Writing Online

I just wanted to post a few reminders and an updated schedule for winding up unit one.

Turning in Posters and Copyright papers

According to my list, most of you are turning in either the poster or the copyright paper on Thursday. If you are turning an assignment in Thursday and have not let me know yet, please do so by the end of class today. You will turn your assignment in Thursday by 5:00 pm to the metal bin to the right of my office door (Eddy 330). At 5:00 pm I will collect all the papers and posters. If I am expecting an assignment from you and it is not there because it got lost somehow, I will email you immediately to let you know, and you must be able to successfully email me your assignment by 8:00 pm in order for it to be considered on time. This means that you must maintain an electronic copy of your poster and copyright paper! Even if you successfully submit a hard copy of your assignment, you will still need the electronic copy so that you can include it in your personal website, the unit two project.

Blogs grade reports and due dates

Everyone should have received a blog grade report and comments from me this morning via email. If you did not, please let me know ASAP so I can resend it. If you were waiting for your report before posting your fourth post (due Oct. 1), I will give you full credit for it as long as it is posted by the end of the day tomorrow, Wednesday, October 6. Remember that you have your fifth blog post due this Friday. Additionally, in some of the blog comments I indicated that I would regrade a post or about page if you revised. Those revisions are due Friday at noon along with your fifth post. Please email me to let me know if you make any of suggested revisions so I know to reread.

Web 2.0 research project

I am still grading annotations, and I apologize for taking so long with this. This is the first semester I have structured the annotation portion of this assignment this way, and it is taking much longer than I thought to get through them all. Now that all the presentations are done, I will tally up each student’s grade on the whole project and send it out in an individual email. You will still have a chance to revise annotations four and five and make any changes I suggested for the overall blog in the group comments you received last week. My plan is to get your scores to you by Friday so that you have the weekend to make any revisions. Exact revision due dates will accompany the grade sheets.

Web tutorials

Over reading days, your primary job is to work through the W3Schools HTML and CSS tutorials and write your summary of what you learned. We will spend time in class learning both of these coding languages, so don’t worry if you don’t understand everything. You also have one article to read for Tuesday, October 12, so see the daily schedule for the link.

Group evaluation forms

Please submit your group evaluation form for the presentation portion of the Web 2.0 project. You can email it to me by the end of the week. Your incentive for doing so is up to 5 bonus points on the project.

OK folks. Here’s the plan for now through Tuesday, October 12, which is our first class meeting after our reading days break.

1. Remember that you have your fourth individual blog post due tomorrow. I am working on getting each of you comments on your blogs, so I’ll extend the deadline for the fourth post from noon to the end of the day tomorrow.
2. Today I am passing out the second round of comments on the overall quality of the group research blogs so that you can discuss them briefly with your group members during the last 10 minutes of class and decide what revisions you would like to make. I will email individual comments on the annotations, and you may revise annotations 3 and 4 to raise your score if you would like. So that you have time to work on the individual blog post and the research blog revisions, the due date for any changes to the group blog will be the end of the day Sunday. I will assign final grades for the research blogs on Monday morning. If you make changes to your annotations, email me so I know to reread them.
3. You may choose to turn in either (not both!) your poster or your copyright paper next Thursday, October 7 instead of Tuesday, October 5. Please let me know today by the end of class if you plan to turn in one of these assignments on the 7th. If you are turning something in on the 7th, submit it to the metal bin to the right of my office door (Eddy 330) by 5:00 pm. I will pick up the assignments at that time.
4. Over the reading days break, you will work on the W3Schools tutorials and write your second tutorial summary Tuesday, October 12. See the tutorial homework page for details. There is also one article to read, which will introduce us to the topic of visual rhetoric on the web (see the Unit 2 daily schedule for the article).
5. The Unit 2 daily schedule is up for your review. Please let me know if you have any questions.

I want to give those of you not presenting today an extra incentive to come to class and be an attentive audience for your classmates. Therefore:

10 bonus quiz/homework points for attending class and being attentive during the presentations.

The same offer applies for Tuesday. So if you present today, you can earn bonus points next week. If you missed or blew a quiz, this is a great opportunity for you.

See you soon.

I’ve had a few questions about assignments, etc. and I have a few announcements about logistical items, so I thought I would compile everything into one post that you can refer to. Here it goes:

Announcements

• I have changed my office hours to Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:15-4:15 pm. I will be holding these office hours in our classroom, Eddy 4, instead of in my office. My reason for this is because as we begin our more technical projects, most of your questions for me will involve the computer programs we will be using, and our classroom is the best place for us to work on those issues. This also allows you to stay after class and work on your projects for an additional hour, with me there to troubleshoot. If you need to speak with me in a more private setting, just let me know and we can set up a time to meet in my office.
• We are nearing the end of the research phase of the Web 2.0 Research Project, and I will be asking you all to fill out a form rating your performance on the project thus far as well as your group members’ performance. The purpose of this form is to let me know if there are any problems developing in the groups—I want to make sure everyone is doing their fair share of the work. I’ll say more about this in class tomorrow.

Clarifications

• I few folks have asked about the length of the poster design plans that are due tomorrow. I neglected to put that information on the assignment page (although I have corrected it now). The length should be approximately 500 words or two double-spaced pages in standard 12-point type.
• The instructions for the Lynda.com Photoshop tutorials are on the tutorial homework page. The suggested beginner course is roughly eight hours worth of video instruction. You may choose to watch all of it over the next week or you may decided to watch only certain lessons given your experience with Photoshop. If you have a lot of experience with Photoshop, you may choose to complete a more advanced course instead. However, everyone should plan to spend about 3 hours with the tutorials in order to learn what you need to know to complete the poster assignment. We will also work on some of the lessons in class tomorrow so you can get started.
• Groups will sign up for a presentation day during class tomorrow, so take a look at your calendars to decide which date will be best for you—Thursday, September 30 or Tuesday, October 5.

Reminders

• Poster design plans are due tomorrow
• Bring headphones to class if you want to work independently on the Photoshop tutorials.

I have received a few questions about what to read for tomorrow. Remember to check the daily schedule for this sort of information in the future. For now, here is what is listed on the schedule for tomorrow. There will be a quiz. This one will not be open-book. The daily schedule page also contains the videos that DeVoss and Porter discuss in their article. They are short—TV commercial length and worth watching.

Thursday, 9/16: Copyright discussion
Book: Lawrence Lessig, Remix, Part III (pages 250-294)
Article: “Why Napster Matters to Writing: Filesharing as a New Ethic of Digital Delivery” by Danielle Nicole DeVoss and James E. Porter.Computers and Composition. 23 (2006).

I want to make sure that each of you gets feedback on your first research annotation before you turn in your second, so I am extending the deadline until the end of the day Wednesday, September 15. I am in charge of Writing Center orientation for new writing consultants, which was this weekend, and it took all my time Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so I wasn’t able to send each of you your feedback via email as I had hoped.

I am reading through the annotations now, and for the most part they are quite good, but everyone has room for some improvement. I will give you individualized feedback in class tomorrow, but for now here are some general patterns I am seeing:

• forgetting to provide information about the author
• spending the bulk of the annotation on summary and short-changing the evaluation portion of the annotation
• a lack of proofreading—typos and misspellings on a website or blog scream careless amateur
• no use of categories or tags

Finally, remember to bring your Non-Designer’s book to class along with the handout that I gave you Thursday from the book Everything’s an Argument. Here is the plan for tomorrow:

1. read and comment on a classmate’s individual blog (10 minutes)
2. open-book quiz on the Non-Designer’s Type Book (10 minutes)
3. visual poetry activity (30 minutes)
4. lesson on a rhetorical approach to composing and how you can use it in composing your assignments for this class with special emphasis on the copyright paper and your blogs. (20 minutes)
5. wrap-up and questions (5 minutes)

Hello all. Here are a few updates and our plan for class tomorrow.

Here is what is due soon:

Thursday, 9/9: Annotation #1 posted on your group blog

Friday, 9/10: Your first blog post on your individual blog

Tuesday, 9/13: Annotation #2 posted on your group blog

Friday, 9/17: Your second blog post on your individual blog

Here’s the plan for class tomorrow (Thursday, 9/9):

Finish Copyright discussion (15 minutes)

• Do you agree with Lessig’s view that the digital economy will continue to evolve as a hybrid economy? Why or why not?
• Hybrid or otherwise, what do you think should be the rules/laws governing authorship and ownership in the digital economy? Think about authorship broadly—creators of music, videos, still images, writers of words and of code, and more.

Open-book quiz on the Non-Designer’s Design Book (10 minutes)

Brief lesson on the CRAP principles (10 minutes)

Visual Poetry activity (30 minutes)

• Listen to the song “The Fear” by Lilly Allen.
• Take the chorus and one verse and using Microsoft Word lay them out in a way that reflects their meaning
• The only rules for your layout are that you can only use type and the CRAP principles in your layout. No images or fonts that are actually images (e.g., Wingdings). You may use colors other than black and white, but only to color your type. No text boxes or backgrounds.

Review of Rhetorical terminology (10 minutes)

• This review is to help you think further about how you are crafting your persona in your writing and how you are addressing your intended audiences in your different projects

I updated the Unit One daily schedule to reflect the due dates for our upcoming and ongoing assignments. I know is seems like a lot to keep track of right now, but once we get rolling you will find that there is a rhythm to the work that keeps you moving forward at a steady pace.

Today we have a presentation from Librarian Cathy Cranston, who will be showing us how to navigate the library article databases in preparation for the research phase of the Web 2.0 Research Project. She will speak for about 30 minutes and then you will have the second half of class to meet with your groups to set up your group blog, plan your “about” pages and start your research.

The schedule for next week is as follows:

Tuesday, 9/7: Copyright discussion
Book: Lawrence Lessig, Remix, Part II (pages 115-249)

• there will be a quiz

Due: Group blog “about” page (by the end of class time)

• you will have 30 minutes in class to finalize an upload your about page, but you will need to have it completely drafted before coming to class.

Assigned: Copyright position paper and personal policy statement

• We will go over aspects of this assignment each day that we have reading due on copyright

Lesson: How to write an annotation

Thursday, 9/9: Visual Poetry Day
Book: Robin Williams, The non-designer’s design book

• there will be an open-book quiz

Due: first research blog annotation

Here’s a quick reminder of what you need to have ready for class on Tuesday, August 31:

• Have completed reading/viewing all of the articles/videos listed for Thursday, 8/26 and Tuesday, 8/31. Remember that you are reading Part I not just chapter 1 of Remix—read pages 1-114. See the Unit One daily schedule for more details. There will be a quiz!
• Come ready to discuss the copyright material and ready to begin setting up your individual and group blogs. You will set-up a WordPress account and create your blog. I will walk you through the basics of using the WordPress software so that you can continue customizing your blogs outside of class.

Here is the plan for Tuesday’s class session:

1. Quiz (10 minutes)
2. Copyright discussion (30 minutes)
3. Brief review of Blog “about” pages, due Thursday, 9/2 (5 minutes)
4. Blog set-up (30 minutes)