Getting Started

In the spirit of the collegiality and conversation exhibited by the Octalogs, you'll contribute to a course blog. I envision this blog as a place where you take responsibility for thinking about the readings with classmates to facilitate learning in a cooperative community. In this communal space, you're responsible to the texts we read and to one other growing understanding of course material.

The purpose of the blog is two-fold: (1) to give you a collaborative space for thinking through and working out difficult concepts, and (2) to extend our conversations beyond the classroom into another modality. 

Your posts and comments will help create and chart our readings across rhetorical traditions.These posts and comments may be some of the most challenging writing you do in this class, and they should be smartly and thoughtfully composed. You might offer informed opinions about the assigned readings, ask and explore questions, counter or offer other other ways of interpreting a text, expand on issues we didn't cover in class, or you might make applications of our texts to other texts you read or encounter. You might also consider more broadly how reading the text contributes to your understanding of the course goals or other readings in the course, putting texts in conversation with one another. In other words, don’t spend time talking about what you don’t understand; rather, work towards understanding through your engagement in composing posts and comments.  

Guidelines

• You'll be split into two groups (A & B) and assigned to post or comment, alternating weeks. Pay attention the schedule for deadlines for blog posts and comments.
• Posts are due each assigned Monday by noon if you wish to receive credit for posts that week. 
• Comments are due each assigned Wednesday by noon if you want credit for comments that week.
• Your weekly post should not exceed 500 words. Weekly comments (at least 2) are likely to be briefer than posts yet should still be robust in thinking and push conversation forward.
• Title your posts to give your readers context for what they are reading. Titles should reflect what you have thought or are trying to argue, rather than merely restate the name of the reading you are responding to. 
• Posts and comments should be somewhat polished; remember that you are writing for a public audience. Paragraphing, spelling, and accuracy all matter. 
• "Post ahead" in anticipation of Monday's readings; however, at times it will make sense refer back to readings we already discussed. 
• Remember that academic integrity applies to the posts and comments on this site, too. Please refer clearly to the text you are discussing, be accurate with names and titles, and include page numbers where relevant. If you refer to someone else's (published) reading of a text, mention this outside source, and feel free to link to relevant texts.

If you're interested, here's an article on why blogging can still matter even if it's "old" technology. http://praxis.technorhetoric.net/tiki-index.php?page=PraxisWiki%3A_%3AWhy+I+Still+Blog

If you want to check out the tenor of our discussion in English 450 last year, check out this site: http://engl450msufall2014.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html