Blogs
Blogs
A Blog, or more formally, a web log, is simply an on-line journal. Like journals and notebooks that you may have kept in other classes, a blog is a writing space where you present and share your ideas on and responses to a particular topic. Some blogs are nothing more than quirky on-line diaries. Others offer informed knowledge on politics and government. And still others comment on nature and the environment, such as Anna Mills on Nature Writing and Creek Running North: A web Log by nature and science write Chris Clarke, both listed on the class Resources page. One of the ways we become better readers of literature and more engaged thinkers about the subject we learning is to write frequently about what we read. Therefore, throughout the course, you will maintain your own personal blog.
At times, I will give you specific topics to respond to in your blog. For the majority of your blog writing, though. what your write about is up to you. A successful blog reflects the personality of its writer. Therefore, people will want to read your blog not only for its subject matter but for how you write about that subject, the unique perspectives you take on that subject. Yes, I did write, "people will want to read your blog." Part of the distinguishing feature of a blog is that because it is on-line, it shares the real audience of the world wide web. Other students studying Literature and the Environment or people interested in our books, authors, regions, or topics, may find your blog, enjoy reading it, and even add comments to it. Which brings us to another unique feature of a blog: unlike course journals and notebooks that had an audience of two (you and the instructor), making them a relatively passive, read-only medium, blogs invite readers to add comments, making them interactive and part of a larger conversation. To cultivate a readership, you may want to share the address of your blog with your friends at Skidmore or elsewhere or with your family. Finally, because blogs live on the Web, you can include links to relevant web sites, photographs, and video (you will be amazed at the amount of materials relevant to our course on YouTube).
The focus of your blog is the class readings, but there are many different ways to engage those readings. One approach is to write blog entries about favorite or salient passages from the book, followed by your our reflection and analysis. Another approach is to connect the reading to another context: something you have learned in another class, personal experience, current events, or other readings. Blog entries might also be critical, challenging the ideas of a reading, asking questions of the author, and when possible disproving the writer. These are just suggestions. Think deeply and critically about the readings and make the blog your own.
Throughout the semester, you are to write a minimum of two blog entries a week. In addition, you are to visit and read each other's blogs and write at least one substantive comment per week in a classmate's blog.
To log-in to your individual "Literature and the Environment" blog, click here. Simply use your Skidmore user name and password.
To facilitate your commenting, below is a list of the class members and the URLs for their individual blogs.
Your blogs are both informal and informed by our class discussion. As I plan to do, I hope you will bring ideas into our class disussion that you have read in the blogs or written yourself.
I will be reading the blogs along with you and evaluating them formally three times throughout the semester.