Principles of Reading Responses

In this class you will be required to periodically respond to course readings with blog posts. Each reading response should be specifically focused on the reading and the prompt provided on the calendar, clearly indicate that you have read and thought seriously about the reading, and be sufficiently developed. Your reading responses must be at least 250 words and should not exceed 350 words. Post your reading response as a blog entry and tag it "Reading Response" and use the tag provided in the prompt itself.

You and possibly your group members may be assigned to post your reading response to the course home page by submitting a story. The posts on the course home page will then be the focus of full class discussion. Selected reading responses will also be promoted to the front page for more lively community discussion.

In composing your reading response you should:

• Be sure to focus your response on the subject of the prompt.
• Link your response to recent class discussions online, your current project work, something you might have read elsewhere, and/or previous professional, academic, or personal experience writing and communicating in other contexts.
• Discuss how the reading contributes to your understanding of the current project, expands your understanding of recent discussions, or suggests ideas for your work in the class.
• Be sure to properly cite the original reading and any other sources you might mention. Good citation practice is critical in all writing and especially so on the Web.
• You can apply the rhetorical considerations discussed in Principles for Posting to Your Weblog to your reading responses.
• When it is your group's turn to post reading responses to the course home page, consider that the goal of these blog posts is to share new information and stimulate discussion. If your group is reponsible for posting about an assignment, check to see if anyone has already posted a response on the reading. If so, read through it. Shape your blog post to take the conversation in different directions.