A note on accessing the blog: Ryan mentioned during week 2 that if the blog won't count hits by its own members. This is true, but only if you're logged on at wordpress. If you just visit the site from WetPaint, your facebook account, etc., and you don't see your account options in the gray bar at the top of the page, you're not logged in. Just a thought...

Posting (DEADLINE: Monday at 6pm)

• Be sure to include an analysis that includes the readings, the current political atmosphere and the narratives of the US that anchor said atmosphere, and a Kingdom reflection/response or integration within our society
• Try not to wait until Tuesday night or Wednesday morning to post; there are 17 people who will need to read and respond to the different posts of the week

It’s In the Details

• be sure to proofread your posts and comments before you publish them. It’s easy to write and respond in our fervor of engagement, and leave things a bit untidy
• There’s a spell check button on the menu bar of the Write Post Page
• Also, be sure to separate your paragraphs with a hard return; it increases readability
• Remember to Categorize your post, using one of the existing categories or adding a new one. Think of the category as a "file" where you put a document for further access
• Applying a tag is most beneficial as well, as tags are the manner with which others may read your blog. Names of authors, concepts, or broad things like "politics" show up when folks are searching the web for material that may connect them to our blog.
  

Word limit

• as we talked about in class, the closer you keep it to 500 words, the better. This will both increase readability for you and those outside of class, and decreases my time to read them!
• There’s a word counter near the “Save” and “Publish” buttons on the Publish status bar on the right of the Write Post page

Comments (DEADLINE: Wed. at 3pm)

• Be sure to engage with your peer bloggers during the week; only about half responded for week 1. They’ve got good things to say, it’s worth your while to read what they’ve got going on.
• Also, feel free to comment on as many as you’d like, but we’d like you to have a more in-depth response of 100 words with someone’s post. This increases the likelihood of conversation and content for dialogue between folk.
  

Grading

• At the end of the quarter, we'll be requesting a copy of your 10 posts and any and all comments, threads and interaction you've had with others on our blog or visitors blogs for final grading.
• With the five texts we're reading, we'll expect at least one interaction with each one in a post and it's connection to politics/culture and the interaction with the kingdom
  
• The first half of the quarter leading up to the election, 5 posts spanning weeks 1-5, we'll be posting on politics and the narratives inherent within that we need to be aware of as followers of Jesus (see above "Posting" category for more details)
  
• The last half of the quarter, 5 posts from weeks 6-10, can be broader in scope, of culture and church and narratives, etc. (see above "Posting" category for more details)