Class Blogs

A significant portion of the writing, thinking, and collaboration of this semester will take place in the blogosphere! All students will have their own blog at Blogger.com and these blogs will be connected via the course blog Our Place in Nature.

In this way we can share thinking, publish our work and ideas to a broader community than just our class members, and connect our work to the enormous resources of the web.

Blog posts should always be posted by 10 pm the day before the class they are due.  Responses to blogs can be posted up until class time.

A blog is a "web log" -- in its most essential form, a commentary on other sites on the web. Since our class will draw on on-line research and includes extended investigation of current issues and cultural resources addressing climate change, our class work is, appropriately, web commentary. Our blogs are "academic blogs" focused on the work in this class, rather than "personal blogs." (Create a second blog that you can use as a personal blog if that interests you.)

Writing on the blog should be thoughtful and careful, appropriate not only to the academic project of the class, but mindful of the possibility that your writing is published to a world-wide audience. 300 words per blog post is about right for a typical post. Blogs should be both personal and academic. They should be visually attractive. Each post should include at least one image and several links to other sites on the web.

I suggest first writing blog entries in your own word processing program before cutting and pasting into the blog. The blog is an easy to use space that allows you to revise and to receive commentary by your classmates and other readers. Soon you will be comfortable with the format.

You are expected to write thoughtful and insightful blog entries every week, and to write content-meaningful commentaries on your classmates entries -- eight to ten times per week. After specific blog assignments, I will visit your blog to record your work and all of your commentaries on other blogs in the grade book.