POWER BLOGGING: READING RESPONSES, YOUR BLOGGING PRESENCE--THE CRITICAL EDGE

I'm adapting some guidelines developed by a colleague, and am going to share these with you here, below. This will be posted to the class 'hub' blog in just a few minutes, so swarm there when you get a chance. At http://wst200genderpower.blogspot.com

A reading response is your opportunity to demonstrate that you’ve read the assigned texts, and thought deeply about them.

Ideally, creating a critical, unique, and creative 'voice' in your blog allows you space to develop a personal writing-research-being identity, (much more than a journal!!), which can incorporate multiple media (youtube, online technologies, images, links, and so much more).

An 'active' presence either on a piece of paper and in an online blog takes time to develop--your writing voice(s)/identities don't just happen overnight--your process is a combination of 're-search', 'me-search' and 'we-search.'

Moreover, when you develop a certain comfort level with the blog space, and begin to venture out to use the multiple 'gadgets' to populate/enhance your space a bit more, you will learn to develop a rich visual and textual space that you will be motivated to return to again and again. This 'returning' and 'being present' provides multiple new possibilities for developing stronger research relations across our class community--and ultimately, for the web, where your work will begin to develop a cluster of knowledges.

Blogging With Intention: Here are Important Guidelines to Follow:

• A 'Blog Response' or POST should represent a mini-analysis of some part of the text that struck you as important or meaningful. Record and express any thoughts, questions, and/or concerns that come up as you read, and thus develop independent ideas about a text.
  


• Concisely and succinctly state what part of the work you see as significant and then explain that aspect in relationship to the work as a whole.
  


• Don’t tell me what happened or summarize the text. I’ve read the material and don’t need this information.
  


• Instead, give focus to showing [BIG SHOW ... little tell--a good rule to follow] & explaining to me as clearly as possible how and why a certain detail or incident shapes your analysis and is important to your overall understanding of the work.
  


• Always support any generalizations you make with specifics.
  


• Offer me some less-than-obvious insight as a reward for reading your responses!
  
  Precautionary Principles:
  


• A certain degree of care and focus must be evident (meaning, content, form, style, details of spelling, punctuation).
  


• Pay close attention to the text [which doesn't mean read word for word--be selective!] and choose [be intentional!] something about which to write.
  


• The blog responses are not "formal essays", however, they do require a certain measure of commitment and responsibility.
  


• Make sure your writing is free of mistakes and that your style is interesting.
  
  


• Length is relative to purpose, intent, passion, and method. Some folks get the work done concisely and hit all the right marks with minimal but incisive paragraph construction. Other times... you may want to elaborate a lengthier explication. The subject matter, themes, and complexity of the texts themselves will guide and direct you.
  


• DO WORRY about saying something worthwhile.
  


• BE CLEAR and DIRECT about what you are saying, and communicate what fascinates, confuses, unnerves, disturbs, elates or troubles you.
  


• Remember that a reading response is not just about what you like or don’t like – you may begin with feelings, but you do not end there. Make sense of the text and make the your growing relationship and learning journey in relationship to the text--make sense!

Blogging responses provide several valuable functions for me:

• They help me insure that you do the reading and


• help me assess your level of understanding and the depth of your thinking;


• they help me monitor your writing skills; and


• finally, they improve the level of our classroom discussion--both in the classroom and in the blog virtual classroom.


• 
  I’ve provided you with a guide to get you started below. These steps to analysis are loosely adapted from Writing and Thinking Analytically by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen. Thanks to my colleague David Warner for sharing these guides with you.
  
  Examples of possible types of responses:
  


• Focus on a small part: Discuss one sentence or passage in detail and explain its significance for the whole or find two key sentences or passages and discuss their relationship.




• Assemble pieces of evidence: Locate three “hotspots” from the text (passages that seem important, striking, puzzling) and suggest what they might show individually or together.




• Formulate overarching ideas, themes, or problems: Devise a good question, explain why the answer is not so obvious, and then try to answer it by finding three apt passages or locate and define a theme or main subject of the text.




• Revise or complicate: Give a raw response, then either analyze it for your own assumptions, values, expectations, or after rereading, give a second response complicating or refuting what you first thought.




• Define significant parts and how they’re related: Try to figure out what rhetorical tools the writer uses and how those tools help us understand the meaning of the subject as a whole.




• Make the implicit explicit: Convert meanings that are suggested but not overtly stated into direct statements.




• Look for patterns: Seek out repetitions or resemblance, contrasts, or anomalies. The latter are especially important for they help us refine our claims and keep us from ignoring evidence; they often lead us to new and better questions and ideas.




• Reformulate questions and explanations; REMEMBER, uncertainty is a normal and necessary part of understanding.
  


• Yet more possibilities:
  A. Which details seem significant? Why?
  B. What is the significance of a particular idea? What does it mean?
  C. What else might it mean?
  D. How do the details fit together? What do they have in common?
  E. What does this pattern of details mean?
  F. What else might this same pattern of details mean? How else could it be explained?
  G. What details don’t seem to fit? How might they be connected with other details to form a different pattern?
  H. What does this new pattern mean? How might it cause me to read the meaning of the individual details differently?
  
  Your blogging responses and the space your cultivate will be evaluated based on their focus and depth. Attempt a variety of responses from day to day... (i.e., if you write the same sort of response every time, your overall score may drop as you are not displaying critical thinking or offering anything new or unique for consideration.)
  
  ** FAQ!
  
  "Do we have to apply all of these recommendations to each and every blog response?"
  
  "NO!, However, you should choose selectively and wisely what you want to accomplish each time, and make a writing plan if you tend to bore easily or stray off your intention. Keep a structure for each blog, and make that commitment to seeing that through. That is powerful."
  
  MTamez--