write weekly blog posts

Dr. Wares will set a login for you on this site; obviously anything you post is linked back to you, and this site is public, so represent yourself and the University of Georgia well!

Each week we will have reading to do and discussion about the reading, with some short films and other activities. Your job is to tell me what you are thinking each week, every week, by logging in, clicking on 'blog' up above, and writing a straightforward contribution to the world.

Are you worried about writing the same thing as a classmate, because we've read the same stuff? One easy contribution to make - for your own learning goals as well as for your classmates and anybody reading this site - is to explain some of the technical terms in the papers we read. For example, what is "taxonomy"?

Here is the catch though. Whatever you write must be IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Again, this is to help your understanding; it also helps us avoid copy-and-paste plagiarism, a lesson to be learned early in your academic career. And here is my suggestion (I may make it a requirement): write in Up-Goer Five.

Up-Goer Five is a name given to writing that only uses the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language. It comes from a cartoon that explains the Saturn V rocket mission only using these words! You can check your own writing using online editors.

For example, here is my take on "taxonomy":

the way of learning how living things are named, and how those names help us see which living things are more like each other.