1102-15 Blog Project Criteria

Hi everyone -

I will be making posts along with you - so be sure to follow my blog as well as your classmates' blogs. For the first post, I'm going to lay down some criteria for this project:

1 - You must choose one form of American culture to critique on your blog, and as always, I want you to be specific. This means, rather than just being a music critic, you should be a mainstream hip hop critic, or an indie Pitchfork-like critic. Or rather than being a food critic, you should be a vegan food critic or a local restaurant critic. All of this must somehow relate to American culture.

2 - You should choose a persona. This means your persona, or the voice you are writing from, can be you - your own voice/identity/tone (ie I'm writing this as a FSU freshman college student who is also an athlete) -   or you can adapt a different voice for satirical purposes or exploratory purposes - maybe you want to mock the socioeconomic politics of a cooking show, so you write from the perspective of a rich, bourgeoise chef and exaggerate the ridiculously expensive ingredients this persona uses in order to show how cooking shows are sometimes geared towards Americans who can spend money on $30 goat cheese. This is a way to make this more of a creative writing project.

3 - Include visuals and videos! And make them relevant to each entry! Your blog is going to be way more interesting if you imbed pictures and videos - and it will be difficult to get a good grade on this project if you haven't used any visuals.

4 - Write more than the minimum amount. I'm setting the minimum here at six longer blog entries, but you really should write more. And if you only end up doing six, they should be interesting, critical, provocative, and in-depth. I'm looking more for quality over quantity, but the more entries you write - the better your chance of getting an A. Remember, this project is 15% of your overall grade in the class. And if you really impress me with the number of blog entries you are writing, I may even give you extra credit on your journal grade.

5 - Feel free to be informal, use "I," write about things that interest you, check out each other's blogs, and have fun with this. As always, remember who your audience is - your peers and me - (even if the persona you are creating might have an alternate audience) - so don't write anything that is offensive or hateful, unless you want to receive zero credit for the assignment.