Record pages or sections on which you are commenting. Record your impressions of characters, events, conflicts, descriptions. Record responses to your own questions. Record questions about the novel as you read. Respond to course focus questions.

Make sure you take the time after, during, or before each reading session to make an entry into your blog. 10-15 sentences per reading session might be enough.

Make each entry interesting, personal, intelligent. Avoid retelling the story or simply “dumbing-down” the text. Write posts that engages your readers in critical thinking, enhances their attention span, and fills them with speculative awe.

Write several short posts per week, once a day at least. Write longer posts when your mood strikes you. Tag each post before publishing. Use categories such as the following to keep your responses organized:

Utopia
Community, Identity, Stability
Science and Technology
Conditioning
Soma
Sensual Pleasures
Religion
Family Life
Death
Skinner
Kohlberg
Piaget
Erikson
Freud
Adler
Thoreau

Track the posts you make and the comments you send and receive in a spreadsheet. Try to spend no more than 15 minutes on the computer per class. If that isn’t enough, do more work at home or during spare time. There is a need for quite, concentrated reading time during your day. Here we go.

• focus your responses on a course focus question
• think “creatively” about your response
• connect to characters you’ve already studied
• extend your response to include symbol and archetype
• consider “Critical Questions”
• emphasize “Voice” and/or “Structure” in your responses
• consider “Writing About Literature”(page 9-14) in Heath
• considered other essay writing strategies
• prepare at least 8 posts in your “body of blog”
• consider discussion questions from the STJ forums
• consider asking questions of your teacher
• considered embedding original audio/video with your post
• be familiar with the 8 point Holistic Critical Thinking Rubric

Tracback a “map” of your response here.

(Partner up if/where necessary)

1. Write a folk song.
2. Create a dialogue in the forums between any 2(or more) authors.
3. Create a dialogue in the forums b etween any 2 or more characters
4. Create a new scene to be inserted into a text synthesizing a character(or 2) from outside the text.

Trackback. Then rewrite the quiz on Steinbeck’s Chrysanthemums.(Post questions in the forums.)

Consider the outcomes we’ve tried to achieve.

Enhancing the artistry of communication has been a strong technical focus. Skills mastered include using online blogging tools, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, even graphical enhancements using Photoshop or audio/video podcasting tools have been included where time permitted and initiative taken. Participation on an online forum has generated a myriad of useful tips/reminders, questions/answers. There will be no speadsheets on the final, the use of Word will be necessary for English 30.

Each course has been structured around Focus Questions and related questions: English 10, English 9.

Emphasis on social networking, peer review/support/criticism has been critical for developing critical thought and reflection for writers defending an idea.

Each course has a reading list: English 10, English 30. Not every title has been studied intensively(or at all), but the proportion of attention paid to those pieces that were studied in class deserve the same level of attention on the final. Of course, those who choose additional literature from the list to focus on in the final deserve to have that initiative rewarded as well. If you choose to focus on Shakespeare, your audience gets tougher, I’ve noticed.

An English 30 paper looking at how the images/symbols/archetypes of Sophocles and Kingsolver relate to personal freedom to would be intriguing. Why not an English 10 paper discussing the threat of fanaticism by comparing the speeches of Mark Antony, Joseph Strorm, and Eamon De valera? What does Søren Kierkegaard have to do with every page you’ve ever read or written?

Extras, everyone should be able to link to Wikipedia for literary terms, difficult vocabulary, or just the odd or eccentric idea; can anyone incorporate the Hayflick Limit into their paper? Everyone has seen video and heard an mp3, but are any daring enough to Podcast their final essay? A carefully edited U2 mp3 snip, an embedded flash video of Ophelia Simpson, a slideshow?

The only limit is to abide the first line of every rubric you’ve ever attached to any assignment:

I _________________ honestly declare that the work is what I have done. In circumstances when I have quoted a certain authority, I have clearly indicated what is a quote and the author.

A Blogger’s Code of Ethics contains truths far older than the phenomenon of blogging.

English 30s will have no access to internet, filesharing, etc etc. English 10s can have it all.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
- Plato

Write a story in which a protagonist undergoes a transformation in the search for self. Have your character encounter basic questions about his/her identity.

Consider using the following images: