This week you will:

1. Create your blog with UH Blogger, add your profile and change how it looks..
2. Create your first blog post on the elements of the Intellectual Traits.
3. Complete and submit your self-assessment for week 2.

This week you will create your own blog using UH @ Google Blogger. Please use your name as the title for your blog. This makes it easy to know who you are. After you create your blog, and upgrade the way it looks, you will write your first blog post on the elements of Intellectual Traits or ....How to become a fairminded critical thinker!

Please remember, before you begin your activities, read and watch this week's topic summary content.

Whenever you learn, let go and have some fun, don't take yourself too seriously.

Read/watch the following...

What's a Blog?

Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web

A BLOG is just a web page, but a web page with some clever formatting software behind it so that anyone (including you) can build it and update it with no technical know how. The key elements that make a web page a blog (other than the blogging software) seem to be:

1. time-stamped snippets
2. posted in reverse chronological order

A blog unfolds over time, with the most recent posts first. Blogs often, but don’t always, include comments from readers, a blogroll to other blogs, a way to search the archives and past posts and a bio of the blogger. Until recently, it was unusual for a blog to be written by anyone other than a single individual. Today, though, it’s not unusual to find team blogs (like the www.huffingtonpost.com) and blogs written by organizations that aren’t journalists

Blogs work when they are based on: 1. Candor 2. Urgency 3. Timeliness 4. Pithiness and 5. Controversy

If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please Who’s There? Seth Godin 28 don’t bother. People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there’s something in it for them. Save the fluff

THREE KINDS OF BLOGS

Yes, I know there are two kinds of people in the world—those that believe that there are two kinds of people and those that don’t. But there really and truly are three kinds of blogs.

CAT BLOGS are blogs for and by and about the person blogging. A cat blog is about your cat and your dating travails and your boss and whatever you feel like sharing in your public diary. The vast majority of people with a cat blog don’t need or want strangers to read it. If you’ve got a cat blog, you should embrace that fact and stop wondering where all your traffic is. Alas, this ebook is almost completely useless to you. You already have what you want!

BOSS BLOGS are blogs used to communicate to a defined circle of people. A boss blog is a fantastic communications tool. I used one when I produced the fourth grade musical. It made it easy for me to keep the parents who cared about our project up to date... and it gave them an easy-to-follow archive of what had already happened. If you don’t have a boss blog for most of your projects and activities, I think you should think about giving it a try. Boss bloggers don’t need this ebook either, because you already know who should be reading your blog and you have the means to contact and motivate this audience to join you.

The third kind of blog is the kind most people imagine when they talk about blogs. These are blogs like instapundit and Scoblelizer and Joi Ito’s. Some of these blogs are for individuals (call them citizen journalists or op-ed pages) and others are for organizations trying to share their ideas and agendas. These are the blogs that spread ideas.

VIRAL BLOGS . They’re viral blogs because the goal of the blog is to spread ideas. The blogger is investing time and energy in order to get her ideas out there. Why? Lots of reasons—to get consulting work, to change the outcome of an election, to find new customers for a business or to make it easier for existing customers to feel good about staying. The math behind viral blogs is astonishing. One person, $20 a month and an audience of several hundred thousand people! Even better, a viral blog stuffed with good ideas is going to influence millions of people who never even read the original. For example, Chris Anderson posted his “Long Tail” idea on a blog. There are now 1,040,000 Google matches for the expression he invented.

If you’re writing for strangers, that means you’re building a viral blog.

The first principle is to make your entries shorter. Use images and tone and design and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually. On the other hand, if you’re writing for colleagues, you’ve got a boss blog. That means you can make your entries more robust.

• Be specific.
• Be clear.
• Be intellectually rigorous and leave no wiggle room.

Takeaway: the stuff you’re putting in your blog is too long. Too much inside baseball. Too many unasked questions getting answered too soon.

Blogs work best when people read them over time.

One frame of a movie isn’t enough to win an Academy Award, and one post on a blog isn’t enough to make a huge difference. My friend Jerry calls this drip marketing. Like an ancient water torture, one drop a time, building until it has an impact. A blog is a chance to talk to people who want to listen, to aggregate an audience that wants to listen to you, to spread your ideas and to talk back to you.

WHAT is Blogging?

Blogging is the New Persuasive Essay

by Shelley Wright | Jun 22, 2012 | Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices, Web Tools That Deepen Learning | 47 comments

As an English teacher, I’ve had numerous conversations with college professors who lament the writing skills of their first year students. But not all writing. Most students are capable of solid expository writing. It’s their skill with persuasive writing that’s the problem. Specifically, they’re weak at writing a thesis statement that can be argued.

I spend three years teaching my high school students how to write a persuasive essay. For many students, it takes that long. (And I’m lucky to have them that long in my school.)

Part of the problem is that our current school systems — and not just in Canada — aren’t great at producing independent thinkers. Without this ability, it’s hard to create a great thesis statement, anticipate the arguments against it, and then compose your own argument in light of what you understand about the pros and cons of an issue.

So for three years, I write for them, and with them. We talk about opening paragraphs, and they learn how to write them with their thesis statement either as the first or last sentence. (The latter requires more skill.) They learn to use transition words, embed quotations to support their argument, consider the advantages of active vs. passive voice, vary their sentences, and many other skills, all in the hope of creating a strong argument.

The truth is lately I’ve come to question the point of much of this. Does the average person, once they leave school, spend a lot of time composing academic essays? Is this the best way for our students to show their learning? In some places, the academic 5 paragraph essay is hailed as the Holy Grail of non-fiction writing achievement. Yet even if a student can become a great persuasive essay writer, they’re still only semi-literate, at least according to the definition of 21st Century Literacies.

Blogging is a different beast

While traditional essay writing may not help alleviate this situation, I think blogging can. Here’s the problem; Blogging is an entirely different beast. And one of the things I’ve learned about my students is that they don’t necessarily transfer a skill they’ve learned in one area to another without difficulty, or even prompting.

For one, the paragraphing is different. The large, solid paragraphs of prose that can be found in a typical persuasive essay, can feel arduous and cumbersome to all but the most determined reader.

Instead, blog paragraphs tend to be shorter. It allows the piece to feel fluid and speeds up the rate at which your reader reads (often through the glare of a computer monitor or on a phone or tablet screen). And while the effective blogger still uses transition words, as many aren’t necessary to provide the piece with a feeling of fluidity and coherence.

Sometimes a paragraph is one simple sentence, used for emphasis.

Another thing is the thesis statement. Its placement, in a blog, is up for grabs. Did you catch where mine is? Actually, I haven’t written it yet. Huh?!

Double-dog daringly different

Blogging also requires a different voice. The way I blog isn’t quite how I talk, but it’s no where close to how I write a formal essay. Furthermore, the voice used in blogging needs to be rich, sharp and distinct, to gain an audience. And while some may argue that academic writing could stand to have a bit more colour and flair, I’m not sure that’s currently the accepted norm (although I wish it was).

In a formal essay, I would never use a sentence fragment. Ever. In a blog, it provides emphasis. Nor would I use slang in an essay. But here? Yep. In one of my posts, I double-dog dared my readers. Could you imagine double-dog daring anyone in an academic essay? If you try it, let me know the result.

Another thing that changes is providing your reader with evidence to support your points. In teaching the typical formal essay, I show my students how to quote directly, indirectly, and using individual words. Blogs still use direct quotes, but an indirect quote can be as simple as a vague mention and a link.

We discover my thesis statement…

I think blogging is the new persuasive essay-my thesis, finally.

Truth is, I love writing essays. There’s something satisfying about rendering the chaos of thoughts into an elegant form. But I love blogging more. It feels like playing.

I also find it more useful. While our students will need to know how to write essays to get through university, many won’t use it after that, unless they remain in academia. I think writing and persuasive thinking skills are important. However, I question the current products we require of students as proof of their learning. Most of the essays written by our students likely end up in the garbage or the computer trash can. And most are for an audience of one.

Blogging has the potential to reach and influence many. Furthermore, it has greater potential for being a life-long skill. And isn’t that our goal in education? People from all walks and professions blog for the purpose of teaching, creating, and informing. A number of my recent Masters courses didn’t require papers; instead, they required blogging. Why?

Because blogging is the new persuasive essay.

If we’re trying to prepare our students to think critically and argue well, they need to be able to blog. It allows for interaction. It allows for ideas to be tested. And the best posts anywhere in cyberspace tend to have a point that can be argued.

I think blogging across the curriculum, not just in Language Arts, allows for both formative and summative assessment. Blogs allow us to see the progression in the development of both thinking and writing. It may actually take more talent and skill to create an interesting persuasive post (or series of posts) on the French Revolution than a traditional essay.

We need to teach blogging as a skill

The solution? Blogging needs to start earlier, much earlier. I read recently of a kindergarten teacher who blogs with her students. Great idea. There’s a teacher in my division who does amazing things with her grade one class.

I’m not proposing that you need to do things radically different. Teach whatever you teach for Language Arts, or other subjects, but include a blog component. So if you’re teaching sentence structure, teach your students to create complete sentences while blogging. Blogs, like traditional writing, need great structure. If you’re focusing on capitalization or punctuation, transfer this skill to blog writing as well.

If you’re teaching paragraph structure, teach students the paragraph structure required for traditional essays and that for blogs. They’re different. Explain why. It’s likely they won’t be good at it at first. But there is merit to the quote, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly.”

A middle years teacher at my school used to stress out when we talked about student writing. She wanted to know if she was teaching them enough. My reply: “All I need them to do is write solid paragraphs. If they can do that, I can teach them all kinds of things.” Really, everything I teach is either an addition to, or a subtraction from, a solid paragraph. My work builds on her work. I don’t need her to teach what I teach. That’s my job. But without her previous work, mine becomes much more difficult.

The same is true with blogging. Starting from scratch with blogging in grade 10 isn’t impossible. But we could do so much more if they already had the basics. In order to write well, you need to write a lot.

If you don’t currently teach your students to blog, please start. Our students need you to. And if you already teach your students to blog, keep it up. Because blogging is an important 21st century skill. It’s the new persuasive essay.

Extra resources you may be interested in...

Why You Should Choose Your Words Wisely

By LEWIS HOWES, JUNE 23, 2015

You are what you speak. Your words come together to write the story of your life, so you must choose your words wisely. The words you think, the words you write, the words you sing, the words you dream. In many creation stories, “the word” is considered the origin of all life. The word is the catalyst, the intention, the incantation to manifest what was previously only imagined. As if when something is first spoken, it only then becomes real.

Words truly are magic. Remember every stage magician’s reveal? That word we all associate with magic? It is abracadabra. With the flick of a wrist or the twist of the wand, something appears or disappears.

The word abracadabra is said to have come from an Aramaic word which means “I create as I speak,” or, “It came to pass as it was spoken....”

Through widely-accepted research in neuroscience, we do know now that our choice of words has a direct and immediate effect on our emotional response and makes our brains inclined to respond in specific ways. This is true whether we are reacting to spoken words delivered by someone else, or to the inner self-talk that we hear ourselves “saying” inside our heads.

Jeff Brown said, “Words – so powerful. They can crush a heart or heal it. They can shame a soul or liberate it. They can shatter dreams or energize them. They can obstruct connection or invite it. They can create defenses or melt them. We have to use words wisely.”

At the end of World War II the Allies sent a message to the Japanese demanding surrender. The Japanese responded with the word mokusatsu, which translates as either “to ignore” or “to withhold comment.”

It is said that the Japanese meant that they wished to withhold comment, to discuss and then decide. The Allies translated mokusatsu as the Japanese deciding to ignore the demand for surrender. The Allies therefore ended the war by dropping the atomic bomb and transforming the world we live in forever.

“A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood

What words will you choose to live by today? How will you define yourself?

What power do you carry with a single word?

Use your words wisely.