After setting up a blog for my composition class on the rhetoric of spectacle, I was debating how to get students up and running on it quickly.

The fact that inauguration coincided with the first week of class seemed a good omen, so I had students do an initial writing assignment, bring it to class to discuss, and then discuss how those writing assignments might differ/intersect/resemble a good blog post (also a great way to talk about genre and schema!)

Since I was out of town for yesterday's class, I decided to require a "blog forum," where students were required to post revised/excerpted versions of their inauguration writing assignments, and then spend class time reading each other's posts, and commenting on them. The results are, well, in my humble opinion, spectacular.

Please do check it out, and post your own comments!