PWR 2 Cultural Interfaces
Blog assignment: page 1
Blog Assignment
Due: By individual assignment between weeks 3 and 7 As part of their participation in our CCR community, students will be asked to contribute 1 blog post and 6 comments to our Cross-Cultural Rhetoric blog, located at http://www.stanford.edu/group/ccr/blog/. Blog Post: Each student will write a post of 250-350 words to post no later on their assigned day (see below) on a topic related to their research project. Topic: You will be writing about something associated with your research topic. Content: Your blog post should not be a personal, reflective free-write, like a journal entry. Instead, it should be grounded in the research and inquiry that you are doing as part of your project. Your goal is to share an interesting source, research discovery, research encounter, or evolution of your argument with your readers. Accordingly, for your post you might o Talk about a source that you found particularly useful, disturbing, surprising, etc. o Record the outcomes of an interview or a survey related to your project o Describe the process of doing a primary research, ethnographical work, etc. o Outline the central controversies or the major scholars in the field that you are studying. o Analyze a text (image, video, etc.) that provides evidence for your larger argument Remember to give some context as you set up your post – at the very beginning of your post identify your research topic and provide your readers with any context that they will need to know in order to understand how the material that you’re discussing fits in to your overall argument and research. Also, keep in mind that this post is designed to showcase an interesting moment in your research. This is like a moment in the spotlight for you, a time to show your readers what is really cool, unexpected, or even groundbreaking about what you’re working on. Format: As mentioned above, although this is a blog post, it should not be written in the style of a journal entry. Remember the hallmarks of good academic blogging: it engages with another text or idea, through quotes, linking, direct references (to people or their ideas) and participates deliberately in a larger conversation or links in to larger issues. In addition: o Be sure to identify your topic at the beginning of your blog post.
PWR 2 Cultural Interfaces
Blog assignment: page 2
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Think about your ethos as you write and how that translates into voice and style. You don’t have to be stiff and overly academic in your writing – but you should be clear, persuasive, and confident. Also balance your attention to your ethos with attention to pathos (that is how to connect with or interest your reader) and logos (how to prove what you’re saying to your reader). Please also include links as appropriate – and images, as long as they are not copyrighted. If you’d like, use the “extended entry” field option when posting for particularly long entries (if you think you’re going to far surpass your 250 word goal) – that way only a small bit of your entry will appear on the main page and then the reader can peruse the rest by clicking on a “more” link. However, I would request that if you’re using an image that you include it in the first field so that it shows up on the main page, rather than in the extended field where it will be hidden unless someone clicks on that link.
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Audience: Keep in mind your audience – not only your classmates, but other participants in the CCR project, including students and instructors both in the U.S. and internationally. You may want to include a line in your opening that states that this is material or experiences that you’ve had while working on a research project as part of your CCR class. This would help the audience situate the post a bit. Notification: After you save your post, please be sure to click on the “notification” link at the top right of the blog post entry field so that an e-mail goes out telling everyone that you have posted. Draft and revise: o o You can always publish your post and then go back and expand on it/revise it – as you would any written text. Proof-reading after you post your file is especially important if you wrote your post in a word-processing program and then pasted it into the blog post field. Sometimes Movable Type replaces certain characters (like quotation marks) in weird ways during the cut and paste process. You’ll need to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
Technical issues: Use the handout on blog posting (linked through the Tech Handouts folder in the Materials section of CourseWork) for instructions on how to post. Remember
PWR 2 Cultural Interfaces
Blog assignment: page 3
to use the following address to access the Blog interface for posting: http://cgi.stanford.edu/%7Egroup-ccr/mt/mt.cgi Extra Help/Guidance: Feel free to contact me at any time with any tech difficulties that you encounter in working with the blog. I will also post an entry on the blog on October 7th, called “Innovations in Education” that you can use as one type of model for your own writing, if you’d like – though it will be focused on an article, and you definitely could focus on a research experience or interview if you preferred.
Blog Comments: During the weeks when students are not assigned to contribute a blogpost, they will need to provide one comment on another post from the CCR blog – for a total of 6 posts over the quarter. This comment should be completed on the day noted on the schedule below. Comments should not be exclusively evaluative of the writing style or effort (try to avoid just saying, “Good job!” or “I enjoyed reading your post!”). Try to engage with the ideas presented, provide alternate viewpoints, expand on the discussion based on your own experience, connect to your own observations about your topic or about the person’s topic, refer the writer to additional sources or links, etc. You should also feel free to comment on other people’s comments on the blog post that you read. The goal, remember, is to engage in a productive online conversation. Aim for a comment of about 100 words. You add comments in the following way: read a blog entry through the main blog site (http://www.stanford.edu/group/ccr/blog/) and then click on the “comments” link at the bottom right of the post. Note: Sometimes Movable Type is slow in posting comments – it might even take a day – so don’t worry if your comment doesn’t appear right away! Schedule: Here is the schedule for posting and commenting this quarter. You are welcome to swap weeks with each other if you want – but this is something you’ll need to negotiate yourselves. Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Blog post due W Oct 10 by class Writers: Lillian, Eethar, Tara due M Oct 15 by class Writers: Evan, Mbali, Yasmeen due M Oct 22 by class Writers: Nick, Harry due W Oct 31 by class Writers: Vanessa, Lleyana, J.J. Comments due F Oct 12 by 5pm Commentors: everyone who is not posting this week due W Oct 17 by 5pm Commentors: everyone who is not posting this week due W Oct 24 by 5pm Commentors: everyone who is not posting this week due Fr Nov 2 by 5pm Commentors: everyone who is not posting this week
PWR 2 Cultural Interfaces Week 7 due W Nov 7 by class Writers: Kavi, Dan
Blog assignment: page 4 due Fr Nov 9 by 5pm Commentors: everyone who is not posting this week
Above and Beyond: It goes without saying that you are welcome to post and comment more than the amount specified by this assignment.