As before, if you have kept up with your blogging, this assignment will be a relatively straightforward operation. If you have some catching up to do, here is your opportunity to do so.
My intention is that preparing your blog portfolio, revisiting past entries, filling in the gaps in your own written responses, and participating in follow-up conversations with your peers will be a useful review for your final.
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title that emphasizes
what you feel you have accomplished so far this term. Begin with a brief
statement for the benefit of a reader who doesn't know the purpose of the assignment or what the class is
supposed to cover. (I call this page the "cover page" or the "cover blog entry" for your portfolio.)
2) Organize the material you have posted on your blog to support your statement about what you learned.
When
including a blog entry, write some significant words, such as the title
of the entry or the reason you are including it in your blog, and
turn those significant words into a link. (Avoid using neutral words like "click here" or "Chapter 2 homework" for the links... make your words
communicate the insight contained in your blog entry: "Emily Dickinson
is a sick cookie" or maybe you could use a few words from the text you discuss as your link: "Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!")
Sort and organize your entries into the
following broad categories:
- Coverage and Timeliness
- Did you blog something for each assigned text, with a link back to the course website? (Example: Maddie G.'s "Bittersweet Victory")
- Did
you write some of your entries early, or at least on time? (Pretty much
every entry you wrote that doesn't belong in some other category could
go here, if it was written on time.)
- Depth (Did you occasionally blog at greater length?)
- Discussion (Did you spark and contribute to conversations that took place on your own blog?)
- Interaction (Here are some suggestions... if you don't have
any entries that meet these categories, you could try to demonstrate
interaction in some other way.)
- On your own blog, did you occasionally mention -- and link to -- valuable things that your peers wrote on their blogs?
- Do you include links from your blog entry to the course web page?
- Have you done outside research, and posted links to what you found elsewhere on the internet?
- Would your blog entries make sense to a stranger who happened
across your blog?
Some ways you can help your blog make sense to an outside reader:
- Do your entries say what book you are quoting from?
- Would the reader know that your posting is part of a classroom
discussion?
- Would the reader be able to follow a link from your entry to
a place where other bloggers are discussing the same text?
- Xenoblogging
(Think of this as good cizenship. Xeno means
"foreigner" or "visitor." So xenoblogging is the blogging that you do
away from your own blog -- in the comments you post on a peer's weblogs,
or the course website.)
Note: what follows is a menu of helpful
suggestions, not a to-do checklist. If you have some commenting to do,
keep these possibilities in mind.
- The comment primo (Be the first to post a comment
on a peer's blog entry, and take credit for getting a conversation
started and keeping it gong.)
- The comment grande (Maybe your peer wrote, "I wonder what Hawthorne's family life was like," and maybe
you looked it up and posted the answer in a long, informative comment on your
peer's blog.)
- The riposte gracious (Respectfully disagree with
something a classmate has said, by providing and explaining a quotation
that seems to support a different interpretation.)
- The revision elegant (Give credit to someone for raising a point that led you to rephrase your statement or rethink your position.)
- The reversal elegant (A stronger version of the "revision
elegant" -- give credit to someone for bringing up a point that led you
to change your mind.)
- Wildcard (Did you use your blog to publish anything
important to you, something that is related to the course material, but
not something that was specifically assigned by any professor?)
- You could write an alternate ending to a story we read.
- You could write
your own parody or tribute; you could write about how the Griffin
Technology Advantage program has affected your learning.
- You could write
about almost anything at all, so long as you can, in your portfolio,
connect it to the material we are learning in class
3) Submit your portfolio by posting a link to it here, on this
page. ("This is my portfolio" is far less engaging than "I learned
about X and Y, but I'm still struggling with Z." The words you post
along with your link are your first chance to get your reader thinking
about your main point, even before he or she clicks your link.)
4) Blogging Portfolio Rubric
- F: No blog portfolio submitted on this page; or portfolio is a list of unsorted links, without being organized to defend a claim about what you learned.
- D: Good-faith effort to identify and reflect on your online contributions,
though those contributions may have significant gaps, may show signs of
being rushed, and may not be present in your portfolio in the form of
working links; a stranger who came across your portfolio entry might be confused as to what's going on.
- C: Useful and informative summary of what you have learned from
your online discussions so far, with working links that the reader can follow in
order to find evidence; a stranger would have some idea of the purpose of your blog portfolio.
- B: Thoughtful and well-organized explanation of how your
online discussions have contributed to your learning so far,
well-supported by links to relevant blog entries; a stranger who comes
across your blog would be informed and perhaps even enlightened, getting
some sense of how all this blogging contributes to your understanding
of the bigger issues we have been studying.
The Bs would be even more useful and informative than the C submissions, an also include more informative linked text (that is, instead of the merely functional
"Click here for my homework" or "Read my opinion of Emily Dickinson," a B would be more likely to say "I quoted from 'The Chariot' to argue that Emily Dickinson is a sick cookie.")
- A: Portfolio cover page is not merely a collection of related links, but a persuasive and insightful exploration
of the relationship between your online work and other modes of
learning (papers, class discussion, the readings themselves), carefully supported by relevant links (both
to your own blog entries, and those of your peers, the course website,
and -- where relevant -- other sources on the internet).
The A submission contains all the strengths of the B submissions, including informative linked text and a brief but helpful explanation of the blog portfolio assignment, for the benefit of random visitors.
The higher As would include links to blog entries that show more depth, more interaction, more links,
and overall more evidence of engagement and insight than the Bs or the lower As.
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