Weekly Blogging

Every week, you are asked to make a blog post. Blog posts are due on Fridays by the end of the day, but you can write them at any point during the week, including before class.

I’m asking you to make these posts because we learn better when we pause to reflect on our activities; things that didn’t seem important at the time can come to feel much more significant. This kind of reflection also helps us to come up with new creative ideas, which will be useful as you work on your exploration assignments.

Blogging every week will give you a record of your time in class that you will be able to look back on, tracing the progress of your thoughts and ideas from the beginning of the semester to its end.

Your blog posts should answer one or more of the following questions:

• What was a particularly memorable element of this week’s readings, discussions, and/or activities – or of you classmates’ blogs? What did you learn?
• What was a passage in the reading that made you sit up and take notice? Why?
• Were discussions or readings from class relevant to a different part of your life this week? Why?
• Did you bring up ideas or examples from class in conversation with people outside our class this week? How or why?
• What more would you like to explore about this material?
• What did you NOT like about the material for this week? How would you challenge it, and why?

Write at least 250 words.

Each blog entry is worth 10 points, and blog posts are worth 10% of your grade in total. Your two lowest blog scores will not be counted. (Yes, this does mean you can skip two blog posts and not have it affect your grade – but don’t forget and skip more than two!)

Blogs posted late will receive half points.