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Blogging:  community writing to understand the literature

Online journals or “blogs” are fast becoming the medium of students today to post their thoughts, ideas and opinions to the online community.  Using blogs in a literature class fuses the traditional thought provoking journal writing with a community based, hands on publishing format.

Activity:  You will use the web blogs to post questions, opinions, ideas, thoughts, etc. about the literature to share your journals and respond to each other’s journals.  Journal writing has long been a useful tool in writing/literature classes to allow a place to reflect on the ideas or present questions raised by the readings.  However, journal writing is most often a solitary process and one that only includes interaction between individual and me. The blog format however, allows interaction between members of the class and me.  My goal is that you will see yourselves as part of the academic discourse of writers/readers and learn from one another as we work together to make meaning from the literature.

Assignment:

• create a blog for the semester (See below for blog set-up).
• post a minimum of 100 words in your journal and 100 words in comments/response to the journals of others each week.
• write on any of the readings assigned for the week you are posting
• respond to any posts.

Technology requirements:

You must have internet access and an email account to sign up.  If you do not have an email account, see me.

Blog set up:

Blogger.com is a free, web based journal publishing site. 

Follow the steps below to set up your blog

go to blogger.com

1. under the box “create your own blog!” click on the “start now!” button
2. create an account, and sign up
3. create a url for your blog

tip:  This will be your web address—pick something easy to remember, but not something that will easily confuse people (i.e. my address is   http://FilipinoAmericanLiterature.blogspot.com).  Once you create a url you can’t change it.

4. Create your blog!  Pick a design template. The template is the design your blog will have.  You can change your template at any time.  Browse through the templates to find one you like.  I chose “Sand Dollar.”
5. Post a welcome on your page.
6. Preview your post
7. Publish your post.
8. View in a new window
9. congratulations!  You now have a weblog.