Community 2.0/DFL 2.0

The blogroll is then split into groups

In practice, the groups serve several purposes. First, membership in a group give individual students a more focused and manageable reading load.

Second, focused groups mean that each student has a guaranteed audience.

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible (or at least non-supernatural) content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".[1] Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures.[2] It is similar to, but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). The settings for science fiction are often contrary to known reality, but most science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief, which is facilitated in the reader's mind by potential scientific explanations or solutions to various fictional elements. Science fiction elements include:

in a recent graduate class on postmodernism, I required once-a-week postings that added up to 20 percent of the final grade:

Because these posts are online well before class meets, I am able to skim them for recurring themes or concerns, which I often use as beginning points for class discussion.

In my efforts to quickly and fairly evaluate blog posts, I developed a simple 5-point scale, which rates each post according to the level of critical thinking and engagement displayed in the post.