T Blog

We were fortunate to have Dr. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos, Blue Hampshire, and Dartmouth College speak to us about her work as a political blogger.  (Thanks, Laura!) If you missed it, ask your classmates for highlights. I certainly learned a lot, and found Dr. Clawson a really engaging speaker.  Was anyone else as surprised as I am at how little money is in it even for bloggers on national blogs?

The 4 o’clock students who couldn’t come to the talk viewed videos related to Iraq and Paul Bremer from CNN, The Daily Show, and Al Jazeera, and gave me their thoughts on what would be best for other students to view. (The Daily Show was judged most entertaining. Al Jazeera and The Daily Show were easier to understand. The CNN videos were a judged little boring and inacessible, but important and in-depth.) For links to videos, see my Iraq del.icio.us bookmarks  at http://del.icio.us/mendhamt/iraq.

On Tuesday, the 7 page peer draft is due(HW 34), and the blog post is HW 35A, the letter to Riverbend. If you need the handout, it’s http://keeneweb.org/tmendham/files/2008/03/hw32_33_34_35a_35b_36_itw101_20080326.doc

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.

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.