LB 492: The Weekly Blog Assignment

Welcome to your class blogs! In these blogs, we will share our initial impressions of the readings, videos, films, podcasts and other materials. We will also use them as a space to share and reflect on some of the creative work you’ll do in class.

These blogs are part of our weekly routine. Unless otherwise indicated, we will post blog prompts Thursdays by 10 am ET, and your blog posts should be posted each Sunday by 6pm. You should comment on at least two other posts by Tuesday at 11:59 pm ET.

Each post should be about 500 words, and should be well formatted and clearly written. The prompts will usually do two things. First, they will guide you toward the ideas from the week’s materials that we want you to consider, and second, they will offer some kind of writing challenge, for example, using quotes to support claims or creating a thesis statement. We also hope you will explore the blog post as a unique format for sharing ideas by including images, embedding videos, and using hyperlinks to lead readers to your sources and additional information.

A few things to note:

1. Medium is a public forum, so you should only share things you here that you don’t mind being out in the world. For example, you may not wish to share your name, age, gender, etc. on a public forum. This is fine. We (Drs. Halpern and Hinko) will just need a way to identify your blog as yours to give you credit for your work.
2. Because this is a public forum, you’ll want to put your best presentation of yourself forward. This does not mean you need to get everything right, but it does mean you’ll want to make sure you proofread your work and turn in something you can be proud of.
3. These blogs are a place to wrestle with challenging content and complicated ideas. There are no right answers to be found in these posts. They are a place for you to grapple with the material and to try to make sense of it together.
4. We DO expect you to show your work. This means drawing on specific ideas, examples, and quotations from the materials. You are demonstrating the work you have done to try to understand and to reflect on the material.
5. We also expect you to adhere to the code of acedemic conduct. You must cite the material with full citations or with soft attributions, where appropriate. When using formal citations, we prefer APA style. Always let your reader know whose ideas you are conveying. If they are your own, great. If they are someone else’s, be sure there is no mistaking who they belong to.
6. You will be awarded points for blog posts based on two criteria. 1) did you follow the instructions? These include the mundane bureaucratic details, such as: Did you post on time and respond to others’ posts on time? Is your post an appropriate length? Did you follow special instructions regarding tagging or labeling the post? They also include more substantive instructions: Did you address the prompt correctly and completely? 2) Is it clear that you have read/listened to/watched all of the required material and have done so as an active learner? While it is not necessary or even possible to do all of the following in each post, there are a number of ways to demonstrate your engagement with the texts. For example: Have you tried to reflect on the ideas in the materials and relate them to your own experience? Have you made connections between various readings? Has what you read challenged or reinforced your own ideas, beliefs, or experiences? How so? Can you connect the material to current events in some meaningful way that illuminates either the materials or the events or both?