The Purpose of Your Individual Blog

Why Blog?

One key activity as a student in a course is to keep a running notebook of your ideas, reactions, insights, questions, and problems that arise as you work through the subject matter of your course. And one important feature of typical student interaction in a class is small group work.

Your Individual Blog in our class is designed to meet both of these purposes: In it you have a central location for your notes, lists, collected images, links to remember, and so on. Think of it as both a notebook and a scrapbook. Simultaneously, because your blog exists in a public space, your groupmates (to be assigned) can respond directly in the comment section of your blog each time you post an entry. So your blog serves as both an individual gathering space for exploration and as a communal space for interaction and joint learning.

What I’m Looking for in Your Blog

[400 words minimum per entry after your introductory post]

I have provided you with another page that contains extensive tutorial videos to guide you through the setting up and development of your blog. At this point on this page my goal is to tell you exactly WHAT I want you to do in your blog entries.

I am not looking specifically for personal diary or journal-type entries but preferably notes that will help you present your insights regarding the content, form, and/or context of the work you are discussing.

Your notes should be primarily analytical, exploratory, and explanatory (“By ‘Quality’ Pirsig means . . .”) rather than simply judgmental (“I really hate Pirsig” or “I really love Pirsig.”). This does not mean that your personal experiences are not valid—and you can certainly include them here—but your primary purpose is to ground your responses in a detailed examination of the text, including our filmic texts (or movies), and the class conversation (including my explanatory videos).

You might discuss some or all of the following elements of the written material at hand, but do not get stuck on one approach if it isn’t leading you in the most productive and creative direction:

• What seems to be the author’s thesis or main point?
• Which concepts and examples seem most important?
• What (if anything) don’t you understand about the work?
• What logical, rhetorical, poetic, or other aesthetic strategies does the author employ in order to support that point?
• What questions do you have regarding the work or the author?
• Does the work help you in any way as you seek your own path(s) to truth, understanding, and love?

How to Post

In order to do this, I am providing you with another video link that will show you the what and the how in action. And since you’re a member of a small group of blogmates, I will show you exactly what I have in mind for you as you comment on your blogmates’ posts:

Creating Blog Entries

To sum up the key points from the video above, you must first write your entry in your individual blog on Blogger (or whichever framework you end up choosing) and THEN copy the URL for that entry and paste it into your Blackboard blog.

This way, while we are not using Blackboard for posting the blog entries themselves (because the Blackboard visual formatting is very crude and limiting), your posting of your blog links into Blackboard allows you to share your entry more easily with your blogmates and me AND (very important!) get your entries counted in the Blackboard grading center.

Things to Keep in Mind

Plagiarism counts for blogs, too! In the University’s definition of plagiarism they include this: “iv. Using other intellectual property in a work without appropriate citations, permissions, or rights (when applicable). Intellectual property includes but is not limited to images, videos, software programs, computer code, or pieces of music.” So whatever source you might be using (or copying) in your blog, be sure to give proper credit.

A good page discussing this issue in terms of posting images is here: “11 Best Practices for Including Images in Your Blog Posts.”

Updated Info on Posting Your URLs on Blackboard

As I have explained earlier, for you to get credit for your blog entries and for your groupmates to find them in order to comment on them, you need to post the URLs into Blackboard for each and every new blog entry you write.

If you don’t post a new URL each time in Blackboard, then I can’t find each one and you can’t get credit for all of them.

I have created two videos to explain this very important process to you, so please be sure to watch them:

• Creating URL Hyperlinks in Blackboard
• Making Sure to Post Every New URL to Blackboard