Welcome to Rhetoric and Civilization!

This blog is for students of English 212, "Rhetoric and Civilization" held Fall semester 2018 at Brigham Young University, taught by Dr. Gideon Burton.

Blog Purposes

• Responding to readings
• Exploring the themes for a given historical period
• Raising topics and bringing in sources from self-directed learning
• Developing content regarding a focused topic for an end-of-semester, "finished" post
• Learning to use a 21st century communications platform, especially to bring in social and multimedia aspects of education.

The blog is not a digital dropbox by which an individual student delivers homework to the instructor. As detailed below, students will be required to read an respond regularly to one another's posts, providing an opportunity to profit from fellow student's independent learning and to refine their own thinking.

Regarding the specifics of the blogging assignment...
Blogging Assignment
Each week students will post, read the blog, and comment/discuss.

• Posting
  Twice each week students will put up a blog post related to the current unit in the course, or connecting the current period to other periods. (Be sure that you follow the blogging guidelines document to be sure you meet criteria.) Posts are due Wednesdays and Saturdays by midnight. (Some may prefer to post by Friday to avoid having homework on the weekend.) Meet these deadlines so that other students will have time to read and respond to your posts.
• Reading the Blog
  Read our course blog in a calculated way:
  --Read any instructor posts in full
  --Do not only visit the blog to put up your post. Budget time to read the blog (efficiently, as described below). As the blog grows, try using the labels (listed in the right column) to navigate to similar posts.
  --Skim the other posts as they go up, noting post titles, any media, or subheadings. Ask yourself, "Do I have a general sense of the topics/themes/events/people/works that classmates are discussing?" and "Am I getting a more complete sense of the outlined themes or key people/events/works for the period in question?" and perhaps "Could any of these be starting points for me for my own self-directed learning or my main post?"
• Commenting and Discussing
  Students should read and comment on at least three other students' posts twice weekly. Comments are due Tuesdays and Thursdays by 11am. Again, follow the blogging guidelines document in order to comment well.
  --Although you can comment on others' posts at the same time that you put up your main post, consider reading the course blog and commenting prior to you posting (or even before doing your reading). You might even end up developing your main post as a response to another person's post. Also, consider returning to the blog later after others have commented (and perhaps continue prior conversations).
  --Search out posts that have not had comments and try to leave comments there, especially if you can bring another student's posts into the conversation somehow.

For details on what you should include in your post, see the blogging guidelines.