How to Use This Blog

We'll use this blog to support our class in two ways.

First, each Sunday John & Amy will post a "preview" of that week's farm practicum, along with materials for everyone to review in preparation for their time on the farm. Please review this material and post a question or comment in response to it prior to your weekly time on the farm.

Second, the facilitators of the coming week's Thursday class will each compose and publish a blog post by the Sunday evening as well. These posts will relate to the food/farming related issue that the author would like us to explore during their 45 minutes of Thursday class time. These posts should contain:

1) a personal reflection about the author's interest in/relationship to/ideas about the problem at hand,
2) links to reference materials that will help the class understand the issue in some depth,
3) information about or links to materials that describe attempts to solve the problem,
and
4) questions that you would like the class to respond to in their comments on your posts.

Keep in mind that we want this course to be personal and solutions-oriented. In order to move toward real solutions, we need to understand the issues in all of their complexity. Your blog posts should contain lots of factual information to help us with this understanding (and please make sure your factual information is coming from sources you deem credible!). But they should also be written from a personal perspective. Why are you concerned about this problem? When did you first learn of it? How does it affect you personally? How are others attempting to solve this problem and how might you personally engage with its solutions?

Your blog posts should end with an open-ended question or two that you'd like the class to respond to by Wednesday evening. Everyone else in the class will respond to your post with a comment that addresses the question(s) you've posed. Commenters, please spend some time composing thoughtful responses--200+ words is a good length to shoot for, but quality is more important than quantity.