O professor deve deixar claro o que espera. Não traduzi por falta de tempo, mas é uma proposta muito estruturada e, em parte, inspirada pelo fato dos alunos terem uma preocupação maior com o como serão avaliados do que com o que vão aprender. —Refletindo sobre blogs (Projetos Colaborativos)

With help from faculty colleagues and Babelfish, I got the following:

A professor should be very clear about what he expects. I did not translate due to time, but it is a proposal very structuralized, in part inspired by students who were worried about how they will be evaluated.

One of my linguistically gifted colleagues translated “deixar” as a comparative “more,” rather than the intensifier “very”. But a modern language specialist said the context of the link to my work is positive.

I’d like to think that my blogging rubric is pretty clear, but I don’t foist it on the students all at once, and in different classes, I expect different levels of close reading, personal reflection, current events, and peer interaction.

It’s the third week of classes, so students have had more than enough time to come to me for help if they have difficulty getting their blogs to work. Now that I can assume everyone’s got a basic level of blogging comfort, I’m starting to adjust my expectations in the lit classes from “blog something” to “quote a passage from the assigned readings and blog about it” to “practice the skill of advancing a thesis, engaging opposing and alternative viewpoints, and using textual evidence to back up your claims.”

I haven’t yet introduced my full-fledged blogging rubric in any of my classes, but I’ll need to post some version of it soon.