Blog Assignment

Each student will participate in this blog. For each grading period, you will post two different types of responses:  general discussion (typically one paragraph, based on opinion, previous knowledge or things you have learned in class) and researched post (three paragraph MINIMUM, based on original research and cited). Please refer or link us to interesting web sites, videos, etc. as well as offering us the information you have found.

Reminders:
To get credit for a post you must have a new insight or thought. A sentence or two just agreeing or disagreeing with a previous post will not be worth full credit!
Nothing that is school inappropriate!
No personal attacks, you can disagree with an idea, but do it in a respectful manner and try to get beyond the name calling you might hear on TV. Nearly all political topics are much too complicated to discuss intelligently by simply giving them a derogatory label.
I challenge you to use this to explore interesting topics, but remember everyone in class is going to see this, so don’t “spill your guts” unless you are sure you want everyone to hear it.
If you use an outside source for information (and you need to!) you need to make a citation.

Rubric
For each grading periods you need to do 3 discussion posts, each worth up to 4 pts.
4 - one solid paragraph with a new thought, idea or response to another post.
3 - not complete enough to be a "4"

Researched (Do one of these each grading period worth up to 13 pts.)
13 - 3 or more good paragraphs with new points, references to source(s) OUTSIDE of class and text and very well written.
10 - Lacking quality or depth to be a 13, but solid response.
4 - Lacking quality, depth, length, or research base to qualify for an 10 or 13.

* This cannot be a "discussion" if everyone waits until the last day so you MUST post periodically (biweekly or more often) or you will lose points. Some posts will have a specific due date. Please pay attention.
PLAGIARISM WILL RESULT IN A ZERO FOR THE GRADING PERIOD! NO WARNINGS!