How-To: Use This Blog

This blog will be dedicated to our weekly discussions and assigned posts. In order to see this blog at all, you need to log in. You should also have received an "invitation" to participate from me, at your Marymount email address; this invitation gives you instructions on how to obtain the Google account necessary for access to Blogger. It is all free--it just takes a bit of finger-work to set up.

Once you've successfully logged in to our weblog, you should note that you have been granted "author" status; that means that you can contribute to the blog, help create it and shape its direction. A large part of that collaborative writing will be your individual posts. Each student is required to make at least one substantial post per week, of no less than 500 words. This blog should provide a place for us to test ideas before we commit to them; explore unconventional or unexpected reading strategies; comment on important ideas developing throughout the term; and record our progress through the assigned material.

To make your posts, you may either create a new post or comment on another post. Each posting box has a couple of key features--a space for a title, a rich-text enabled composition box, and a space for post "labels" (think of them as index entries). Each of these three key spaces must be completed.

Titles should be interesting and informative. Think of it as practice for your formal essays. These titles also form the top-level archive entry system for our blog, so we need to be able to tell what any given entry is really about!

The composition box is rich-text enabled, meaning you can bold and italicize, spell-check, add links and pictures, change your font and colors, and so on, much as in Microsoft Word. Here you type the actual content of your weekly posts.

Labels are very important elements of this blog--these allow us to quickly search and organize by "subject heading," as it were. All your posts need to be labeled--you should always label by the last name of the author(s) you're working with (RICHARDSON, HAYWOOD, and so on), but you may add additional broad-subject labels as you see them evolving over time. For instance, if you're very interested in feminist theory and criticism, you might want to label any posts having to do with FEMINISM. As you complete your posts, you will begin to note that possible labels appear magically as you type them--you can accept these, or create new ones. See all the labels in the blog DASHBOARD.

Once you've completed your post, you should PUBLISH it; you can also SAVE it AS DRAFT, and come back later to finish it. You can have many different drafts going at once. You can also go back and edit any previous posts.

A final word on netiquette and classroom decorum

Unless it is necessary for your posts, please do not use any smileys or IM abbreviations. Please do not use all-caps, as in large chunks it is difficult to read and implies that you're YELLING! Please do be considerate of all your peers and their thoughts, as well as your instructor. While this is a space for critique and constructive criticism, it is not a space for flaming. If you are routinely inconsiderate, I will eject you from this blog and a large portion of your grade will be recorded as an "F." All posts must be completed in a timely fashion; late posts will be marked down. And finally, please consider this a semi-formal writing space; please do spell correctly and write in complete, grammatical sentences!