English 421K, Technical Writing

You'll do a lot of the writing for this class in your individual weblog space on the course website. You can access your weblog via your my account page.

One way to think of a weblog or blog is as a journal. However, unlike a journal that you might keep at home (as well as most if not all of the writing you have done in school before), your blog space is public. Your fellow class members will be invited to read your blog. Classmates will respond to your posts with comments and replies. Group members will review notes you take when doing research. And, of course, since it's on the Internet, other Web readers may encounter your writing and take a look at what you have to say.

There are many uses for weblogs, but we'll only use them for a few things here. During this class, you may be asked to use your course weblog to

• share drafts of your work-in-progress for peer review
• keep a project log
• post research notes 

In addition to the individual weblog space that everyone has, the home page of our course website is a community blog space where anyone can post. While most of your blog writing will be posted to your individual weblog, we'll use the home page as a place to promote discussion among all class members. For example,

• When there is a reading response assignment, your instructors may promote someone's post to the front page for community discussion.
• Groups may be asked to lead discussion by posting their reading responses or blog posts to the course home page instead of to their individual weblogs.
• Groups may be asked to share proposals and progress reports with the entire class.

Good Blogging Practices

• Titles for blog posts should reflect the context of what you have written, not merely restate the name of the title of the assignment or reading. Interesting and informative titles draw more interesting responses from others.
• Blogs should demonstrate the principles of writing for the Web as they are covered in this course.
• Bloggers link. Use hyperlinks when referring to another post on the public Internet and follow good attribution practices. Hyperlinks mean converting text to a link, not merely cutting and pasting in an URL. To do so, you'll have to know a little HTML for creating hyperlinks.
• People visiting the course website from the Internet won't know what you mean if you just mention "the reading assignment for today." Since PW Online is password protected, others on the Internet cannot access it. Treat it like a printed text. At minimum, you should mention the name of the text and the title of the chapter or section you are referencing.
• Good bloggers always keep in mind that they are writing for a public audience.

To Learn More

• To receive credit for your work, be sure to follow the course requirements for reading responses and project logs.
• Read Chapter 28, "Networking with Others on the Web" in The Thomson Handbook (p. 621)
• Optional: Read Meg Hourihan's What We're Doing When We Blog for a brief description of weblogs. For further reading on weblogs, take a look at The Weblog Webliography on Kairosnews.