Note: The schedule says this, but here it is again: the SP2 is due this Friday (2/24) by noon. The LP1 is due in the workshop link by the usual time–one hour before class on Monday (2/27). Also, bring a LP1 printout for in-class peer review on Monday (2/27).

In Douglas Adams’s Hicthhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, he described many marvels that we may never see, or maybe we will. Vogon poetry clearly exists, only under another name, but the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster is legendary, but still fictional. Thanks to teachers, students, and the problem of just being human, the somebody else’s problem field is out there and ready to be harnessed for the power of good ….or evil.

This post is here to note the problem of twenty-two students or so milling about in online teaching space wasting perfectly good writing energy by assuming that it is somebody else’s problem if the readings threads for the week don’t get started. This post also intends to search for a solution, one that involves some degree of common sense and the acknowledgement of personal responsibility for one’s own education. That is the flaw with assigning students to begin the readings threads. Sure, in theory, it evens out the responsibility for getting things started, but in practice the threads don’t get started at least half the time because the students assigned don’t do it or I forget to assign the threads in the fifty short minutes we have f2f and then, you guessed it, no one steps up and starts the threads anyway.

When it’s Thursday and the readings threads are still not started, there is a simple solution, one we discussed in class. If you are someone who has yet to start a readings thread, start it. I know this breaks the high school norm of keeping your head down and never doing something that you don’t have to, but college is voluntary and learning is a series of voluntary acts. Take a risk. Start a discussion in the forum, especially if you intend to participate and no one else has done it. SInce this class is themed around the readings text’s subject of connectivity, the discussion of the readings can only help you come up with ideas and connections that will be helpful for your writing.

I have followed the generalized syllabus for Writing I by quantifying participation and describing drafts in a very quantified way, one that I normally would not use. If the points method continues to be ineffective, I will revert to my normal method, which involves assuming that all students are capable of doing the work needed simply because they want to do well, not because there are “points” attached to every single action involved in the writing process. That, to me, is the problem in breaking down the entire semester into points. Student get the idea that success in writing can be quantified and that if they simply do all the actions on the points chart, an A will appear. That, of course, is not true. There are two flaws in that idea. First, it is possible to do everything in the chart, but with competent results instead of superior results. Competency means a C. The other flaw is more subtle. By naming many small acts that gain points, the other, less quantifiable acts are seen as not necessary. So, stepping up and starting a discussion thread on the forum is not given its own points. Thus, the idea becomes unthinkable. Doesn’t that seem a bit, well, crazy? (Yes. Yes, it does.)

I prefer to have percentages without a points breakdown. That way what is expected is expected and not seen as the culmination of a disconnected tally. I will think some more about this and let everyone know if the complex points table is going to disappear. At this point, I think it might. If it does, you will know it, and it will be replaced with a method that is much more clear and able to be tracked on the online grade book, something that is not possible in the current system.

To my Writing I students: some answers to emailed questions: 

1. Where do we turn in the Short Project One?
1. Here’s where you turn it in. If there is no upload window, you are too early. The window opens at least a day before the assignment is due. Click image to enlarge:

1. In the Sources Assignment, is all we are supposed to do is click the “add a blog” button and upload (at least) 8 sources to the “bag of sources” you refer to?
1. Yes, but please make each source a new entry. GIve the citation and say something about the source. Tag it too so that everyone can click a tag on the tag cloud and find a subject.
2. Are we required to do in-text citation in our LP1 or just a works cited page?
1. Do both. If you talk about the source in the LP1 (and you will), you need to do in-text citation. After all, quotes, paraphrases, and summary must be cited in-text. Of course, any source you use in-text needs to be on the Works Cited page.
3. This may be true for several of you: I am doing my LP1 over a different topic than any of the 3 in my SP1, which helped me see that my SP1 topics were all bland and generic. So, I switched. Is that all right with you?
1. That sounds good as long as the new issue fits within the Public Affairs theme of “Connectivity.” Also, make sure that in the end, you have a viewpoint and don’t just do a plus/minus list. You can’t just say essentially, “Here it is” or go for something where all reasonable people agree. Explore at least three points of view to avoid that yes/no binary that leads to lockstep, dull papers.

For  everyone else (and any Writing I students interested in the theory behind the praxis):

This post may be part of a longer thread that I return to several times in the semester. As regular readers have figured out by now, I am doing a blended Writing I as part of a much larger grant, the NGLC (Next Generation Learning Challenge). I know from long ago that having at least an introductory face-to face session and an end-of-semester session greatly helps online courses in several ways. Logic, that faulty measure, indicates that meeting once week face-to-face would be even better, perhaps even the blend that administrators are looking for in their cost-reducing, student-convenience love for online courses.

I was in fact expecting one thing to be notably better in a blended course. I thought the nuts and bolts here’s-how-you-do-it part of Writing I where we actually go over the assignment in person would help students be able to do the mechanics of the assignment with fewer panicked emails or confusion. It appears that is not true. Just in case, I have been triangulating information about assignments and it looks like I will continue to do so.  In brief, I went over it in the f2f class session verbally, pointed to it on screen, did this post, will tweet this post’s link using the #eng110c hashtag used for this class, and I will also email the link to the entire class with a summary of what questions the post answers. So that makes (1) in person, (2) blog, (3) Twitter, and (4) email. That ‘s one more than the rule of three.

I am also trying to consciously communicate using different modes, thinking of the different learning styles Gardner points out. Instead of relying solely on text, the f2f class allows auditory learners to hear instructions. For visual, non-text-loving learners, I’m using more screen shots and may try an iMove clip now and then to help both of these learners. For now, I tried a screen shot of the “Due Here” link in this post and hope that helps. The kinesthetic learners, well, that is more possible in a computer classroom when I can let them use body memory for actions. I haven’t found a way to do that online yet. The short version of this may be that teaching a blended writing class may be just as challenging as a wholly online writing class with the added drawback of greater expectations for clarity.

The somewhat odd title for this post connects to a Writing I example I often use for describing the difference between a good source and a bad source when doing sourced writing for academia (university writing, writing for publication…). In this post, I am going to extend this small, mildly humorous example to ridiculous lengths.

Let’s assume you are writing about cheese. There’s a lot of information about cheese out there and if you are doing university-level writing, you know that not every source has the same worth. My perennial example had to be modified a bit after the demise of both Angelfire and Geocities sites. Updated a bit, the rule of thumb is that if you go to Joe’s Cheese Site, you know, the one with the animated GIF Christmas lights and the dancing hamsters juggling Gouda cheese balls, you should have some inkling that although Joe may really like cheese, he’s probably not the authoritative source you are looking for.

Here’s why. When looking for sources, one way to evaluate them is to consider Aristotle’s Trivium: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Joe’s Cheese site falls short in all three and here’s how. Ethos is the character and reputation of the speaker. We don’t know anything about Joe, not even his last name or address, and judging from how the site looks, his judgment may be poor. He could be six years old. We don’t know. Logos is the completeness and accuracy of the information. Joe doesn’t give us any idea where he gets his fun facts about cheddar, but amusing as the video clip of the exploding cheese cannon is, it doesn’t take much for us to apply the laws of physics and conclude that some editing skullduggery took place. Oh! and no, the moon really didn’t turn out to be made of green cheese, or as Joe claimed, well-marbled Roquefort. Finally, pathos is the emotional weight given the argument. Sometimes pathos is seen as a bad thing, somewhat like manipulating the reader/viewer/listener’s emotions. Used properly, pathos is a call to what is highest and best in the reader. Martin Luther King’s justifiably famous “I Had a Dream” speech is a good example of the proper use of pathos. Joe’s internet donation button at the bottom of the page for the support of nacho vendors in major league baseball parks uses pathos to manipulate viewers to donate to Joe. In reality, we don’t have to fear that nachos are being banned from ballparks. Oh, Joe.

Here is a list of kinds of sources, a top ten, so to speak. Take note: being #1 in this top ten is not good:

1. The Land of Joe. Old fashioned home pages with obscured authorship and no fact checking. Some blogs would be here also. Do you know who it is? Is it someone who knows about the subject? Really? If not, skip it.
2. About pages, Ask Jeeves pages, Yahoo group pages. The best of these can be almost like an encyclopedia, but remember, you don’t use encyclopedias or dictionaries in academic writing. The worst are rife with misinformation and rumor. Just say no.
3. The first hit on Google. These days, the first hit on Google may be there because it paid to be there. Commercial sites, especially ones for medical practices, can look very authoritative and give general information about diseases or current issues in medicine, but they are doing it to get customers for their practice, not to disseminate scholarship. Is it a .com? Does it use phrases like “studies show” without naming the studies and letting you know who did it, when, and where? Don’t get your information from someone who is trying to sell you something.
4. Newspapers or trade magazines. Trade books. The convention for these sources is to give news/ ideas, but in a way that does not allow you to trace sources. They cite somewhat, but not enough. Usable, but don’t rely on them. Exception: Sometimes The New York Times sponsors  studies that use statistics correctly. If they cite properly, then it is usable.
5. Wikipedia. Don’t use this as a source for your paper, because, as I pointed out in Part One, it is an encyclopedia. However, if you are in the situation where you must write on a subject where you haven’t the faintest idea how to start, Wikipedia can tell you some places to start. Read the entry, but pay closer attention to the Works Cited. They will be the kinds of sources you need to start with.
6. Academic blogs. Yes, some blogs are rated about the same as ol’ Joe, but not all. If you think of blogs being a medium like books are a medium, you can see how, like books, not all blogs are alike. An academic blog is written by someone who studies, researches, or teaches (or all three) a subject and writes in the blog to store up ideas or to do writing that may end up eventually in a book or article. For example, Mike Rose is a professor with significant publications in the area of literacy and basic writing who keeps a blog. His blog would be extremely usable as a source. If you find a blog that looks academic, but you are not sure if the writer is “academic” enough to count, check the blog’s about page or the CV tab. Academics usually give a Curriculum Vitae that details who they are and their publications.
7. Podcasts. These can be very good, very informative, and some have a huge following. I usually find mine using iTunes, but there are also video podcast series’ on YouTube. In a previous post, I linked Matt Chat, a video podcast series about the history of games and gaming. Here’s why I used it as an example: Matt Barton is not just some random guy. He is an Associate Professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and has published at least two books about game history and scholarship. This series of “chats” include interviews with some very important figures in the world of gaming and will be an important source for years to come as an archive for a medium that can be ephemeral.
8. Web Journals. There are web journals on a variety of subjects. Some scholarly areas have primarily web scholarship; my area of Computers and Writing is a good example because web texts allow scholars to link and to show in a way that is impossible in print. A source is a true web journal if it is “peer reviewed” or “refereed.” This means that the proposed article is sent to reviewers (usually two) who give written feedback and an evaluation for the article. Scholarly print journals and books do this too.
9. Print Journals. We are now entering the world of library access. You may find peer-reviewed journal articles in a Google Scholar search, but you can’t access it that way or you may be asked to pay for access. Our university library has paid the costs on your behalf for many, many of these research databases. Go to your university’s library site first.
10. Books. Okay, all books are not equal, but I think you know that by now. The main division is between trade and university/scholarly. Note that trade books were listed at #4 because they do what they do, for the most part, without the scholarly tracing or sources that is typical of the kind of writing done in academic writing. Check who the publisher is and that can give you a clue. For example, Random House is a big, big publisher, but they do not do scholarly books at all. Hampton Press does, and so does University of Utah Press.

This post is meant mainly for my Writing I students, but others can ride along and may get something from it as well. The next two, no–three assignments in my very themed Writing I are all about the sources. The Short Project 2 is an annotated bibliography assignment. The Sources assignment uses Moodle’s blog block like a grocery sack where students tag sources and throw them in. Long Project 1 is an exploratory draft that needs these sources from the other two assignments to be able to ruminate, to carefully consider the ideas associated throughout time with the chosen topic and through that essay, work out what you might have to say about that topic as a part of the “conversation” the sources present. In other words, to do a good exploratory (the LP1), you need to not only list the sources, you must analyze them for what they say and note where they fit in the multiple conversations that exist for the topic. You also need to, hopefully much earlier than the exploratory, evaluate each source for validity, centrality, and usefulness. Once you know the landscape so to speak, it is easier to place yourself on it. The bulk of the LP1 then is a matter of synthesis rather than listing. The other two assignments formed lists or tagged categories. The exploratory….explores and writes its way to some ideas about how the sources “think” about the topic.

Let’s talk about those sources. So, in other classes, maybe in high school, you may have ranked sources by where they are: Print being primary, books better than articles, and print articles better than anything on the internet. This class may seem strange because so much investigation involves sources found through the internet. For example, you may wonder why we are bothering with video clips or even blog posts. Here’s the deal: it’s true that all sources are not equal, but it’s also true that why they are not equal has nothing to do with their genre (i.e., where you find them–book, article, website, film, digital recording, and so on). The source itself holds its value, not where you find it.

Now there is some truth to the idea that some neighborhoods are less likely to hold stellar sources intended to be used for scholarly writing. Since you are intending to do scholarly writing, academic writing, chances are you won’t find the modern equivalent of Derrida hanging out in a chatroom debating  deconstruction and why he thought there was “nothing outside the text.” You may have noticed that the his name here links to a Wikipedia entry, another thing most instructors say is not reliable. In actuality, Wikipedia has a peer review process that is more rigorous and lengthy than that of a print encyclopedia with the added benefit that it has no page limit and can update in a moment rather than waiting three to five years with an annual update volume to tide readers over. No, the fact that it is on the web is not why instructors say “Don’t use Wikipedia in your academic paper.” It is the fact that it is an encyclopedia at all. Encyclopedias are not used for scholarly writing, which prefers to use the most primary sources possible. I used it here though because I wanted you to know who he was but did not need you to have deeper knowledge. Derrida was not the point.

No, the point was that Derrida did not have an Angelfire or Geocities page. He might have done Tumblr, but the authority would be in that it was HIM, not that it was a Tumblr page. Back to the using video clips thing, you can embed them into your papers since they are turned in as PDF. With that in mind, this YouTube of Derrida talking about fear about writing, is a really good source. It is primary, meaning that it is Derrida himself literally saying things.

I have to go now, but I will post Part Two about sources later today.

This is the second semester I’ve used the Workshop module on my Moodle site, and as I get more familiar with it, I like it more and more. I did two things I didn’t try last time, and find that I will do them again. FIrst, I set up a trial feedback prompt in the workshop. Granted, it was a yes/no response question, but just having it helps participants focus on the sorts of things that are important in their all-important holistic comment in the text box. Next, I used the instructor assessment function this time to give my feedback. I like this more than expected, mainly because it keeps all the feedback in one place for the students. By limiting myself to a holistic response with  the possibility of standard yes/no questions in the beginning (I may add a yes/no “Is it typo/error-free?”), it also keeps me from spending time on minor things or typos that will be cleared up in the final draft. FInally, having all this in Moodle means that it is tracked in Moodle. There is no ambiguity about who has done what or even when. The activity reports are thorough and clear without feeling too much like the panopticon.

From the student viewpoint of course, it’s new. New sometimes means that awful feeling that you are doing things wrong even if you get it right. I think that will die down the next time through. Also, many students are sincerely not used to having an initial and midpoint look at their work, so for them, the workshop is extra foreign. One thing I know for sure, once a writer has the advantage of good feedback at several points during the writing process, the advantages are clear. Good feedback accelerates the student writer’s ability to grow and improve.

More about this for my Writing I students: If you haven’t uploaded your SP1 using the Workshop link at the Hub, do so ASAP. This is how you get feedback on your work, and even if you think everything is fine and you don’t want feedback, doing this is how the class operates. Participating in peer review is part of your final grade for the course. So if you didn’t upload your SP1 yesterday, yes, you are late and will pay the penalty, but late is infinitely better than not having an initial draft at all and not giving or getting feedback. Needless to say, you do not get instructor feedback unless you upload your draft to the Workshop.

if you have your SP1 in the workshop, you can now give (and get) feedback. Make sure you comment for three students and pick ones who have little or no feedback. SP1 is due Monday, at least an hour before class. This will count as your midpoint version, so it does need to be revised from the initial version that is workshopped this week. it also has a turn-in link: look for the “Short Project 1 Due Here” link under next week on the schedule. I will give a letter grade for that one and will comment again. Your final version will be the portfolio version, and that too, will most likely be revised, unless of course, you are satisfied with the midpoint draft grade. So that is the line-up. Initial draft, workshop, midpoint draft, grade, portfolio, holistic grade.

This is a sample presentation I made for my Writing I class to show them how Prezi can be used to brainstorm. I went with Prezi because I have used it before for conference presentations and thought I could get a version of the class’s Short Project 1 done fairly quickly. Overall, I think it was successful, but I didn’t like some of the limitations. For example, no sound without a lot of file conversion word and tweaking that I simply wasn’t willing to do. So, the Garageband clip that I made of my thinking some things out loud had to be pitched. The other thing is that when Prezi says insert YouTube, they really mean YouTube only. Vimeo won’t upload, which is a shame, because the on-site Vimeo for Foursquare really is kind of nice. Otherwise, no real complaints. The Prezi is below. Click the arrow to move the presentation to the next view, or click “more” for other options.

So my Writing I class is beginning their semester-long arc on “connectivity” by doing a little brainstorming. The assignment goes as follows:

Short Project 1 gives you the opportunity to present your ideas through Prezi presentation software or something similar. For the presentation, you should use  Prezi, Storify, Pinterest, Popplet, PowerPoint, Keynote, or other mind-­mapping software like FreeMind to briefly lay out the ideas you’re working on for the long projects. You should prepare at least three ideas (no more than five), using the software. Each idea should link various materials (text, graphics, video, sound) so that the viewers get a better idea of what you’re thinking about and how the material stretches across a host of media.

After you have put together a draft of your presentation, read through it aloud as if you are presenting. Your presentation shouldn’t be more than five minutes, nor less than four.

Keep in mind that your presentation (especially Prezis) will have to be viewed online. This means a link. Once finished, be sure to post the address to the assignment link so it can be easily viewed. If you do a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, convert the file to a PDF. PowerPoints are very large–not that portable. PDFs are small and everyone can open and see them. You can convert to PDF in the program, just like with Word.

Some people have emailed because they are not sure what to do. I hope the following helps. You’ve all done brainstorming before. Think of this as the same thing, only far more useful than the webby graphs you drew on the whiteboard in the past. This will link ideas and sources together too, only this time you can gather up real sources and access them from the “presentation” you create. Another thing to remember is that I’ve built feedback into the assignment. What you produce by tomorrow will get feedback from me and your fellow class members through the Moodle workshop module, so go ahead! give it a try.

For some, coming up with ideas or even knowing where to look to come up with an idea may be the problem. In case you need jumpstarting, here are two ideas I came up with by reading my Google Reader this morning, why Foursquare isn’t that silly after all and Will Richardson’s eureka moment about reading the Kindle and research notes. I have other ideas like this that are worth investigating and I give them in this previous post. I think I will go with Richardson’s eureka moment (my term, not his) because I know I’ve written about this before and find it interesting. I will have to do two others at least, but this will be my start. Next up (later today): I will brainstorm this idea in a model for how this assignment could work and either link or embed it here. I will also tell you my process for doing it and how long it took.

This post is mainly for my Writing I students, who are joining in with all the other Writing I students here in Missouri State University’s Public Affairs Conference theme, which this year is “connectivity.” To that end I (and the composition program here) am using Stephanie Vie’s very nice reader, (e)Dentity, from Fountainhead Press. On Wednesday, mainly around 11:00 CST, we will be gathering together on Twitter for a tweetfest on Why Smart People Use Twitter. (check the #eng110c hashtag), but the main thing they are doing before our next face-to-face meeting is to do a little mind mapping as a form of brainstorming using Prezi, Storify, Pinterest, Popplet, or something that works in a similar, dimensional way to map out non-linearly a variety of media clustered around some possible Long Project 1 (an argumentative paper) ideas for later. Since we only meet face-to-face on Mondays for 50 short minutes, I’d like to share some starting points with them, and if you are a regular reader of this blog, I hope you ride along.

So, where are some possible hot topics for a an enterprising FYC (First-Year Composition) student who wants to write (eventually) an argumentative paper within the very broad area of connectivity? At the Social Media Collective Research Blog, a group blog run by researchers at the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England, danah boyd (no caps by choice, like e.e. cummings) shares some of her findings about password sharing by teens and the possible role parents shared in that trend. the post also has a link to a New York Times article on password sharing as a sign of affection. Very interesting stuff.

Looking for the motherlode on internet research? A very good place to start is the Pew  Internet and American Life Project. This is a longstanding Project that has produced some incredibly interesting statistics about what Americans do online, and even better, gives a longitudinal view by revisiting topics over time.

On a completely different note, sometimes attempts at connectivity backfire. Buzz Study highlights McDonald’s attempt to create Twitter buzz for itself with #McDStories.

Back at the Pew Internet site, you might want to take a look at the new report (out yesterday) on how many Americans own a tablet or e-reader. 29% is looking more mainstream to me. For contrast, check this earlier look in June on stats on e-readers and tablets. Hmmn.

Just saw the latest tweet from Missouri senator Claire McCaskill  (AKA @clairecmc) and once again noted how she uses Twitter well as a way to connect with her constituents. Not all politicians do this well though. It would be interesting to consider the differences between politicians who “get it” and those who don’t.

Then there is the whole SOPA thing. Last week’s Wednesday internet blackout definitely had an effect (link via Slashdot), with congressional support for the bill not-so-mysteriously melting away. it’s still an issue though, and will continue to be as long as there is debate about intellectual property and fair use, a debate I don’t see ending any time soon.

Here’s one more thing to think about–we all have encountered memes, those ideas and sites that get passed around social circles like wildfire, especially in places like Facebook. What might be interesting is to look at memes for different circles. For example, variations on Ryan Gosling made the rounds in rhet/comp and feminist studies circles last fall, but I doubt that it was a meme that spread outside academia because you need to know quite a few critical theorists to get the jokes. What memes do you pass to your friends? how are the different from say, Feminist Ryan Gosling? Or… are they different?

So, I did this list over breakfast and really only scratched the surface of what is out there for those looking at the broad idea of connectivity and looking for ways to narrow it into something worth writing about. To my Writing I students, happy hunting! I know you’ll find more.

I love Julie Platt’s new YouTube on Sh*t Rhetoricians Say. I showed it in ENG 526/628 yesterday and even in a class with relative newcomers to rhetoric, they have encountered some of these buzzwords.