A core part of this course is the blog posts that you will write in response to the readings and to your experiences in Peru.
You will set up a blog and three times a week, you will write a post of c. 400-500 words or embed a video blog of 5-10 minutes. Two blog posts will be in response the readings (due the day before we discuss a text). The third blog post (due at the end of the week) will reflect on what you have seen/experienced in Peru. You will also, for each blog post, write comments on at least two of your classmates’ blogs posts.
You can set up a blog on just about any platform (except for Tumblr or, it also turns out, WiX). I recommend one of the following: UBC Blogs, WordPress, or Blogger. (Update: it looks as though Substack will also work.) Feel free to customize your blog in any way you fancy: make it pink! Upload cat pictures! It’s all good.
Note that these blogs will be in theory at least visible to the world. If you want you can be anonymous or adopt a pseudonym. That is fine by me, so long as I know who you are.
Blog posts are due either by 11:59pm the evening before we discuss a reading or (in the case of your Experience blog) by 11:59pm on Sunday night.
Set up your blog before we arrive in Peru, writing a post introducing yourself to the class, telling us something of your expectations for the program. You will also have sent me (at jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca) the address of your blog.
Then, by some magic of the Internet, I’ll arrange things so that your blog posts show up here, on this site.
Your aim with these posts is to spark discussion. Tell us about what you noticed, what you found interesting, what you liked, what you disliked what you found puzzling, what you want to talk about in class. You may want to make connections with other weeks’ readings, or with similar texts you may have read, or with similar experiences you may have had.
Each blog post should also include one question that you want us to discuss collectively.
Video blogs: If you want to do so, you are able to submit videos for your responses. A video blog should be 5-10 minutes long, should fulfil the same function as a written blog (sparking discussion and so on), and should also include a question. You should upload it to a video site (such as YouTube or Vimeo) that allows you then to embed it within your blog. Then, publish your blog post with the embedded video in it.
These posts and questions are not graded for quality, or even for grammar or spelling etc. Write them quickly, as soon as you are done with the reading or as soon as you feel you have something to say about what we have seen and done! The point is to get some first ideas and impressions down, while the texts and experiences are still fresh in your mind, and to begin preparing for in-class discussion.
I would like you to use “categories” and “tags” on your posts: you should use categories according to the author’s last name (e.g. “Vargas Llosa”). You are encouraged also to you use tags to indicate the themes or topics that you are highlighting (e.g. “urbanization” or “modernity” or “protest” or whatever). You may want to consult the list of concepts that I think are important for the course, or come up with your own. Either way, these tags will constitute a tag cloud visible on multiple pages on this site.
Before two days after our discussions, you then should write comments on at least two of your classmates’ blogs posts.
One more thing…
Comment moderation
It will make everything immeasurably easier if you remove comment moderation from your blog, so that you do not have to manually approve each comment as it arrives.
On WordPress blogs (wordpress.com or blogs.ubc.ca), this is how you do it:
a) go to your Dashboard
b) go to Settings > Discussion
c) click “E-mail me whenever Anyone posts a comment”
c) unclick “Before a comment appears Comment must be manually approved”
d) unclick “Before a comment appears Comment author must have a previously approved comment”
That’s it! Good luck!
