This Week's Recap: Building Our Blogging Muscles

I just finished reading this week's student blogs and want to call attention to some of the interesting stuff out there. In terms of challenges being faced in the first two weeks, many commuters are having parking issues (see Shelby's blog as one example), and many residents are having roomate issues (see Alexis' blog for an example). A lot of people also touched on issues of time management (Julie's blog is one example), and we are going to spend a lot of time with this topic in the weeks to come: readings, discussion, and developing some practical strategies. The key is to find what works best for you and then implement that: Ryan, in response to all the distractions in his dorm, was finally able to find the "sweet spot" for studying, and Jeanette realized that based on her own learning styles, it is best to do work earlier in the day rather than at night when she is too tired to do good work. Both of those examples seem to echo the concept of "Work Smart" because they capitalize on what works best. Finally, Elena reminds us in her blog that there's nothing wrong with asking questions in order to surmount some challenges, which I think is an important reminder for all of us.

In terms of the formats of the blogs, I noticed that a few people tried out a few new templates, a few people have started commenting on other people's blogs, some posts included funny comics, many included great links, and most included pictures. Many cited the articles that the post was responding to and even provided quotes (for a good example of how to format quotes in a blog post, check out Nicky's blog.)

A few important housekeeping notes:

1) Give each post an interesting title.
2) Put titles of articles in quotation marks.
3) Do not simply summarize the reading! Engage! Question! Apply! (For example, Kristen applied a concept from the reading to a specific real-world example, Melissa asked an inquiry question in her post and answered it, and a number of people weighed two concepts from two different readings against one another.)
4) Work Smart! Don't save both post assignments until Saturday!
5) This week, a number of people didn't complete one or both posts by deadline and receive zeroes for those assignments. If your post isn't long enough, doesn't answer the assigned question, or doesn't include either pictures or links, you receive a check minus. If you are worried about your blog grade, come check on it during office hours.
6) Next week's blog assignment: 1 post on Outcasts United (either respond to the author's talk on Wednesday or connect something in the book to topics we have been reading about and discussing for this class) and 1 post that is free choice.