Online Agenda Items

For each assigned author (Frost, Foster, and Fitzgerald), post a separate entry on your SHU weblog, to include a brief quotation and a position statement. (Details explained in class 01/26.)

1. Read the assigned texts for next week.
1. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor
2. Frost, ''After Apple Picking''
3. Frost (selections)
4. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Ch 1-4)
2. React by posting an agenda item (quote and brief comments) ON YOUR OWN BLOG, before Friday (so that I will have time to read your entry before class meets Monday night).  Your user ID is "FirstnameLastname" (according to however your name appears in GriffinGate) and your default password is "Firstname".
   
   (We went over the basics in class on the first day, but detailed instructions for your SHU blog are also available online.)
   
   In a comment on the course page devoted to each reading, this page, type your chosen quotation and include a link to your blog entry. You can just paste the URL after your quote, or you can add a few lines explaining your response to your quote.
   
   Note -- pay attention to the URL that you post on this page.
   
   Your URL should look something like the following:
   http://blogs.setonhill.edu/FirstnameLastname/2008/02/blah_blah_blah.html
   
   The following link is not specific enough. Your reader will have to hunt for the specific page.
   http://blogs.setonhill.edu/FirstnameLastname
   
   A link like the following is only useful to you, because it points to your editing pages -- your readers will find it useless.
   http://blogs.setonhill.edu/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=6689&blog_id=10
   
   
3. Respond: Before class meets, post 2-4 comments on agenda items that your peers have posted to their own weblogs. (If you have been asked to look at 2 separate readings, then I am asking for 4-8 comments.)
   
   
4. Reflect: For each assigned reading, bring to class a half-page reflection paper, that names a student whose agenda item made you see the assigned reading in a different way. I will occasionally, but not always, collect the reflection papers. If you wish, you may do your half-page reflection at the same time you write your agenda item -- but that should mean doing them both early, rather than waiting to post your agenda item until the night before or the morning of the class discussion. (Again, if there is more than one reading assigned as a "text" for a day's class, then I am asking for more than one reflection paper. But note that I am not asking for a separate set of reflections for each and every Frost poem in your handout.)
   
   
5. Recommended: 
1. You are welcome to post your half-page reflections on your blog. 
   
2. I would also welcome it if you post links from your blog, to the blog of a classmate whose insights you found noteworthy, or to information you found elsewhere on the internet. (Try to work those outside ideas into your own reflection -- it's not that useful to your readers if you write something abrupt like "Here's an interesting link.")