apply it. All of us come to knowledge through writing in different ways; over the course of the semester you’ll begin to develop your own style.  Below are some approaches I’d like to see you try throughout the semester: they’re the moves you see smart bloggers making all the time.

• Focus on direct quotations from the text and explicate them.  What is it about it that’s confusing?  clear?  helpful?  what is it’s relationship to the essay/article as a whole?
• Outline major points of the argument
• Locate an outside source (website, picture, video, etc.) and link to it or embed it; explain how it helps you to understand the essay
• Apply one text to another text—literary/cultural/experiential
• Link to other students’ blogs and describe how those posts help you to understand a text
• write in a different voice: how might someone else (the author, an alien, your grandma, etc.) describe the reading?

Blog posts should be at least 300 words long (about 1 typed page).  The first post of the week is due before noon on Wednesday; comments (see below) are due before 11 a.m. on Friday (please comment on the previous week’s posts, not the upcoming week’s posts).  No late posts or comments will be counted toward your grade. You might think about the Wednesday blog post as one that expresses your specific ideas about the reading we’re about to discuss  in class. Consider these questions: What sticks with you?  What did you think when you first read a quote, and how have your ideas changed?  How would you compare the readings?

Remember that although blogging is more informal and personal than academic writing, you are still expected to follow the conventions of standard, academic English. 

What about comments? Once a week, you’ll post comments to two of your classmates’ blogs. A good comment is one that engages with the author’s ideas and gives him/her something else to think about. You may be able to do this in a short paragraph, or it may take you a bit longer. 

Again, here are two guidelines: comment at least once on each author’s blog over the course of the semester *and* this is important!! Keep a list of the blogs and dates where you’ve posted comments. [a couple of ways to do this—when you comment, post the locations of those comments to your own page (e.g., “I commented on Cara W. and Sherri’s blogs today) or write one post titled “Comments” and edit it weekly (e.g., “1/25—commented at Cara W.’s and Sherri’s. 1/31—commented at Ryan’s and John’s,” etc.).  At midterm and at the end of the semester, I’ll ask you to turn in a “Check-In” that documents all of your posts and comments.

It may be helpful to view My Year of Star Trek and Critics In College to observe different ways of engaging with course material. 

Remember to check the class blog for weekly prompts.