General Guidelines
The following simple blog assignment guidelines will insure that the blog posts overall have the desired level of thought and complexity and will insure equity in the evaluation process. Remember that the blogs are an experimental writing space for the purposes of our course; therefore, it is appropriate (and sometimes necessary) to shift the focus of your writing throughout the semester to meet changing audiences and contexts.
- The blog project includes 10 weekly posts plus a design plan, about page, and reflective analysis paper for a total of 130 points. See below for a list of exact post due dates.
- Blog posts may vary in length, but by the end of the semester the lengths should break down as follows: 1/3 of posts 500 or more words; 1/3 250 – 500 words; 1/3 100 – 250 words. You will post to your blog every week by Friday at noon. Each post is worth 10 points. One point is subtracted for each day a post is late. One point is subtracted if a post is not tagged and categorized.
- At least half of your posts should contain links to and/or discussion of outside sources–the sources can be text, audio, video, still images, etc. Original photographs or other media you create for a blog post can substitute for an outside source.
- Your blog should be thematically unified; that is, it should have a clearly identifiable topic. Examples of topics are biology, personal finance, contemporary poetry, national politics, cooking, etc. Your blog must take your general theme or topic and narrow it down to fit a specific purpose and audience. For example, a blog on personal finance could target college students as its audience and narrow the purpose to offering advice on how to develop a household budget and stay out of credit card debt.
- Your blog should be informative or critical or a combination of the two. That is, the purpose should be to provide readers with useful information on a topic and/or to provide a critique or analysis of specific issues related to that topic. This does not mean that your blog cannot be creative, entertaining, or funny. Often times social or cultural critique takes the form of humor (think the Simpsons or The Daily Show), and it can also be creative (think of all the works of literature that provide cultural critique).
- If you would like to explore some widely-read blogs to get ideas and inspiration for your own blog, check out the list I’ve put together (see below).
Blog Project components and due dates
blog design plan (10 points)
Thursday, 8/26 at the beginning of class
Design plans are submitted in hard copy form. (roughly 500 words)
After exploring examples of blogs already on the web (see list below), take some time to develop a brief design plan for your proposed blog. You need not answer every question below, and you may address each aspect of the design plan in whatever order you wish. Also, remember that this is an exploratory document–you don’t need to have every aspect of your blog project worked out right now. Blogs often evolve based on the comments readers provide, so your ideas might change throughout the semester.
Your design plan should begin with an analysis of purpose, audience, and context:
- Purpose: Why do you want to communicate to an audience about the issue, topic, or subject you have chosen? Do you want to inform on an issue or provide factual information or instructions or advice? Do you want to offer informed opinions or persuade your audience to adopt your viewpoint or take action on an issue? Are you offering social criticism, for example critiquing American eating habits or television programing? Is your purpose to entertain and if so, why do you think this form of entertainment will be interesting to your audience?
- Audience: Who is your ideal audience? What is the audience’s demographics (age, gender, race, etc.)? What are their interests, hobbies, political and/or social leanings?
- Context: What background knowledge are you assuming your audience will bring to your blog? How do you imagine the situation in which they will read your blog posts: will they be drinking their morning coffee in a comfortable chair, sneaking a break at work, sharing your blog with friends or family?
Also consider the following:
- Medium: Why will your idea work well in a blog space? That is, why do you want to communicate with your audience over an extended period of time through many short posts rather than through one single, unified piece of writing?
- Arrangement: How will you visually organize your blog? What colors, graphics, and organization of information appealed to you when you were exploring the blogs you looked at in class? How might you arrange your posts? For example, if you are writing about music, will you provide audio clips? If you are writing about events (your job at a bookstore, for example), what information do you want to provide in your first post (you might establish recurring characters such as co-workers or regular patrons)? What information might you save for a later post (that your boss is a dunderhead and always features terrible books on the display tables)? Also consider how you will use the category and tagging functions of your blog—these functions help readers search your blog to find the information that they are looking for.
- Strategies: How will you establish your authority or believability as an author? Will you write in a formal, academic style or is it more appropriate to be conversational or funny? Will you provide evidence that you’ve been thinking about and/or researching your topic extensively such as quotes, links to other information on the web, embedded audio, video, or still images? Do you want your posts to appeal to your readers’ sense of logic and objective reasoning or to appeal to emotion or to both?
About page (10 points)
Thursday, 9/2 at the beginning of class
The About page is the first thing you will write on your blog and serves to introduce your readers to you and the topic and purpose of your blog. You need to clearly explain who your target audience is for the blog and why the information and/or analysis you will provide in this space is worth the reader’s precious time. Remember: there is a lot of information available on the web, so you need to give potential readers a reason to spend some of their online time with you on a regular basis. Part of convincing readers to stick with your blog is establishing your ethos or authority as an author. For example, if you are the author of the above described personal finance blog, what gives you the knowledge necessary to advise others in this area? Are you a finance major? Have you personally learned how to live without credit cards? Are you in charge of maintaining the household budget for you and your roommates? Remember that the web is full of sketchy information—give your readers a reason to trust you.
Weekly Posts (10 points each)
All Friday dates refer to the due date for that week’s blog post. Blog posts can be posted at any point during that week. For example, the Friday, 9/17 post can be completed any time after the previous week’s post (from Friday, 9/10 @ 12:01 pm to Friday, 2/19 @ noon). All weekly blog posts are due by Friday at noon.
- Post 1: Friday, 9/10
- Post 2: Friday, 9/17
- Post 3: Friday, 9/24
- Post 4: Friday, 10/1
- Post 5: Friday, 10/7
- Post 6: Friday, 10/15
- Post 7: Friday, 10/22
- Post 8: Friday, 10/29
- Post 9: Friday, 11/5
- Post 10: Friday, 11/12
blog reflective analysis (10 points)
Tuesday, 11/16 at the beginning of class
Reflections are submitted in hard copy form. (roughly 500 words)
In this analytical paper reflect on your experience keeping a blog this semester. Consider questions such as the following:
- Do you think your choice of topic and approach turned out to be appropriate to a blog format?
- What aspects of your blog are you satisfied with and what would you do differently if you were to start over? Why?
- Are there any posts you are particularly proud of? Why?
- How important were other’s comments (or lack thereof) to the overall success of your blog?
- Can you think of other situations in which you would keep a blog in the future? If yes, why and what situations? If no, why not?
- What suggestions would you offer to instructors considering using blogs in their classes?
Blog Examples
Here are links to some blogs that might give you some ideas for your own blogs. I’ve tried to categorize them if possible or to provide a brief description.
If you want to explore on your own, Technorati indexes thousands of blogs, and even has a ranking system. If you come across some interesting ones, let me know and I’ll add them here.
Many blogs also have “blogrolls” where the author of the blog will list other blogs they think their readers might be interested in, so as you’re exploring check out the blogrolls too.
And, I must thank my colleagues from across the country who turned me on to many of the blogs listed here (and apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone): Angela Crow, Jim Kalmbach, Steve Krause, Cheryl Ball, Ben Reynolds, Alec Hosterman, Carrie Finn, Marcy Bauman, Devon Fitzgerald, David Thomas.
Academic Blogs: Rhetoric and Composition (mostly)
Forgotten Canon
Blogenspiel (this blogger is actually a medievalist, but there is a great blogroll that will take you to many other academic blogs)
Books/literature
http://books4breakfast.blogspot.com
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/
This is an official New York Times blog written by the the editors of the paper’s book review.
visual arts
http://artblog.net/
Photography
http://craigwolf.com/news/
a photo blog on landscape and nature photography. What I like about this blog is that the photographer posts photos and discusses the techniques he used.
If you are interested in looking at other photo blogs, explore the following blog index site. Many of these blogs feature photos only and very little text, so they are not exact models for what we will be doing in class, but they can give you an idea what photographers and other visual artists are doing with blogging technology.
http://www.coolphotoblogs.com/
(make sure to click on the “URL” button to go to the actual blogs and not just to the website’s description of them.)
Film and Video
www.daviddylanthomas.com/blog
This is the film blog of David Dylan Thomas, who was super helpful in providing me, a complete stranger with the links to and descriptions of most of the film blogs that follow. This blog got me thinking about films I haven’t thought about in years and made me laugh out loud–that’s a good combination in my book.
http://filmmakermagazine.com/news/category/news/
Independent film
http://www.cinematical.com/
Group blog covering all aspects of the industry
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/
Film Critic, Glenn Kenny, who tends toward more obscure films.
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/
Critic David Poland’s acerbic take on the industry. Good economic analysis and good analysis of the media that covers the industry.
http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/
Interesting for a somewhat religious (but not dogmatic) take on cinema.
http://johnaugust.com
Blog of screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Very interesting. A lot of advice for screenwriters.
http://twitchfilm.net/site/
Good for Asian and horror genres.
Feminism/Women’s issues
http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/
This is a hardcore feminist blog and wickedly funny.
http://www.mothertalkers.com/
A blog about women’s issues and activism related to parenting.
Journalism
http://www.dailykos.com/
This probably one of the most famous liberal political blogs and it has a long list of regular posters, but it is managed by one person, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who founded the blog. Dailykos also has a long and interesting blog role you can check out (scroll to the bottom and you’ll see it on the right-hand side of the page.
As a lefty myself, I don’t have good information on the conservative blogs out there, so if anyone in class knows of a few, let me know and I’ll add them here.
http://icga.blogspot.com/
The title, Informed Comment Global Affairs: a group blog, explains the topic of this one.
http://www.juancole.com/
Juan Cole also writes for ICGA (above), but this is his individual blog.
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/
UK blogger comments on online journalism
Here are some interesting blogs that defy categorization
http://waiterrant.net/
This is a creative (fiction or non-fiction–hard to tell) blog
http://andreaseigel.typepad.com/afternoon/
The blog of author Andrea Seigel. I haven’t read any of her books, but after reading her blog, I want to. All her posts have a cynical, oddly feminist edge to them.
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
People mail in their secrets on postcards and they are posted here.
http://onemillionfootnotes.blogspot.com/
This blog, One Million Footnotes, has recently provided me with random thoughts for my day.
http://www.yarnharlot.com
A blog all about knitting (yes knitting) by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who has written several books on the subject.
