How we'll use the blog

From your freewrites on Monday I gather that many of you have used blogs in the past for various classes--not always in ways that you found particularly helpful. For the purposes of this class the use of blogs is going to be pretty low key. Setting them up took only minimal effort so I'm sure you won't complain if I don't expect you to write a new post after every class or something.

Rather, what I mostly want to use them for is for you a few major things: first, I want to use them for reading responses. The HGW book is only marginally helpful most of the time so I have selected 9 extra readings that we'll be using to give you more pertinent examples of the kinds of writing that you ought to try to emulate or work with. What I'll do is assign the readings around a week ahead of time as well as a writing assignment to go with it. I'll be posting the first after this post.

Second, I'll use the blog for your topic proposals. This makes it a lot easier for me to comment on your proposal and ask for/read your changes in a timely fashion so you can get to writing.

Lastly, we'll use them occasionally for smaller writing assignments and for some out of class discussion. We'll work this one out as we go.

Of course you can feel free to use the blog for other things as well. I have you all in my RSS feed (I use google reader) so I'll see when you post things. If you want to post questions there, thoughts about the class (yes, I will be reading them and I know who you are O_o), or any sort of freewrites, etc thats always fine. I might even respond.

I hope this makes for a helpful (or at least tolerable) addition to the class.