Websites for Blogging

Hi all. Please don't forget to email me your blog urls by Friday. You can send them to msaaland@gmail.com.

Here are some free sites you can use for blogging:
Blogger (which we used for our utopian project)
Wordpress
Tumblr
Typepad
Livejournal

Also, here is a link to a helpful site if you are looking for tools to help you explore the web, from hosting pictures for free to getting a free email:
I want to

Again, here are the directions:

Reader Response Blog

In addition to your reading logs, you will be responsible for keeping a blog in which you think through thoughts and feelings that you have in response to the material we study, the class discussions and activities that we engage in, and any other experience you have with the unit topic. Your blog should have a minimum of five (5) postings, but you are welcome to include more. The following issues will be factors in the way I grade your blog:

• Your blog does not need to follow the conventions of textbook English. Rather, the purpose is to think about the class without worrying what form your thoughts take. As this is part of your classwork, while academic language is not required (or even encouraged) please do keep in mind using language which would be appropriate for school (i.e. no swearing, please).

• Do not simply summarize the literature we read in class. While you need to refer to these texts, the primary purpose of your blog is to think about your response to them, rather than to provide summaries of what they say. In other words, your journal should focus on how you have engaged with the literature.

• You are welcome, though not required, to reflect on personal issues that occur to you in relation to your consideration of the literature. Keep in mind that I am required by law to share any thoughts or suggestions of violence, suicide, substance abuse, family abuse, or other harmful behavior with the school counselors.

• Each blog post should be a minimum of two hundred (200) words. Any additional posts you make will count towards your participation points. You will receive double points for each quality blog posting you do (one point for short entries). This includes comments on others' blogs.

• As this is a public forum, please do not reveal personal information about yourself such as your home address, your telephone number, your last name, or any other confidential information about yourself. You are more than welcome to use a pseudonym for yourself if you like.

• Part of what makes blogs exciting is the ability to include multimedia. You are more than welcome (in fact, encouraged) to link to other sites which you find relevant, include images and video, and anything else you can think of which is appropriate to the discussion.

• On the day your blogs are due, you do not having reading logs due.
  

Due Dates for Blogs

2/27 – Blog created
3/2 – Blog #1
3/9 – Blog #2
3/13- Blog #3
3/18 – Blog #4
3/25 – Blog #5

We're taking a trip today!

Good afternoon and congratulations on finishing your blogs - I can't wait to check them out!

Today you will get to view and evaluate your classmates' blogs! You should try to visit at least 5 blogs today. Leave constructive feedback in the comments sections of the blogs. Here are some types of comments you can leave:

• Comment on what you liked.
• Comment on anything that confused you.
• Comment on anything that you did not like.
• Offer any suggestions for improvement.

After visiting the blogs, I would like you to reflect on your own blog through answering the following questions:

• What was your group trying to accomplish? Did you succeed? Why or why not?
• What would you change about your group's approach to the project? What did your group do well?
• What did you like about the project? What was difficult? What was easy?
• What grade does your blog deserve? Why?

Here are classmates' blogs:

Tucanese
Kingdom of Paradigm
The Waddlers
The Hive
Ecosia
Dolphin Island Paradise
Marcolien
Impossible is Nothing

Enjoy your trips!

Blog Resources and Ideas

I can't wait to see everyone's blogs! Just in case you need them, here are urls to free sites where you can post images. The first two require you to have a username, while the last does not.

Photobucket
Flickr
Tinypic

Also, Jessi brought up a good idea and I wanted to share it with the rest of the class. If you want to present some of the information in your blog, besides things which must be explicity written (like journal entries), and you can thing of a different way to do it - great! Her group is going experiment with video in their blog. You could also create digital art using photoshop, write a song, create art and scan it in or photograph it, create a short skit and videotape it, etc. You could even integrate other media into your blog postings/journal entries (for example, maybe someone in your society wants to share a link or a photo). Part of this activity is to use the internet as a tool for learning: reading, writing, and story-creation.

Welcome to our class blog!

Hey there scifi students. This is a new experiment to help you all keep track of what we're working on along with important deadlines. You all know that we have been working on our utopias this week and those will be due Thursday, February 12th at the beginning of class, as we will be spending that day evaluating each other's blogs. Tomorrow-Thursday, please meet at the computer lab as we did today.

Tomorrow I will be handing out our next short story, "House of Bones" by Robert Silverberg. You will need to read this and do 5 reading log entries by Friday. Friday will be discussion day so be prepared to participate! I would also recommend bringing the last two stories we read by Pollack and Delany as we'll be revisiting them.

Links:
Bare Bones Guide to HTML
EFF Student Blogging FAQ (from Thursday)

I'll leave you with some pictures of Samuel Delany, who has the most amazing beard I've ever seen (in person or otherwise):