Blogging

For Students of COM350

You will post five nature blog entries over the course of the semester, which you will include in your final portfolio. You may also include images and video as well. You don’t need a thesis or outside sources.

Six of our class periods are devoted to this “out of classroom” experience. (You can skip one or drop the lowest grade.) By each due date, you will pick a location “in nature” and write about your experience. For this purpose, “nature” is a location that is not primarily constructed by humans. A boardwalk, library, or street would not be considered “in nature.” The beach, the woods in Bulow Creek State Park, or a freshwater marsh surrounding the St. John’s River would be appropriate places to visit. You may also find many natural areas around Embry-Riddle that are interesting and worthwhile. You cannot post about the same place twice. You can visit places where other students go.

The content of the entry should describe your experience and something about how you feel about it or what it means in terms of a larger idea. For example, you might describe your experience watching an army of ants as awe-inspiring for whatever reason. (They can be! See Tim Flannery’s “The Superior Civilization” p. 122) If an ant bites you in the process, you may choose to describe that as well.

You should find a notebook for this project. Take handwritten notes as you visit each site. You will be asked to produce these notes. If possible, take a camera with you to visually document your experience. You can post images on the blog as you see fit.

Guidelines & Suggestions

• Get dirty. These journals are not about from-a-distance observations; they are about You and Nature interacting in the physical world. If you go to the beach, go into the water, under the water, into the sand.
• Describe your experience. Read a few paragraphs from the first page of Axelson’s “The Alpha Accipiter (p. 99) for a good example of this type of description. Avoid clichés and weak descriptions/metaphors. The phrases “a beautiful day” or “blue sky” are not okay. Plants are never just “green”; clouds are never just “white.”
• Include other people if you’d like and/or arrange to go to locations with classmates. If you go into nature with someone, by all means include them in the journal. Many times the inclusion of others gives more meaning to an experience, and their inclusion also gives you more to write about. (How did your friend react to standing in ankle deep muck? What did your dog do when it saw the ocean?)
• Take poetic license but do not write sloppily. Write how you feel using concrete language, be creative, make unlikely connections, have no fear.
• Check out Nature.com Blogs (http://blogs.nature.com/blogs) for examples of nature blogs.
• Do not use past experiences as a basis for the blog entries—you must go into nature during this term. Fabricating a journal entry without having the experience that you write about is academic dishonesty.

Your entries will be evaluated on whether you followed the instructions, wrote a “complete” entry (one that makes sense on its own as a singular piece of writing), employed college-level writing (appropriate vocabulary, style, and tone), and posted an entry relatively free of grammatical error. Fragments are fine if used for effect. Not as errors. Worth 200 points (total).