English 100 at Ashland

A few details about this blog: This isn’t an official AU site, and everything here is my own opinion. Because it’s not an AU site, anybody on the Internet can read it, so if you have a friend who is in another English class—perhaps even in another college—I have no problem with you sharing the address. The blog software puts the newest items at the top, but you can still read older items that have fallen off the opening page. Just click MORE POSTS at the bottom. Or you can use the Archive and Labels tool in the left sidebar. I have enabled comments on the posts, but comments will be moderated, so if you write something, it won’t appear for a while. One more thing: Almost everything we do in the course will come through an online Learning Management System program called Blackboard. You will not have access to that until the official first day of the course, so the information here is inte...

 In no particular order: Fall 2026 100 and 101 have a LOT in common, so much of the "orienting a new student" material can duplicate. Aside from the truly outdated, a lot of this 100 blog would be great for Fall 2026. Maybe start the whole thing in mid-July. Blackboard, Outlook, and MS Copilot have reliability problems and are not terribly user-friendly, so blogger can be an alternative. Guide them toward GoDaddy syllabus and writing assignments. Stress downloading LibreOffice and (perhaps) Thunderbird. The little "Revert to Draft" thingy should probably apply to 99% of the old posts; then, when it is time, do some revision and post them so they show up with the right date. On this 100 (and 101?) blog the "Course Essentials" and such go in the left sidebar. Apparently the only way to get an older item to update and change its publish date (so it lands on the opening page) is to copy the file to my computer, delete the original from Blogger, then start a ne...