"To get all 50 points, you must be actively participating in the discussions by posting your own thoughts on your blog and be commenting on the blogs of other students. There is no firm number of posts that you need to do, but you should plan on contributing at least around 7-10 thoughtful posts and/or comments this semester. By thoughtful, we mean critical, thorough, reflective, and instructive."Here's how we're going to do this. Please email me an email titled "My best reflective posts" or something like that, and in the body of the email give me the URLs to the SEVEN best posts that you have written this semester that showed you reflecting on class topics.. I'm only requiring you to send me seven posts instead of 10 because I know it might be a pain to have to track down all of the posts that you have written this semester. Send me your seven best ones, and I'll assume you did some other posts as well. A post can be:
- something you wrote on your blog
- a comment you wrote on somebody else's blog
- a comment you wrote responding to somebody's comment on your blog.
A reminder about what does NOT count as a post:
- Turning in homework (i.e., your blog post about your lesson idea does not count as a reflective post, it was a required way of submitting your homework -- it was not reflective.)
- However, a couple of times this year I specifically required you to reflect about a class topic. For example, I asked you to reflect about our ethics activities. That counts as one of your reflective posts because you were reflecting on what we learned about class. The required posts that will count towards your seven are: 1) Intro to Technology integration assignment (when you reflected about how your teachers used technology; 2) Best use of technology in your major assignment (when you reflected on the best technologies used in your discipline); and 3) Ethics reflection
- Posts about non-class topics. Some of the best writing this semester was about politics, love lives, etc. While highly entertaining, these had nothing to do with class and so they don't count as reflective posts!
Do you see the criteria? A post counts towards your seven if it was reflecting on class topics or topics connected with the use of technology in education.
If you're wondering, "How in the world do I remember where I posted stuff?" remember that it probably won't be too hard to find your posts. Look on your blog first. Then think if you posted something on my blog and use the search engine at the top of my blog to find the post that you commented on (although the search engine part doesn't work as well as I would like). Finally, look at your blogging buddies' blogs if you remember posting something there.
Here's how you send me the URLs: Once you find one of your good posts, click on the "comments" button underneath it. This will take you to a page that has only that post and it's comments, and nothing else. Look at the URL bar in the browser (where you type in web addresses). This is the "direct link" to this specific post. Copy and paste this URL into your email to me. This way I get an email with direct links to your five best posts and I will be able to read them and evaluate how reflective you've been this semester!
Good luck tracking down your posts and please email them to me before Finals Week. And thanks for all your wonderful thoughts!
