comm207fall06

Welcome to our class weblog for Communications 207, Editing for Publication, at Benedictine University's Springfield campus. It's frankly an experiment, and I don't know how well it'll work out. But after getting to know the people in the class a little during our first two meetings, I think we'll do a good job with it. I'm impressed with your attitude, and I can tell you'll make that extra effort we need to ensure the experiment will succeed.

Here's how it will work. In the syllabus for our class ... which you can review by following this link to my faculty page ... I mention in Section V that one of my teaching methods is "whole classroom discussion (including participation in discussion on the Message Board linked to my faculty webpage)," and in Section VI, Subsection C under Written Assignments I say, "You are required to post to the class message board both in and out of class. I will post assignments to the board." Basically, we will post to the blog instead of the message board.

Grades: Your overall final grade is weighted like this: (A) class participation and in-class editing exercises to be assigned without notice, worth 50 percent of the total grade; (B) out-of-class written and editing exercises, including the midterm, worth 25 percent of the total; and (C) quizzes and tests including the midterm and the final exam, worth 25 percent. The blog will count toward the 50 percent (Part A) that is based on class participation.

Here's what I hope you gain by contributing to the class blog: If you can already use hypertext markup language, you'll get more practice with it. And you don't know HTML already, you can learn it as you go along.

One last thing. And this is important! I will be summarizing some of the more important parts of The Associated Press Stylebook and posting them to the blog as we go along. These will be the tricky parts that professional journalists look for when they're deciding which job applications or press releases in File No. 13. I can't decide whether to start with "A" or "Z," but pretty quick I'm going to flip a coin. And when I do and start posting, you're responsible for knowing them ... or knowing which ones they are and being able to find them quickly.