Portfolios

Your portfolio will include the following items:
Revised paper 1
Revised paper 2
Blog posts, including reflective post
Research paper (graded and not revised)

I would like to see your revised work posted on your blog as a public piece of writing. Please create a page on your blog for each of your revised papers. A page is different from a post because it does not move. I will show you how to do this.

In order to make sure I get your revised papers, I have created a PORTFOLIO dropbox. Please put the revised essays in this dropbox as well as on the blog.

In a sense, your blog is your portfolio. You can point to it as a complete body of work. Make it pretty and revise anything you want to before the due date. Remember, each blog should have photos or videos!

Reflection: Final post

I want you to reflect on this semester as a whole. Please write a final reflective blog post explaining what you learned about reading, writing, and thinking in this course.

Discuss the writing assignments, including the blog. I found your blog posts to be insightful and beautiful in moments. This is the first time I have used a blog, and maybe this is just a special group of students, but it was successful for me as a first attempt.You developed some complex answers to my questions about the texts and put energy into making them good. I appreciate it, and I want to hear your feedback about the experience. You can also talk about writing papers and getting my feedback on them.

I am interested in hearing about the reading assignments and the films we watched. Should I use them again? Were they worthwhile to read? How did they affect your thinking in some way?

If this is your first semester in college, how did the course meet or defy your expectations?

You can add anything else you think is important.

This is my last teaching experience for a little while, and it has been a great experience for me. Thanks for your hard work and ability to be flexible.

Miss Representation

American media presents us with limited representations of women, according to Miss Representation. After watching the film, think about your role models as a child and today. What women are available for you to use in your own career path? Are they in movies? On TV?

Thinking about your own experience, do you agree with the idea that having no role models in the media leads to a lack of women leaders?

Blog post #4: Sapelo Island, Georgia

As I mentioned below in another post, I spent a week in Georgia this summer studying slavery in the area with the National Endowment for the Humanities. My group spent a day on Sapelo Island, one of the few places that retains African and slave creole culture and language. The people who live there are decendants of slaves and have deep roots in the land.

We will be thinking and talking about land rights and who has a claim to the land. For your blog post, I want you to think through this idea of place and the importance of where you live. Does your family have ancestral land? If not, why not? What does that do to your identity? What does the land mean to the people of Sapelo? Who are they if they are not living there? You should refer directly to the articles and the book for this post. Photos can be found on Google or at this link: https://picasaweb.google.com/114303977036164408865



Cornelia Walker Bailey



Blog Post #3: Waiting for Superman?

After watching the film Waiting for Superman, you probably have an opinion about the state of education in America. The film is powerful, but not everyone agrees with the argument the film makes. Please read "Grading 'Waiting for Superman'" from The Nation and see what the objections to the film are.

What do you now think about teachers' unions? The film makes them out to the the sole reason for the failing education system. Meanwhile, the teachers in Chicago are striking right now. Are those teachers causing the problems?

Blog Post #2: You and education

Thinking about what you know about education from our readings, compare your own educational experiences so far. What portrayl best represents your own education and why? Include photos of your past schools if possible to illustrate what kind of schools they were. Did class matter in the school you went to? What were you taught? How did it affect your career choices later in life? Please write about your own experience in the context of what we have been learning so far this semester.


My high school, St. Augustine HS

Blog post #1

Blog assignment #1:

Interviews

You will be interviewing a classmate for your first blog post. A good interview reveals something about the interviewee that we would not normally know. Make your questions in a way that will get your interviewee talking about something important to her.

The blog post will be well written in paragraph form, so you will be taking your answers and making them into a complete picture with your writing skills.

The blog post will also include photographs that your interviewee provides you. These photos should be a central part of your question and answers.

You will have time during the next week to work on perfecting your blog post before it is officially due. Please use your time wisely and proofread your work. Make it as professional and presentable as possible.

Why a Blog?

Ossabaw Island road

My inspiration for undertaking this blog assignment is inspired by a recent experience I had in Savannah, Georgia.  I was selected to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks Workshop there. We discussed the history of slavery in the area of the Sea Islands, and we we were able to meet the descendants of slaves who still live on Sapelo Island. Because of what I was able to learn about this summer, we will be reading and thinking about the issues these islanders face today. My fellow faculty members from across the country were so inspired that we decided to create a blog project where our students could share their work written about the history of Sapelo and Ossabaw Island with one another. It is called the Sapelo and Ossabaw Islands Writing Project . Because we have this technology, students from all over the country can now learn together, which is a wonderful opportunity.

Tabby structure built by slaves on Sapelo Island

Your second blog post this semester will be a collaborative blog post that you will both present to our class and post on this national blog. Your work will have to be polished and representative of the quality of work Cedar Crest students are capable of.

Marsh at Sapelo Island

Welcome!

Hello Writing 100 students!
Welcome to our course blog. You will be creating your own blog that I can link to this one.  We will be practicing writing skills along with enhancing your creativity, critical thinking, and technical skills with blogging!

You will be exploring the ideas in this course through your own personal experiences in this blog. Our first unit, for example, is about education. Since you have experienced education for many years in several different settings, your stories will be of interest in conjunction with the essays we will read.

Blogs also have multimedia capabilities, which is not something we can do in your formal papers. I want to see you connecting your ideas with your read through your writing as well as images and links to other places on the web.

I look forward to seeing your work over the semester!