What is a reading blog?

Reading to Blog

What's more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We'll be able to answer some of those questions after we've recorded our relationships with the books we read.

In order to preserve paper, as well as to promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we'll be keeping blogs about the books we read.

You will write your own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework blog entry. You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I hope you focus on different topics and take different approaches in each entry.

Imagine you have been assigned "The Three Little Pigs" for homework. To write a reading blog based on this reading here are some possibilities:

-Respond to the text personally: 

I never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!

-Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation: 

The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf "huffed and puffed and blew his house down" he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve's character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.

-Ask questions to later answer:

What might the grandmother represent? Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses? How might I write a better ending? I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs. 

-Visual Vocabulary 

Select the words you think it was important to define in the text. Match a picture to it on your blog post. 

-Hyperlink 

You might want to use the 21^st century's answer to footnotes when you're talking about something that is not common knowledge. We'll do a demo of how to insert a hyperlink in class.

You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries. We'll take a look at them next week in class and in conferences.

Take a look at this example from a student a few years ago. Here's a more satirical style and here's another more effusive style. 

Here you can find the rubric I'll be using to assess your blogs.