Please set up your blog using Marymount's WordPress installation, and read over this helpful advice about blogging. This term, I am asking each of you to write in your blog (at least) twice a week on subjects related to this class and our reading--a theoretical post, about the critical and contextual ideas we're studying, and an analytical post, that applies some of those ideas to Bishop's poetry. Additionally, you must respond to each of your peers on at least two separate occasions throughout the term. The goal of this substantial assignment is to offer you an opportunity to record your thoughts and to engage in an ongoing critical discussion about what you are learning. This assignment also offers you the opportunity to practice your analytical skills, learn a new technology, and consider how you will present your work to a public audience. Your posts may form pre-writing work for the two formal essays, as well! As we discussed in class, each post should be about 500 words long.

Due dates and grading:

The night before our class meeting, your blog post is due--this gives me the time to read your work, and your peers will have time to reply to your posts. Unless otherwise noted, the first should cover the assigned theoretical readings, and the second, the poems you're reading.

I will give full credit to complete posts submitted in a timely fashion that reflect a clear engagement with the material. This means that your posts should suggest to me that you have read and have grappled with the material--you do not need to understand it completely, but you need to make a focused, supported, clear attempt to understand it.

Additionally, you must respond to each of your peers on at least two separate occasions throughout the term--this will be graded in your participation score, and to earn full marks, your response should be thoughtful and it should offer clarification or constructive criticism.

Topics:

I do not want to see just summary in these posts. but rather a balanced, thoughtful response that reflects your own interests. For the theoretical posts, you might choose to reflect on the central idea of the theoretical reading, describe what you do and don't understand about it, what you like or find useful about it, or consider its relationship to other theoretical readings assigned. For the analytical posts, you should attempt to offer an interpretation (of one or two of the assigned Bishop poems) that reflects your theoretical awareness. In each case, be sure to use direct quotes or cited paraphrases whenever possible!

Other sources:

I want to see your ideas in these posts, not someone else's! Please only use and refer to the assigned materials to inform your posts. If you use a quote or an idea culled from these readings, it must be documented appropriately through in-text citations.

Additional posts:

As noted above, you must respond to each of your peers twice throughout the term. However, if you would like to post even more--about interesting, relevant websites or other things pertinent to the class, I will offer extra credit. You may earn up to five points on top of your final grade for effective blogging, which can also include responding to others beyond the requirements for the course.

Links to other webpages, blog functionality, &c:

Remember that the web is, at its best, a site for dialog and sharing, and links offer you one way to do this. I encourage you to add links to your posts that take your reader to other web-based materials.

I am also grading your ability to learn and adapt the technology to your purposes. A student can choose to earn only a portion of those points by setting up a basic WordPress blog; however, the more effectively you use its other features--by adding functionality in widgets, by tagging your posts, by categorizing them, by using your blog for other classes or to work through your paper ideas, and so on, the more points you will earn.