Many different forms of blogs exist, but those that you should be modeling after are blogs that are smart, well-informed, well-written, and personal as well as analytical. While your blog may feel like a diary at times, it is a diary for the world to read — so always keep your audience in mind (even if they haven’t found you yet).
Blogging allows for a great deal of creativity both in writing style and in visual/graphic design, and therefore it is a wonderful channel for self-expression. Blogging allows you to combine and customize your many skills, talents and interests into a format and style that should reflect your distinctive perspective and voice.
Blogs can be witty and serious, personal and political. Bloggers can be both storytellers and news reporters, both cultural commentators about world events and writers of deeply personal memoirs.
How I will grade your blogs
Blogs will be graded on frequency of entries (at least two per week or as assigned) as well as timeliness.
Have you blogged on each of the assigned topics?
Have your blog entries been posted in a timely manner, as assigned? Are you ready to share them in class, if called upon?
Individual blog entries will be graded on
• The length and complexity of the blog — reflecting the amount of time and energy you seem to have put into it.
• The degree to which the topic of your blog entry relates to the course issues (relevance).
• The level of critical thinking represented in your blog entry: not just superficial observations, but deeper analytical thought, making new kinds of connections (don’t just state the obvious) and integrating ideas in new ways. Interrogate the sources of ideas (even — especially — readings assigned for class) and don’t just accept them as truth. Asking questions is far more important than finding definitive answers.
• The degree to which your blog incorporates ideas and concepts from the class readings (this is extremely important): linking to them (as applicable), discussing them, mulling them over, finding examples useful to support or argue with them, and so on.
• The degree to which your blog cross-links to and references other relevant websites and shows that your ideas are interconnected with current thinking about your topic. A few extra minutes doing a web search and reading a few related news articles or web sites can make a big difference in your grade. Be sure to document them.
• The degree to which your blogs are audience oriented: Are you speaking just to the teacher to fulfill a grade requirement? (Wrong answer.) Are you speaking to your classmates? Are you speaking to anyone out there on the web who may happen to read your blog? Be sure, then, to always write in a way that fully explains what you are referring to so that anyone can understand your blog.
• The degree to which you demonstrate an increasing command (as the course goes on) of blog layout, design principles, and technical skills to include links, embed photos and videos, and so on. Break your long paragraphs down into readable “chunks”; use bulleting for lists. Insert photos or images to break up long text sections…
• And of course, clear writing that is relatively error-free and that is appropriate for self-expression on an academic blog: good grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure. Blogs may be a bit less formal than academic essays, but they should not be written in text-speak or extreme slang. You are encouraged to write in the first person voice (using “I”) and you may use contractions to make your style more conversational and personal.
And don't forget that blogs are living, breathing, interactive conversation sites--so be sure to participate in comments and discussion on the blogs of others and also on your own.
Happy blogging!
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