Be curious, ask questions, and keep your mind open to learning new things

Welcome to The Art of Blogging.

"The revolutionary potential of blogs is found in a shift away from more traditional journalistic principles of objectivity, replaced instead by the insistence on an authorial stance replete with biases and subjectivities." --May Friedman, Mommyblogging and the Changing Face of Motherhood

We will meet Monday evenings from 6:30-9:00. Please bring a laptop computer (or similar device for accessing the internet and composing blog posts).

Assignments: Assignments constitute 25% of your mark. Each week, your assignment will be read an assigned text on blogging, and also to read your classmates' blog posts.

Portfolio: Your portfolio constitutes 50% of your mark, and comprises 8 blog posts (4 on a class blog, and 4 on your own blog) for which you will be given class time to create. If not completed in class, you can finish your blog posts at home, but they must be posted no later than midnight on the Wednesday following our class.

Participation: Participation constitutes 25% of your mark. Please come to class each week ready to discuss that week's assigned text and having read your classmates' blogs. No blog is an island and community is a huge part of why blogging works, so your participation is essential.

Workshop Tips: 

• Please be courteous to your classmates and have your blog posts up in time in order that we have plenty of time to read them. 
• You will not necessarily be the intended audience for each blog post. Let this not be your point of departure for criticism. Show some imagination and empathy. But our discussions will  also benefit from many points of view. 
• Blogging is inherently personal and often political, but we must maintain professional boundaries in a class like this. As we examine the art of blogging together, please refrain from posting content that might be upsetting to others.
• Similarly, please refrain from critiquing your classmates' work for any content you find disagreeable. See previous point about intended audiences. We're more interested in how content is presented than evaluating the content itself. 
• All of these points are to make our classroom a safe and comfortable space for everybody. If you have concerns about anything presented in your classmates' work, please speak to me after class. I welcome all your feedback. 
• Please be respectful and considerate of each other, spend as much time listening as you do sharing, be curious, ask questions, and keep your mind open to learning new things from everyone.