Week 2: Get Your Blog On

Today we'll get everyone set up with their own blogs and talk about choosing blog topics. You'll be making blog posts as your homework for a few weeks (and beyond), so it's worth investing some time in picking a topic that will keep you inspired, and also that will let you connect with communities and join webrings, blog carnivals, etc.

We'll also take a look at an online community that started as a simple open letter to the Kansas state school board and has now grown into the official Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, focusing on how the site is built to welcome new visitors, facilitate communication among members, and encourage participation and contributions. We're going to be building an online BECA community, so we'll be looking at lots of examples like FSM; part of the homework for this course will be finding such communities and presenting them to the class.

HOMEWORK:

1. Pick a topic for your blog and finish building it on Blogger. Make sure you keep all the settings I went over in class today!
2. Write a blog post that includes at least one image and three links. Remember that your writing voice and style are up to you, but I'm looking for writing that reflects college-level writing proficiency (including mechanics: spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.).
3. Post a link to your blog on the Class Blog or e-mail me the link.
   
4. James, Shira and Jeannine: Find an online community (definition is pretty wide open; consider what we saw in FSM and see what interesting things you can find) and send me the links.