Schedule

Week 1 Facilitators (post by 10/4)

Samantha R, Bryan B, Brooke W, Kyle D

Week 2 Facilitators (post by 10/11)

Alesha H, Kenny G, Henry F, Brady S

Week 3 Facilitators (post by 10/18)

Erica S, Leah G, Sayna P, Tyler S

Week 4 Facilitators (post by 10/25)

Kyle A, Lindsey V, Marissa M, Justin H

Week 5 Facilitators (post by 11/1)

Andy C, Anand M, Michael D, Qiang Z

Week 6 Facilitators (post by 11/8)

Antiqua B, Alex W, Lauren J, Sijie C

Sign up to facilitate

Every week, we'll have a group of four students facilitating- choosing a blog or site to post, and keeping the conversation about it going on the class blog.  To sign up for a week, follow the link below.  Click "claim" for one of the four slots on the week you want, and enter your name.



http://www.divvyus.com/grhu386

Blog Project Test Run

Welcome to the Blog Project!  Every week, a group of you will be responsible for locating and posting the link to a blog or website for the class to discuss here.  The site should relate in some way to our course theme.  On your week, you will post the title and URL of the site you've found, like so:


Travel Blog
http://www.travelblog.org


Easy, right?  The facilitating group must post the site no later than Monday night, so that the rest of the class has a whole week to check it out and respond.  We might sometimes use class time on Tuesday for this, but for the most part, you will be making your contributions on your own time.


The project officially starts next week, but I thought I'd give everyone a chance to try it out with a blog I selected.  Check it out, and share your observations in the comments.

Suggested Prompts for Respondents

These suggested prompts are copied from the Blog Project assignment sheet.  Feel free to suggest your own ideas for prompts and questions in the comments!

As a respondent, you want to provide an insightful, engaging analysis of the featured site. Approaching the role of respondent without some specific analytic lenses will not provide material that your classmates will want to discuss. Below is a set of prompts that will serve as analytic lenses as you consider the site that is under consideration in a given week. You only need to choose one of these prompts each week. You’ll find that some will work well for some sites and not for others. You might find it interesting to use the same prompt more than one week, which will allow you to reflect back on past featured sites and draw comparisons. As the quarter progresses, you may want to suggest new prompts to your instructor and your classmates.

1. Analyze the interface of the featured site. Focusing on visual elements on the home page, make an argument in your comment on the class blog about what the interface implicitly suggests about the featured site's central theme(s), values, or identity (see Writing Analytically on how to make the implicit explicit). Make an inference that could be a topic for class discussion and debate.

2. Look for an argument or disagreement occurring in the comments on a particular post, thread, or article on the featured site. In your comment on the class blog, analyze the key issues and points of contention in the comments. Based on your observations, develop a theory about the values of the online community at this site. Use the following questions to get you started:
        What issues or ideas do people seem to agree upon despite the larger disagreement?
        What rhetorical strategies do commenters use to construct their arguments?
        How do commenters reference other comments, and what does that suggest about the nature of interaction within the community?

3. Look through several posts for any claims about a writer's or several writers' ethos on the featured site. In your comment, develop an analytical theory about how ethos is working on the blog. Here are some questions to get you started:
        How do writer(s) invoke their education, status, experiences, beliefs, or identity? Do these methods ever backfire (do readers ever respond negatively to a writer's identity, education, etc.?)
        If there are multiple writers contributing to a single blog or site, do you see any similarities or differences in appeals to ethos across posts? What assumptions can you make about the community based on what appeals to ethos bloggers seem to rely upon most? (For example, is education seen as particularly important? Political beliefs? Gender? Anything else?)

4. Look through several posts for any direct references or appeals to the audience on the featured site (you might look for the use of the pronoun "you"/"we" or for more subtle techniques, such as posing a question to the audience or inviting the audience to respond). Write a comment on our class blog that states your theory about what those appeals to the audience suggest about who the writer believes the audience is, what they believe the audience values, or what the relationship between the writer/audience seems to be (for example, does the writer ask for the audience's opinion or position herself as an authority, or something else entirely?).

5. Look for one instance or several instances in which an author of a post makes a claim or introduces a new idea on the featured site. In your comment on the class blog, write an interesting analysis of the rhetorical techniques the author uses to make this argument. You might consider the following questions:
        Are any of the ideas particularly controversial, and if so, how does the author attempt to persuade the audience or account for the controversy in advance?
        Look for whether readers generally agree or disagree. Formulate a theory about what the trends you notice suggest about the nature of the community, their values, the purpose of the site, etc.
        Does the author cite any evidence or an authority on the subject, and if so, who or what is considered persuasive? Do the readers agree? What kind of knowledge does the community seem to value or disagree upon?
        Does the author introduce a new idea by referencing or attempting to improve upon someone else's idea? What might we learn as writers about how arguments can be built off of or proceed from other arguments? What's effective and what's not effective?

6. Read through several posts and comments and formulate a claim about whether or not you think the featured site actually does anything. In other words, does it seem to have any effect on people's knowledge, values, ideas, etc? Provide evidence for your claim in your comment on the class blog. 

Commenting Guidelines

Please be respectful to your classmates in your comments.