T Blog

The noon section of ITW 101 is cancelled for Wednesday March 26, as our my office hours for today.  You’ll be receiving an updated calendar for the course later on, but here’s the short-term plan:

On Monday, 3/31 we’ll meet in the regular classroom and then go to the library for our third information literacy session.

Students who can’t come to the 4/3 6 pm special speaker time will do peer review on 4/2.

Our next peer review will be the 7 page draft on Monday, 4/7.  If you need or want guidance before then, please feel free to come to my office hours which are Monday 2:30-4:30, Tuesday 2:30-3:30, and Wednesday 2:30-4:30.

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Laura Clawson will be coming to speak to you, the Blog of One’s Own students, at 6 on Thursday, 4/3.

Dr. Clawson blogs under the blogger name Miss Laura on the political blog Daily Kos, and on Blue Hampshire (under the name Laura Clawson).  She teaches sociology at Dartmouth College, and has a background in English and American Studies.

Dr. Clawson has also joined our online social network, Keene-Ning, so that students can post questions on her wall. To encourage discussion, I’m offering extra credit for this. Any question relevant to our course work or Dr. Clawson’s work will provide an extra homework credit. The two best questions will earn a free half day’s attendance credit.

On Thursday, April 3rd, we have a special speaker coming to talk to our class, Dr. Laura Clawson, who is a blogger on Blue Hampshire and Daily Kos.
Dr. Clawson will be coming to the 6 pm section of the class, and I’m emailing to ask all of you who can do so to arrange to come to on Thursday, 4/3 6 pm. Those of you who can come to the Thursday 6 pm section will be excused from your regular class time (Wednesday 4/2 at 12 o’clock or Thursday 4/3 at 4 o’clock).
-I understand that some of you have other classes or perhaps jobs or athletics commitments at Thursday 6 pm. If you have a class and would like me to write to your instructor, I’d be happy to do so. (Your other instructor is under no obligation to consider our event more important than their class, but I’ll write a nice note and maybe they’ll decide to be generous and let you out of class.) If you can’t come Thursday at 6, you can’t. We’ll have a regular class for those who can’t come at night. I’ll be handing out a form in class next week to ask you to tell me in writing whether you can come to the special time so I can plan accordingly.

I’ve just learned about a handy software program called TextAloud. The program, which offers a free trial download, will read any computer text aloud, and even convert it to an MP3 so you can listed on your iPod or other MP3 player. (Okay, so the speech sounds like Stephen Hawking’s voice machine. But did I mention it’s free?) TextAloud is available at http://www.nextup.com/index.html.

Although many classic texts are available online for free, A Room of One’s Own hasn’t entered the public domain yet in the United States.  Interestingly, it is legal to distribute in Australia, and is availble on the University of Adelaide Library page at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/ or at Project Gutenberg’s Australian site at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791h.html. The ebook can be bought legally in the US for about $7, on sites like http://www.ebooks.com/ or http://www.ebookmall.com/.

Today, HW 27 was collected, (instructor drafts of intro paragraphs of the semester-long project, with peer draft and peer review comments/highlighting attached), the directions for HW 28, 29, 30, and 31 were distributed,  we watched excerpts of the video version of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and discussed Chapters One and Two of the book. Chapter One: Framework of book–a talk about women and fiction, comparison of Oxbridge and Fernham. Chapter Two: A trip to the British Museum library, Professor von X, and a look at the newspaper.

Read Chapters Three and Four of the Woolf for our next class, and have a fun and safe spring break!

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.

Individual conferences continue today (Monday March 10) and tomorrow (Tuesday March 11) instead of regular class. 

The instructions for HW 26 and 27, which are due Wednesday if you’re in the 12 o’clock section and Tuesday if you’re in the 4 or 6 o’clock sections, are available on the “Documents for ITW 101″ page of T Blog or  at  http://keeneweb.org/tmendham/files/2008/03/hw26_itw101_20080310.doc.

HW 26 asks you to response to Chapter 2 of Virginial Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and HW 27 asks you to revise your introductory paragraph for your semester-long project and submit it both on Blackboard and a printed copy in class.

Please go to Keene-Ning to complete HW 24–which asks you to write an explanation of Chapter One of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as if you helping a younger family member understand it.

Today are individual conferences instead of regular class. Arianne, Cara, Paige, Dayna, Kori, Stacy, Gretchen, Alison V, and Chelsea, you’re up today at your appointed times.

Agenda for Thursday’s class:

• Return annotated bibliography instructor drafts
• Assign times for individual conferences
• Attendance
• Discuss and compare Wonkette and Daily Kos, based on interviews we read with Ana Marie Cox and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and your observation of the sites.
• Thesis statement exercise
• Distributed HW 22 and 23
• Break
• Peer review, read-around style.
  • Round 1: Read, highlight what you like, closing comment, and your name
  • Round 2: Underline the thesis statement if there is one, and to test the thesis statement’s arguability, state what reasonable people who disagree with the claim might argue. If there is not a thesis statement, create one relevant to your classmate’s topic. Sign your name.
  • Round 3: Asterisk the sentences that “hook” reader interest (this is often done with a statistic, a paradoxical statement, a question, a quotation, and analogy, or an anecdote). Write one additional sentence that could be used to hook reader interest (it is okay if this one is made up or a lie–we’re doing it for practice)
• Collected extra copies of HW 21 (students were asked to print two copies of the peer draft of the introductory paragraph). These will not be graded–it’s just to show me that you did the assignment and understood it.

Today’s agenda for class

Attendance

Distribute HW 22 and 23 instruction. Please note–HW 23 will be completed on our online forum/network, Keene-Ning at <http://keenening.ning.com> If you have one of the older copies of the handout, please make sure to get the new one for HW 22 and 23.

Discussion of readings,  and of introductions and thesis statements.

Break

Peer review, readaround style.

Agenda for Wednesday:

Attendance 

Collected instructor draft of annotated bibliography, with peer review sheet and peer draft attached.

Distributed HW 20 and 21 instruction sheet, which is also available on the “Documents for ITW 101″ page at http://keeneweb.org/tmendham/files/2008/02/hw20_21_itw101_20080226.doc

Discussed essay introduction paragraphs–hooking reader interest, background, and thesis statement.

Discussed Scoble reading: What do we know about Scoble from this interview? What do the five pillars of conversational software mean? Which of the principles from the Corporate Weblog Manifesto did students find most interesting/noteworthy?

Break

Watched two excellent short films about college writing: Across the Drafts and Shaped by Writing.

Return “ballpark: paragraphs

Attendance

Discuss readings on transitions, Nick Denton, and Joi Ito

Overview of MLA documentation, with handout, “Documentation Resource”

Discussion of Works Cited lists and how to create entries for books, magazine articles, and database articles, with handout, “MLA Works Cited.”

Peer review of annotated bibliography. Students without printed bibliographies excused from class, and took a half absence.

Overview of MLA documentation, with handout, “Documentation Resource”

Discussion of Works Cited lists and how to create entries for books, magazine articles, and database articles, with handout, “MLA Works Cited.”

Peer review of annotated bibliography

Break

Discuss readings on transitions, Nick Denton, and Joi Ito

Use Google Reader to view your pod’s latest posts:

Google Reader is a free aggregating tool for reading and sharing blog posts. I’ve set up my Reader account to let me easily view the latest posts on student blogs, and thought I’d share the links for those of you that would like to keep track of your podmates’ work or want to add feeds to your sidebar (I’m offering extra credit for this right now, but the offer won’t last forever.) I’ll list the links below, and you can also find them listed in my sidebar along with the direct links to student blogs.

Lambda’s Latest Posts

Mu’s Latest Posts

Nu’s Latest Posts

Xi’s Latest Posts

Omicron’s Latest Posts

Pi’s Latest Posts

Rho’s Latest Posts

Sigma’s Latest Posts

Tau’s Latest Posts

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 Tuesday:

Attendance
Collect instructor drafts of “ballpark” paragraphs (Instructor draft, original peer draft, and purple peer review sheet. Student’s name on each item. If one or more elements missing, write a note on what you are handing in saying that it’s not there.)
Go to library for second information session with esteemed library liaison Asst. Prof. Deng Pan–the essential and major session on using Academic Search Premier and Lexis-Nexis.

(Students already have handouts for next week’s handout. See the HW 16, 17, 18 & 19 handout on the “Documents for ITW 101″ page here on T Blog if you need it.)

Agenda for Tuesday, 2/19

Attendance

Distributed handouts for HW 16, 17, 18, and 19, which can be found on the “Documents for ITW 101” page of T Blog.

Reminder that instructor drafts of your “ball park” paragraph are due on Thursday, printed and in the Dropbox on Blackboard.  Also, Thursday we’ll meet here in the classroom, then go to the library for our second information session with Prof. Deng Pan.

A look at some blog posts you chose for HW 12, and discussion of writing description. Remember, the titles of post should be enclosed in quotation marks when you write about them, and the titles of websites should be put in italics or underlined. Don’t be sloppy!

Break

A look at some of the blogs mentioned in the Rebecca MacKinnon article we read for today, including Global Voices Online at http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/, Isaac Mao: Life 2.0 at http://www.isaacmao.com/, OhmyNews at http://www.ohmynews.com/ and OhmyNews International at http://english.ohmynews.com/, RConversation at http://rconversation.blogs.com/, and Screenshots at http://www.jeffooi.com/. Reminder to spell, capitalize, and space titles of blogs as the blogs themselves do it.

The agenda for Monday, 2/18 was:

1. Attendance
2. Distribute HW 14 and 15 instructions. These can also be accessed on the “Documents for ITW 101″ page of T Blog.
3. Peer review of “Ballpark Paragraph” instructor drafts.
4. Tracy checks HW 12 and HW 13 printouts.
5. Students sent to watch “The Information Cycle” on their own computers or at the computer lab. The link is: http://www.lias.psu.edu/instruction/infocycle/infocycle.html
6. On Wednesday we will meet in the classroom and then walk over to the library instruction room for an important instruction session with Assistant Professor Deng Pan, who is our library liaison for A Blog of One’s Own (as well as being a research librarian and head of technical services and acquisitions at Mason Library).

HW 14 and 15 are due Wednesday.

I’m considering the possibility of providing extra credit for useful or informative class-relevant short videos or other multimedia that could be shared with the class. This might entail presenting some of your findings from your research in a podcast or PowerPoint, demonstrating the use of the 3-D scanner in the Mason Library and uploading it to YouTube, or creating a Flickr photo stream with pictures of the covers of magazines in the current periodical section of the library that cover topics in social computing.

See me to discuss possible ideas.