I should have 50 followers!

We have pretty much finished our individual conferences for the first paper, and I have great confidence every one is on the right track. Remember to take your drafts to the Writing Center, and the 60 lab if you have that opportunity. I suggest you reread the first paper once a week, and put an hour of revision into it so that by the time the portfolio is due, the paper will be ready.

Starting today or tomorrow, we will begin workshopping our second paper--the autoethnography. By the middle of October, we will have conferences on this paper, and then you will need to continuously revise this paper, as well, throughout the semester. Before Thanksgiving break, three papers will be completed; we will spend the time after Thanksgiving polishing three or four papers for the portfolio. Paper 4 will be drafted during and immediately after Thanksgiving.

Beginning today, I will be checking this blog regularly to see who is posting reading responses. Remember, you can respond to either a reading from the class, or to another student's response. But the expectation is you will write a combined total of 500 words per week on this blog and your personal blog. Since we have ten more weeks of the semester, you need to write this much every week for the remainder of the semester to earn the maximum number of points unless you have already written on the blogs so far.

I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions of blogging as a substitute for writing in a reading log or journal. Susan

One month gone, three to go

It seems impossible, but the first month of classes at Humboldt, fall semester, 2010 is almost over. I started this blog so that I and my composition students could 'talk' to each other every week, but the progress has gone more slowly than I had hoped. But that is the nature of writing--it is a process that seems to determine its own pace. Most of the students have, by now, started their own blogs. I enjoy reading about their hobbies, travels, home towns, adjustments to college life, and interests. And the blogs are demonstrating that they can be very good writers when writing about topics that they choose and that appeal to them as a bridge in and out of the classroom. During months two and three of the semester, I am expecting that their writing about what they read on this blog will start to become both appealing to them, as well as a forum for us to exchange ideas with a real audience.

Next semester, I plan to design and present a workshop for college teachers on using blogs in their composition classrooms with this semester as my trial and error. I am going to ask my students this semester to comment on their attitudes and opinions about blogs as an alternative to the traditional reading response journal, learning log, and writing prompts so that I will have real 'data' to share with my colleagues during the workshop.

My biggest challenge so far is getting students to check the class blog each day or week and to add a comment. It needs to become part of their routine.I am optimistic this will be the case by the end of the semester.

Dear Students: I want to encourage you to send me your blog addresses so I can visit your personal blog. One student in the M/W/F class has already had me as a visitor! I also would like to receive either on the class blog--this blog--your first reading response on the articles we read in class on the mosque controversy, or a hard copy by this Friday or next Tuesday. Remember, we do not have class on Monday. If you did not take notes to write a reading response to the article in class, you can google, mosque controversy ground zero and you will be offered hundreds of articles to read and review. Remember, 250 words on your blog and another 250 on the class blog or hard copy for the 500 word requirement this week. S