Here’s the frame I suggest for this first, 700-word, essay:

You imagine that you’ve promised to write kindly Aunt Em or Uncle Henry about your first weeks at Haverford College and you decide to include an explanation of what may seem to them the strangest of your courses, a writing seminar titled “My Blog, Myself.” You explain clearly and succinctly what a “blog” is, offering an example or two (perhaps with links, in case the folks in Kansas have acquired Internet access) and you offer your own first-week opinion of how self-expression in blogs does or doesn’t conform to writings with which Em or Henry are more familiar. You may imagine that you’re answering the rhetorical question, “What is a ‘weblog’, as a form of writing?”

A title is optional, as is a bibliography (but do think about adding those links). I suggest you draft your essay in Word, using spell-checking (Tools, Spelling and Grammar, or <F7>) and the word-count feature (Tools, Word count) and then pasting the finished essay into your LiveJournal so we may all read it. Note that you may limit access to your LiveJournal by logging in and using the Manage Friends page to create a “custom friends group” into which you drag the usernames of all of us in the class. You then restrict access to this posting to the new custom friends group. If this is puzzling or doesn’t seem to be working, ask me or one of your more-experienced classmates for help. If you have trouble getting the essay into LiveJournal, or if you have qualms about sharing it with the class, or if you want to get my quick read of your draft before you paste it to LiveJournal, email me.

NOTE: I’m (at least) a day late getting this assignment to you in written form, and it now seems unreasonable to ask you to submit your essays early enough on Monday for me to read them before Tuesday’s class (and there’s that faculty Labor Day picnic Monday evening …). Plan, therefore, to have your essay finished and posted by class time Tuesday, September 7. We’ll spend some of Tuesday’s class (along with discussion of memexes) comparing approaches to the topic, and I’ll read and respond to your individual essays by Thursday.