Welcome to the Stevenson Core Blog
A blog about a first-year college seminar is probably not the most exciting, but also definitely not the least exciting, blog in the whole blogosphere. There won't likely be any late-breaking celebrity news, but there also won't likely be any cat pictures or melodramatic break-ups. The aim of this blog is to facilitate an ongoing, less mediated and less restricted discussion of whatever the course brings up or touches on throughout its two quarters. A blog discussion is unique in that it does not suffer from time or length constraints. You can write as much or as little as you like, you can spend five minutes or five years on a topic, you can choose to ignore or respond to whatever you like- all without causing the kinds of duress that similar freedoms would bring to a real-time, in-person discussion. That said, many of the rules of civility we consider necessary for in-person discourse should be upheld here as well: we should not call names, we should not dismiss the perspective of another out of hand, we should try to be sympathetic and attentive, etc. In short, be nice, have a good time and try to learn from each other.
For those of you who haven't posted in a blog before (I kind of doubt that's anyone from your generation), it's as easy as clicking a link, filling in a text box and pushing "publish". You will be asked for a title: try to use that feature to loosely categorize what you're talking about, in order to make it easier for all of us to follow the conversation. For instance, if you want to say something about a Monday night lecture, say "thoughts on Prof. Suckiel's 9/25 lecture"; if you want to say something about a reading say, "Machiavelli is a pervert....", etc. You can use the comments feature to respond to another post, or you can create a new post that references a previous post. There are fancier blog platforms out there which do some of this categorizing for you, but they cost money, so just try to be transparent with what you're talking about it, insofar as that's ever possible. Also, this blog can accept very basic html, so if you want to throw in some links or otherwise take advantage of hyper-media, feel free (you can also just cut and paste url's if there's something online you want to point us towards).
I won't be grading or evaluating this blog in any sense, but I will be reading it (so if you want to talk trash about me, make sure it is very clever and worth reading). That said, I do want to extend the blog as an oppurtunity for people who might be socially uncomfortable speaking in class to participate in a different mode of conversation, and have that recognized by me. If you find that you do not often want to speak in class, but still have views you want to express or questions you want to pose to the group, this may be a good venue. But I want to caution that this should not become the de facto venue for passive-agressive behavior. If you know that you refrained from saying something in class because it was patently offensive, the blog is in no way a better place to say it (in fact, it can be a much worse and much more damaging way). Again, refer to the part about being nice and having fun.
For those of you who haven't posted in a blog before (I kind of doubt that's anyone from your generation), it's as easy as clicking a link, filling in a text box and pushing "publish". You will be asked for a title: try to use that feature to loosely categorize what you're talking about, in order to make it easier for all of us to follow the conversation. For instance, if you want to say something about a Monday night lecture, say "thoughts on Prof. Suckiel's 9/25 lecture"; if you want to say something about a reading say, "Machiavelli is a pervert....", etc. You can use the comments feature to respond to another post, or you can create a new post that references a previous post. There are fancier blog platforms out there which do some of this categorizing for you, but they cost money, so just try to be transparent with what you're talking about it, insofar as that's ever possible. Also, this blog can accept very basic html, so if you want to throw in some links or otherwise take advantage of hyper-media, feel free (you can also just cut and paste url's if there's something online you want to point us towards).
I won't be grading or evaluating this blog in any sense, but I will be reading it (so if you want to talk trash about me, make sure it is very clever and worth reading). That said, I do want to extend the blog as an oppurtunity for people who might be socially uncomfortable speaking in class to participate in a different mode of conversation, and have that recognized by me. If you find that you do not often want to speak in class, but still have views you want to express or questions you want to pose to the group, this may be a good venue. But I want to caution that this should not become the de facto venue for passive-agressive behavior. If you know that you refrained from saying something in class because it was patently offensive, the blog is in no way a better place to say it (in fact, it can be a much worse and much more damaging way). Again, refer to the part about being nice and having fun.
posted by Dillon Westbrook at 12:12 PM
1 comments
