T Blog

Portfolios are in campus mail to those Blog of One’s Own students who wanted feedback on their work. I was really impressed by the general level of work students did.

Dear Next Year’s students,Throughout the year we learned a lot from the course A Blog of One’s Own. In the beginning of the semester you spend more time doing the work, but towards the end it gets easier and goes faster. We watch a few YouTube videos in the class which are very interesting.You should stay organized and be prepared to be successful in the class. The library and the writing center are very useful for this class because we have a lot of research and writing. We learned how to use library tools and we received research tools. We also learned about different internet tools. For next years student we hope they have a different perspective on the war after reading Baghdad Burning. This course is not the hardest but it is somewhat time consuming. This is an interesting course and we hope you learn a lot.

Sincerely,

Tau Pod

Dear students of the Fall ‘08 ITW class,

The instructor for this class is very knowledgeable of the information that is presented. She is very excited to teach the information, but if you get on her bad side watch out. Don’t arrive late to class, its only respectful towards your proffessor and classmates. Remember to turn off your cell phones because no one wants to hear your new ringtone. The professor expects you to be respectful and to partake in class discussions. By doing your homework and keeping on top of the reading, you’ll be able to partake in class participation a lot easier.

Also, for your 20 page paper you are required to go to the Writing Center with your work. At the center, students are there to help you with your new paper that you are in the process of developing. Getting another perspective and set of eyes on your paper will only help to being successful with this course and will leave you with a A+.

I wish you the best of luck!

Love,

Bryant Hoard

Caillee Maestro

Kate Kelleher

Sigma Pod

Dear Students of the fall 08′ ITW class,

Our advice for you next year in this class, is to use as many resources that you are given. The Writting Center is a good way to get the advice you need for your semester long project. They do a great job of helping you edit your paper.

The library is another quiet place to get your work done without the distractions of being in your room.

We strongly suggest for you to check these sources out, it really can make a difference in your grade as well as quality of work.

You  need to expect to put time into your work. What you put into it reflects on the quality of your work. A skill for managing your time. Keep up with your blogs. Don’t get behind. If late, it will reflect your grade.

This course is tedious work, but not hard. When completed semester long work, it pays off, just don’t leave all of it for the last minute.

Sincerely,

Rho

Dear Students of the Fall ‘08 ITW class:

There are a lot of things you need to know about this class before you get overwhelmed. Make sure you keep on track with your blogs and the readings. Scheduling and time management are huge factors in this class. Reading will take up a lot of time and never forget your book in class.

The work in this class was fairly easy, but very time consuming. Be prepared to work on your research paper as soon as it is assigned, that will be to your benifit. Make sure you keep up with all the deadlines and it should help you stay organized.

We have learned good research skills in this class. The library secessions were a big help when we were researching for our projects. We also learned about different cultures and how blogging affects many other countries. We hope that they enjoy the books and not get too stressed with all the blogs. Stay on track and GOOD LUCK!

Love, the Pi Pod

PS: Beware of Virginia Woolf.

Future ITW Students:

Expect homework for every class. These assignments can vary in length depending on how long you take to read the material. The assignments are usually not hard. If you read slowly allot more time for assignments. Pertaining to the semester long paper, if you meet the deadlines you will be fine. Do not save this paper til the last minute because you will wish you hadn’t.

You will certainly take away a lot from this class. Most people learned the most about their research topic. Then you will learn how to use a blog and post blog posts. This class also focused on politics and voicing individual opinionated responses after watching selected YouTube shorts. Next yr’s class will hopefully become more political and enjoy the class!

Dear Next Year Students,

What I learned first is what a blog actually was. We learned that blogs are important in many successful corporations. We learned from Blog! about all the different types of blogs. We learned that if you text in class you will get kicked out. We also learned from Baghdad Burning that Iraq & the U.S. are more alike. We hope that next year’s class takes blogs and pod-casting to the next level.

Visiting the Writing Center is a requirement for this course and it is in your best interest to attend. They will help to make your paper better than it was to begin with. The library can help you write your research paper. They will guide you to useful resources. When you go on the field trip to the library it is a great idea to pay attention because Deng Pan is very helpful.

Megan Breen

Meagan Bullett

Melanie Canfield

Chris Colbert

Erin Coyle

Jimmy Ahern

When taking this class you should expect to spend a maximum of about 4 hours a week out of class. This really doesn’t include the 15 page paper you will be working on throughout the semester. You also really want to stay on top of your work otherwise pulling yourself out of a hole will be hard. This course has been pretty hard because on top of your other classes you have at least two homework assignments a night. With this class using outside resources helped a ton. The Writing Center was a great tool. They helped you out so much to get a good jump start on your paper. So I would very much encourage using outside sources because they will help you out and keep you on track with your paper.

Before we started this class,

We wish we realized all the work were getting ourself into. It really never stops until the moment you leave class. We would never get behind on the work. Take advantage of the resources we have, like the Writing Center, going more than once, because you get extra credit. Always keep up to date with the blogs, because once you get behind it just makes it harder. We would also want to start researching early and organizing the research. Starting your portfolio when you start working and keep all of your drafts together.

You should expect to spend about two hours on each assignment, due ever class. The semester long project will take at least a month to complete. The readings and writings can be time consuming, especially when you have two at once. Taking other classes, you should plan a time to do the blogs every night.

The end, good luck!

Outside of class students should expect to spend at least an hour, including reading time, on each blog. When we had different portions of our paper due, depending on length, you should expect to spend at least two hours per night, and then as the paper gets lengthy, even up to 4 to 5 hours. With our courses, it definitely was hard to handle, just because we were constantly juggling our paper, with regular writing assignments. The Writing Center was helpful because they gave you a lot of feedback, and helped with the actual structure of the paper. Next semester students should definitely consider the Writing Center, more than once, not only because it’s extra credit , but because you can benefit.Good luck to next semester students!

-Lambda Pod

Hope you’re all having fun reading Virginia Woolf! Kudos to those who have kept up with the homework and written summaries of Chapter One for the HW 24 discussion on Keene-Ning. Individual conferences continue today instead of regular class, but tomorrow we return to our regular schedule. HW 26 and 27 are due Wednesday for 12 o’clock students and Thursday for 4 and 6 o’clock students.

For those of you wishing to get a jump start on your work for spring break, the homework due after break is also posted on the “Documents for ITW 101” page, along with the past present homework assignments.

I realize that not only have many of my students never written a 15-20 page research essay, most have not had the chance even to read many long essays. To give you an example of how engaging and personal a good research project can be, I asked one of last semester’s students if I could post her essay on T Blog, and she kindly agreed.  You can read her essay by going to the “Documents for ITW 101″ page, or clicking here: http://keeneweb.org/tmendham/files/2008/02/samplestudentessaythenineteenthwasagoodstart20080222.doc

Enjoy!

Agenda for Thursday:

1. Attendance
2. Introductions (Tell us your name and what was something fun you did on the computer recently, or something not fun) (did in 4′o clock section but not 6 o’clock)
3. Announced HW 5 deadline extended–since it requires you to provide links to your classmates’ blogs but so many students need to create new blogs, we’ll wait until more of them have been created.
4. Returned HW 1, collected new printouts of HW 1 where necessary. Students who are creating new blogs asked (preferably) to email Tracy the new address as soon as possible, or at the very least bring a printout to the next class. See “How Create a New Blog” and “How to Import Posts“.
5. Announce pod assignments.
6. Group work defining types of social computing.
7. Break
8. Un-quiz on Toward A More Participatory Democracy… Not a quiz! Discuss. the reading.
9. Watch YouTube video of The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on Crossfire. (We didn’t get to this in the 4 o’clock class, will do Tuesday.) This appearance was referred to in the reading “Toward a More Participatory Democracy,” and includes an argument for real debate in journalism. As Kline puts it, “newspapers and television in practice now routinely define objectivity and balance to mean nothing more than allowing two partisan spokespeople from opposing ends of the political spectrum to scream at each other for two minutes or two paragraphs–as if that has anything to do with getting at the truth” (Kline 9). (Watch the Crossfire clip here.)

Check your calendar to see what assignments are due Monday. Visits by Writing Center tutors next week. Printouts of HW 2 and HW 3 were not collected. You should print out all your blog posts and bring them to class, but they do not have to be handed in at every class.

If you’ve been asked to improve the anonymity of your online presence in the course, you’ll need to create a new blog. 

1. Go to your old blog and sign in: http://keeneweb.org/yourblog/wp-admin 
2. Go to http://keeneweb.org/
3. Click on the link in the sidebar for “Get a Keeneweb blog or user account”
4. Once you’re at the “Get another Keeneweb.org blog in seconds page” it will be self-explanatory. Choose an address and blog title that meet the requirements on the “HW 1″ and “Your Reading Response Blog” handout–ones which don’t make it easy to figure out your real name and are appropriate for mixed company and the academic enterprise.
5. Click Create Blog.

For some students whose blog addresses I feel don’t provide enough anonymity, I’ll be suggesting that they create new blogs for the course. After you create a new blog, you can copy your old work onto it. Here is a quick list of steps for importing the posts from your old blog:

1. Go to your old (not-anonymous-enough) blog
2. Dashboard (via wp-admin in the address or the Site Admin link)
3. Manage tab
4. Export tab
5. Download Export Filebutton
6. (See what file is saved and where–might be 2002-01-30.xml on your desktop)
7. In header, choose new anonymous blog name
8. Manage tab
9. Import tab
10. Browse for export file or paste in address
11. Upload file and import
12. Submit
13. “All done. Have fun.”

Fait accomplis!