Today in class we will be setting up your blogs. If you brought your own laptop, you can set up your blog on the spot. If not, no worries, we will walk through the process so you know how to make it happen once you get back to your own computer.

You may be thinking… why in the world are we setting up blogs? Well, there are two good reasons. First, you will be placing your discussion posts on your personal blog. They will be available to all the other students as well as myself to read. It is really similar to the discussions that you may have used previously in D2L, with the exception that the blog dashboard offers you much more flexibility. It is a place you can record all kinds of information, files, photos and observations.

Second, this format is available to you for your Legislative Brief. If you take a look at the final major assignment for the class, you will see that it should be prepared and submitted electronically. That means you want it to be multi-media. We will talk about what this means during the semester, and you have other options besides the edublog format. But since you will be here using this for your discussion posts, it may be a place you want to use for your final Legislative Brief Submission.

We will be spending some time today going through all of the resources that are presently on the D2L site and will be added over the next week. (I am working on it) The most important thing for you to do at this point is to start paying attention to the legislature. Everyone believes we will have a very fast and short legislative session due to the earlier date for the primary elections. So start thinking about your bills really soon and start contacting legislators as quickly as you can.

See you this afternoon.