T Blog

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

For our penultimate class meeting of the 4 and 6 o’clock sections, I handed out instructions for submitting essays to Blackboard for ITW submissions, answered questions about the final draft of the semester-long project, we did peer review of 15-20 page drafts, listened to the third and final podcasts by students about Baghdad Burning, and students filled out evaluation forms.

Peer Review Method: 1) Carefully read your classmate’s essay. 2) Identify two of the elements from the Grading Standards Sheet that they’re doing well with and the highlight the parts of the essay that demonstrate that. 3) Identify two of the grading standards elements that you think they could most fruitfully work on. 4) Write your classmate a half page note (on notebook paper or on their essay) explaining what two standards they’re doing well on and why you think so, and what two standards they could work on, and why you think so. Sign your name return the essay to your classmate.

In class this Monday for the 12 o’clock section, tutors Haley and John came from the Writing Center to do a workshop on proofreading and editing. Thanks, guys! They covered transitions, sound-alike words, writing formally, the importance of a polished final project, having a strong claim, and more.

I also handed out the directions for submitting the final draft to the TW Blackboard site and handed out portfolio checklists and grading standards sheets to students who didn’t get them last week. Just as a recap, you put your final draft and all previous drafts with the instructor and peer feedback in a portfolio with a printout of all your blog posts (you don’t have to print out Keene-Ning) and hand in that physical copy on Wednesday.  For Wednesday you also have to submit your instructor draft electronically to the digital Dropbox on Blackboard for this course, and submit an anonymous copy of your essay to the ITW site on Blackboard. 

Finally, we listened to the podcasts students recorded in our section for the final homework assignment, which I thought provided a perfect final discussion of Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning. I was proud of the thoughtful responses students had to the book.

On Wednesday you’ll complete another survey on information literacy for Professor Yi Gong like you did at the beginning of the semester, complete a “Letter to Next Year’s Class” assignment with your group (your choice of written or Gabcast response), and hand in your final portfolios. Portfolios are due at the beginning of class.

First of all, an alert student brought to my attention that the directions handout says that Podcast 2 is not due until midnight tonight, and of course I will honor what the instructions I gave you in writing, so anyone that didn’t post a link on their blogs to Podcast 2 yet has until midnight tonight.

In class today I handed out a portfolio checklist that tells you everything you need to hand in the last day of class, and a Grading Standards sheet that tells you how I will evaluate your final draft of the semester-long research and writing project. We went over them, then discussed the reading in Baghdad Burning, students’ impressions of it, and I asked for students’ thoughts on what it’s like reading one blogger in depth and at length, and now that you’re all experienced podcastters, I asked for students insights on how audioblogging compares to text blogging.  After the break we did peer review of 15-20-page drafts. Today’s method was to read the essay, identify two of the grading standards that it was especially successful in, highlight the parts of the essay that show that success, and then write a note of about half a page to talking about what two elements from the grading standards the essay was most successful at, and what two might be the most important to work on to create a successful essay.

Returned 7-page drafts. Students had 10 minutes to proofread their instructor drafts, then turned in 10-page drafts. HW 40 and 41 instructions handed out (see the Documents for ITW 101 page if you missed them). HW 40 asks you to respond to a podcast from Alive in Baghdad. Leave yourself time to make sure you can view the podcast on the computer you’ll be using, and if you’re using the computer lab you might want to bring headphones with you.  Share research findings/blog posts for HW 35B–students were asked to look up a name or term from pages 41-69 of Baghdad Burning. You can view my shared posts in Google Reader at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/09248713823500804133.

After the break, exploring intellectual and emotional responses to texts. Identifying the emotional tone and undercurrents of writing and other works of art can be a help in analyzing and understanding them. Here are part of your reactions to this exercise: 4clockexploring-your-intellectual-and-emotional-responses-to-texts.doc 6-oclock-exploring-your-intellectual-and-emotional-responses-to-texts.doc

I was happy to hear from Brian Conley today, who started the Alive in Baghdad podcast series you’ll be responding to next week. They’re doing important, original work and our attention to it on class blogs might even help spread the word.

Individual conference days were announced and we discussed the reading in Riverbend (7-41)–What parts did you find upsetting or surprising? We view videos, the  BBC News series “Five Years, Five Iraqis” at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7305270.stm and the Daily Show’s “The First Five Years” at http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=164644&title=iraq-the-first-5-years
.  Finally we did peer review of seven-page drafts using the “What Can You Remember?” method. I collected a copy of seven-page draft, and returned three-page drafts with checks, check-pluses, or check-minuses.

Thursday HW 35B and the ten-page draft are due. You already have the instructions for these.

We had a small class Wednesday for the 12 o’clock students who couldn’t come to the Thursday night talk with Laura Clawson. We discussed Baghdad Burning (students had read the introduction and first two posts, and did peer review of the three-page drafts, using a new four-question “What Can You Remember?” form.

Homework for Monday is the 7 page peer draft and HW 35A, the Letter to Riverbend.