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They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad. -- Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline

For the peer review assignment (listed in the syllabus as "Workbook 7"), I have provided these 12 peer review tips (not substantially different from the printout I gave you in class, just edited slightly).  Your grade for the peer-review exercise depends on the quantity and quality of the constructive feedback you provide to your peer. (So smile at the good and frown at the bad, but don't make your peer feel very sad.)

In the process, you will get specific, concrete peer feedback, which you can use to revise your paper (and perhaps raise your final grade). But for me, the real value of the exercise is that the experience of hunting for and fixing problems in a peer's paper will help you develop self-editing skills that you can apply to any writing situation.

It's one thing for you hear me say "The people you want to interview are all as busy as you are," but it's quite another thing to make the third or fourth or tenth phone call to try to catch somebody between meetings.  Much of what you previously knew only by studying new vocabulary terms or hunting for fill-in-the-blank answers has only now become more concrete.

We've covered a lot of material already, but now that you have had this field experience, we're really ready to learn about journalism.

The purpose of this entry is for all of us to practice creating a blog entry on our individual sites, in such a way as to create a link from the new page back to this page, and from this page back to the new page that comments on it.

Imagine if you read something in a book, then pulled out a piece of your own paper and jotted down a note about it.  Somebody else who came along and read the same book would never know that a piece of paper exists somewhere with your thoughts on it.

Blogging can seem lonely and pointless unless other people read and respond to what you have written. So follow these steps, and you'll draw more readers to your writing.

For each assignment that is marked in the daily course plan as an "assigned text" (or just "text" on the "Outline" page), follow these steps as part of your participation grade.

1. Read: Read the assigned text.
2. React: 24 hours before we discuss an assigned text in class, post your Agenda Item (a brief quote from the assigned reading, and a brief note explaining what you'd say when called on in class) posted to your blog, following the trackback procedure (see the "Help" page for the "Trackback Tutorial"). Even if you haven't finished the assigned reading yet, please do post your agenda item on time.)
3. Respond: Before class time, I'd like to see everyone post 2-4 comments on peer blogs, but our class is small enough that I think we should all follow each other's blogs.
4. Reflect: Bring to class a half-page reflection paper that mentions by name a student whose agenda item helped you notice or question something about the assigned reading. I encourage you to post that half-page reflection on your blog, but doing so is optional. (Your upcoming portfolio assignments will ask you to include examples of blog entries that show your ability to reflect deeply, to launch a good discussion, etc., so it will be to your benefit to plan to publish longer reflections on topics that really interest you.)

If you have any questions, feel free to post them right here.

Feel free to post your questions here, or on any other page on the site.

Posting a comment here will automatically generate an e-mail, so you don't need to e-mail me to tell me that you left a comment.

If you'd like to talk in person, the syllabus has information on my office hours.