Reading Blogs due weekly on Tuesdays by class start
Overview
Each student will maintain their own blog throughout the course of the semester. Blogs will be due every Tuesday (for readings) and every Friday (for project updates) as listed on the course schedule.
Purpose
Blogs allow you to keep track of your project development and reading cycle. Writing weekly project updates helps you to further engage in the iterative design process, and will (hopefully) motivate you to keep up on your work.
Format
Blogs will be split into two main groups - chapter readings and design updates. On average, you will be assigned 2 chapters from different books every week. Chapter readings are due every Tuesday in the following format:
Blog Title: Title of Book and chapters assigned
Reference Information:
- Title of book
- Name(s) of author(s)
- Book editors - when and where
1. Brevity: Writing should be as short as possible, Length should be appropriate: between a paragraph and a page.
2. Clarity: Writing should be clear and understandable to someone who hasn’t read the book.
3. Completeness, pt. 1: Writing should include main/significant/important concepts from book.
4. Completeness, pt. 2: Writing should function as a reference: If you later need to access information from the book, it should be in the summary.
5. Completeness, pt. 3: Writing should include information necessary to implement ideas.
In addition, be sure that your summary posses the following characteristics:
- Effort is shown.
- Does not include opinionated information.
- Is useful and follows the above five requirements.
1. Why is this reading interesting or significant?
2. What are the faults of this work?
3. What are the possible applications for this work (i.e., taking some of these ideas and applying them to others’/your work)?
Overall:
- Contains a useful picture.
- Insightful and interesting discussion (if you have to ask, it's probably not insightful or interesting).
Students who complete their blog entries on time and include the information as outlined above will receive full credit. We will be reading your blogs, so make sure that you include actual, and honest, updates. A penalty of one point is assessed to blog entries for every week that they are late. After four weeks, late entries are given a score of zero.