As of course you know, you need to post a reflection for each unit in the course. Reflections (which are basically blog posts) are a place where you can expand at some length on a theme or idea from the unit–with a little more formality and depth than you might use in the forums, but a little less formality and depth than you will use in your papers. Reflections are part of the open side of the course–so you may have an audience which is wider than just me and your classmates. And you may receive comments from people who are interested in what you have to say, even though they’re not (officially) part of this course.

So how do you post a reflection? It’s fairly simple.  Click “Post Your Reflections” in the navigation menu above.  If you’re not logged in, you’ll need to log in.  If you are logged in, that link will take you straight to your Dashboard.  In the Dashboard, you’ll see a menu item for “Posts” and a choice to “Add New.”  That’s what you’re doing: adding a new post (reflection).  Give your post a title, and type it right into the box there.  You’ll see editing buttons, if you need or want to format your text (there’s even a spell-check in a dozen or so different languages).  There’s an “add media” button if you want to include some images or other media.  All fairly standard.

In order to keep things somewhat organized, please choose a category (from the menu on the right) for your post.  The category should be the unit where that reflection belongs.  For example, your first reflection, in the first unit, should have the category “Where Have You Been?”  Don’t choose “Reflections” as your category.  We want these reflections to go directly to the right sub-page for each unit.

Reflections, by default, are public.   But there’s a choice there, and it’s your choice.  If you want to make your reflection private, just use the “Visibility” setting under “Publish” on the right.  If you choose “Password protected” you can set a password, and then you can give that password to your classmates (post it in the forum, where outsiders can’t see it, with some thoughts about why you want that post to be just for us).  Or you can give the password only to me, or only to a group of classmates.  You can even mark the post “Private,” which makes it so nobody except you can see it (but do remember that I, as the professor, can still see private posts–this isn’t the same as your own personal blog or journal!)

And of course, you can go back and edit Reflections even after they’re posted.  And if the category or visibility needs to be changed, you can do that, too!