Each week you will write a blog post on your website as a form of journaling, which is an epistolary practice. Blogs are your spaces for your own informal and formal writing. One advantage of using blogs for journaling is it supports multiple forms of media, such as images, videos, links, etc. This allows you to bring in more of your own creativity to your communication. Blogs and Hypothes.is also include tools for commenting and discussion, enabling students to engage their ideas in conversation with others, either within our own class community (using #fys183) or more openly on the internet.
The goals of blogging or keeping an online journal for this class are:
- To encourage regular writing and to build confidence in writing
- To develop the analytical mind by ingraining the Five Analytical Moves and other analytical tools
- To make connections between readings, letters, class material, discussions, and personal observations
- To raise questions and issues that will help fuel and contribute to classroom discussions
- To generate ideas for future assignments and essays
- To provide a forum for inquiry, analysis, and evaluation of ideas
Writing an effective blog post:
- Have an interesting, engaging title that helps draw the reader in.
- Reflect thoughtfully and analytically on the week’s reading, discussions, activities, and ideas.
- consider the readings/discussions/activities in relation to their context;
- write about an aspect of the readings/discussions/activities that you find interesting, strange, confusing, surprising, or you have questions about;
- formulate insightful questions about the readings/discussions/activities and then attempt to answer those questions;
- respond to another student’s post, building upon it, disagreeing with it, or rethinking it.
- Possible Writing Prompts (or ways to help you analyze text and write analytically):
- Some weeks, such as for Week 1, you may be provided with a specific prompt or question to write about.
- Use 3-2-1 prompts, such as:
- points / questions / AHA
- 3 : three interesting/strange/confusing/surprising points
- 2 : formulate two questions from the readings
- 1 : what was your one AHA moment
- OR
- points / quotations / question
- 3 : three interesting/strange/confusing/surprising points
- 2 : two quotations (include the source)
- 1 : question
- points / questions / AHA
- Utilize the analytical tools such as the 5 Analytical Moves (summary posted in our course site)
- Other analytical tools
- There is no set minimum or maximum word length for your posts. Early posts may be less in length, but as your thinking and writing process improve, your posts may grow in length. Conversely, as you develop your writing process, your writing may also become more efficient.
- Be sure to assign the “fys183” and “weekly writing” categories.
- Add 2-3 tags/keywords that help add meaning to your post.
Submitting Your Post to Canvas
While you will be doing your writing on your own site, you will need to submit your assignment in Canvas. There will be posts for each week of our course. This one assignment will capture each post, but you will need to “re-submit” each week. To submit your post, copy and paste the post URL for the assignment submission.
Due Date
Weekly writing posts are due by the start of class the following Tuesday.
