Welcome and First Assignment!

Welcome to the Freshman Composition I class blog. This blog will be used by our class this semester as a space to post writing journal entries, helpful links, and to post the final visual arguments. I designed this blog with you in mind—here you should be able to interact with classmates and engage in course material beyond our class sessions. It is also a great way to cut down on the large amounts of paper used in a classroom.

With that in mind, your first class assignment is to create a blog, using ONLY blogger, and then to email me the URL. Keep in mind that this blog must be separate from your own personal blog and is to be used only for our ENC 1101 class (anything you would be embarrassed to show your professor should not end up here—ie: this is not the place for mysapce type of personal pics). As such, I have (and you should) set your permissions to only allow our class to read and post to your blog.

Once everyone has created their own blog and emailed me the URL, I'll post a list of links on this page so that we can easily find and read each other's pages and postings. In order to do this, we must first cover some rules of engagement and protocols for our blog.

What Do I Expect of You?

Participation: These assignments are graded. Essentially, instead of turning in your journal entries, you will post the entry to your blog. Beyond that, you are not required to post here unless otherwise noted.

Interaction - Got an opinion? Express it. Speak up. One of the reasons you will post material online is so that you can see other students’ take on these issues and work through the writing process.

Keep an Open Mind – Writing is challenging and often asks us to move beyond our comfort zone into some dicey and uncomfortable areas. Keep working through it and keeping writing. There will be a moment of clarity (even if it is momentary)!

Academic Language—While the online writing journal is a space where you can personally express yourself, it still operates within the rhetorical conventions of academia. Keep your entries grounded on the prompt. Answer the questions as they pertain to wiritng and to your topic. Finally, while these entries are informal they also require that you use Standard Written English, refrain from profanity, and keep the subject matter G rated.

Sense of Humor –Come on people, some of this stuff is funny! It is ok to laugh at something even if we are simultaneously analyzing or agonizing over it.

Spirit of Collaboration – Learn from each other, ask questions, and remember that sometimes it takes a village. With that being said, don’t expect that others will do your work for you. To collaborate does not mean to hand everything over to one leader; instead it requires that we learn, despite or because of difference, to work together to accomplish our goals.

What you can expect from me.

Answers - Good answers to all questions, even the hard ones. And, sometimes that means my answer is to send you to find the answer.

Posting and Discussion Protocols:

Be considerate of others. It is important to be honest and to express yourself freely but being considerate of others online is just as important as in the classroom.

Make every effort to be clear. Online communication lacks the nonverbal cues that fill in much of the meaning in face-to-face communication.

If you want to send a message to me, email me instead of posting a comment to the blog.

Post your assignments to YOUR page and not to mine—your page should hold all of your work for the semester and mine should hold the prompts.

Use the following conventions when composing a discussion posting:

Be careful about "Subject" headings; use the subject suggested in your assignment.

Create a new post for every journal entry and/or assignment instead of posting to the first one, that way it is easy for everyone to find.

If you are asked to respond to your classmates’ writing, avoid postings such as "I agree," "I don't know either," "who cares," or "ditto." They do not add to the discussion! Take up space and communicate when asked to respond to others. These “same here” style posts will not be counted for credit.

Do not use all caps. This makes the message very hard to read and is considered "shouting."

Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation. These count online.

Try to avoid posting large blocks of text but when you must, break them into paragraphs and use a space between paragraphs.

Whew! Without further delay, your fist assignment is to create a blog using Blogger and write your first post. Here are the instructions:

1. Set up your blog: to do this, go to www.blogger.com and follow the on-screen directions for setting up a free blog. Please take some time to personalize your blog. This is a way for the class to get to know you, so feel free to include a photo (remember my comment about appropriate), links to other sites you enjoy, etc. Please make sure that your name (first/preferred name and last initial) is clear on your blog. I know that some/many of you already have a blog where you write posts; however, for the purposes of this course, you will need a separate blog that is focused on our course. You should feel free to provide a link to your other blog if you would like to share that with your classmates as well (as long as postings and pictures are Disney rated).

2. Write your first post: your first assignment is to write a letter of introduction about yourself. In addition to the basics—where you are from, what major you are or want to be, etc—I want to know a few things related to your participation in this course. Here is a series of questions to think about as you write (you are not expected to answer all of these, of course; pick a few from the list that you would find beneficial to describe given your own history):

· Why are you interested in taking this writing course? If your answer is simply that it’s required, then what would you like to get out of it?

· What types of writing do you primarily do now (think beyond traditional school papers to other kinds of writing and technologies, like email, texting, etc.)? How do you feel about your writing? Why?

· What type of writing would you like to do if you had the time? Why?

· What type of writing have you always liked? Why?

· What type of writing have you always disliked? Why?

· What types of texts (autobiographies, histories, essays, short stories, poems, plays, reviews, editorials, something applicable to your major, etc.) do you most enjoy writing? Why?

· Who has had a great influence on how you write?

· What strategies do you use when you write and where did you learn them? Do you use the same strategies for every piece you write, or do they differ according to the context? What are these differences?

· What themes or issues attract you most in your writing?

· What do you find most difficult about writing? What makes writing easy (or at least less difficult for you?

· Why do you find writing important—or not—in your life?

· If you could change one thing about yourself as a writer, what would it be?

· Overall, how would you assess your strengths and weaknesses as a writer?

· What areas do you hope to improve upon as a writer this semester?

At the end of your letter to me (it should be around 250-500 words), please write a final statement letting me know that you have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course blog. This should go without saying, but please remember that all of your blog entries should be in paragraph form and use complete sentences.

3. Follow up: email me at mtweed1@atlas.valenciacc.edu with your URL (http://____.blogspot.com), so that I can add it to the list on our course page. Your personal page, including this first letter assignment, must be posted before midnight on September 3, 2008.