T Blog

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 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

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.