Assignment: My Renaissance

My students are studying the Renaissance period in our Rhetoric & Civilization course, and I'm asking them to blog about it.

(Blogging is part of the digital renaissance taking place in our day, an outpouring of new forms of art and communication. So, we are participating in an ongoing rebirth or renewal of culture that is parallel to the period known as the Renaissance in European history.)

Here is what I'm asking my students to do in a post themed "My Renaissance"

Compose a blog post about the Renaissance

• length is about 300 words (400 max)
• refers to self-directed learning
• supports / refers to one of the themes from this period
• personalizes the period (sees this historical thing through an individual perspective)
• well designed visually as a blog post, and includes an image
• includes a meaningful title (NOT: "Blog post #1" or "My Renaissance Post")

I'm also requiring that they respond to one another's blog posts on the blogging platform. I'm cautioning them NOT to lapse into "report mode"--merely paraphrasing some source. I need to see them present in the post through a personal perspective or their own explicitly personal self-directed learning efforts.  Here is an example post.