Unit One Announcements & Assignments 2/14/08: We will not be meeting in class today. At some point during the day, please click here to read through today's lesson, which includes a summary of what we've learned in Unit 1, an explanation of the End of Unit Blog Assignment, and links to grammatical lessons. Also, check my LiveJournal entry on our Class Blog for further instructions. Remember that we will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Tuesday. See you then! 2/12/08: Today we will be meeting online for our interview with Joe the Peacock over AOL Instant Messenger. Please refer to the following instructions for this class period: Make sure to log on to AIM at the start of our regular class period and message MissDevon42 with your real name to let me know you are present. If you do not wish to install AIM on your computer, or if you are using a computer on campus, please refer to the Meebo Website in order to log in and participate. I intend to lead the overall interview with the questions we composed during our brainstorming session on Thursday. However, ideally, your own follow-up questions should be the major direction for the interview. Please feel free to add, interject, comment, question, etc. at your own whim. I will try to maintain a certain amount of order, but I want you to feel free to express yourself. This is, after all, your interview. After the interview is complete, I will dismiss the class and post the full text of the interview to our Class Blog. Please remember that there will also be an online activity assigned for Thursday. Please be sure to check the website for updates at that time. For homework: Respond to one of the following prompts in the Class Blog: 1) Your reaction to our interview with Joe the Peacock; 2) Your reaction to Mentally Incontinent; or 3) Your reaction to recent entries in one of the blogs we are reading as a class. A friendly reminder: all blog entries are to be at least 200 words unless otherwise stated. Also, when posting to the Class Blog, pay extra attention to grammar, spelling, etc. In addition, please make sure that you are "participating" online by commenting to your peers' entries. As always, let me know if you have any questions! 2/7/08: Today we will wrap up our discussion of Mentally Incontinent, discuss alternative methods of research, and brainstorm questions for our interview with Joe the Peacock on Tuesday. We will also perform an in-class exercise on evaluating online sources. For Tuesday: Please do remember that we will *not* be meeting face-to-face Tuesday or Thursday of next week! At our regular class time on Tuesday, we will meet online via the AIM chat program, and we will interview Joe the Peacock. Please be sure to log in on time and check in with me, username MissDevon42. On Thursday, I will post a short exercise online, in addition to a Unit Summary and the End of Unit 1 Blog Assignment, which will be due the following week. Be extremely careful to check the website for updates and needed information during our "online" week! If you think of any other questions to ask Joe the Peacock in our interview on Tuesday, please email them to me. Make sure that you are scheduled to meet with me in Student Conferences next week if you have not already done so. Write an entry to your personal blog over the weekend. I look forward to "seeing" all of you online next week! 2/5/08: Please make sure that you sign up for a conference with me if you have not already done so. Also, please be sure to write down your appointment time with me to make sure you do not miss your conference! Today in class, we will take our second Reading Quiz, discuss our reactions to Mentally Incontinent, explore the Mentally Incontinent Website, apply the evaluation tools we learned last week to our own blogs, and make sure everyone is familiar with AOL Instant Messenger in preparation for our online interview with Joe the Peacock next Tuesday. For Thursday: If you haven't already, make sure that you are finished with Mentally Incontinent by Thursday. Track down a copy of Rhetoric of Inquiry and read Chapter 9, pages 183-194, paying close attention to the section on conducting interviews. Write an entry in the style of Joe the Peacock and post to the Class Blog. We will meet in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Thursday. Please bring your laptop to class if at all possible, and we will also try to do some work in small groups evaluating weblogs. See you there! 1/31/08: Today in class, we will discuss in detail methods used to evaluate online sources, and we will also begin class discussion about Mentally Incontinent. I will also pass around a sign-up sheet for student conferences. For Tuesday: Try to finish Mentally Incontinent. We will have a reading quiz on Tuesday. Post an entry to your personal blog, and comment on the blog entries of your peers. We will be meeting in HSS 202 on Tuesday. 1/29/08: Welcome back! Again, I want to thank all of you for your incredible amount of patience throughout my illness. I have finally (I believe) caught up with all the assignments, so if something doesn't seem right with your grades on Blackboard, see me after class. Hopefully, we will manage to accomplish all of the following in class today: We will briefly review the answers to Reading Quiz #1, and we will take a little time to wrap up our online discussion of Rebecca Blood's book. I will take this time to answer any questions you may have about the process so far. We will then take a look at Rebecca's Pocket, The Journal of Joe The Peacock, Neil Gaiman's Journal, and WWdN: In Exile (Wil Wheaton's Journal), thinking in terms of the different categories of weblogs that Rebecca Blood describes in her book. We'll consider the format, purpose, and rhetorical appeal of these sites, and then we'll be sure to add them to our LJ Friends List: Rebecca Blood, Joe the Peacock, Mentally Incontinent, Neil Gaiman, and Wil Wheaton. If time allows, we will also take a few minutes to play "Musical Blogs" -- which means looking at different musical artists' blogs, listening to their songs, and reading their lyrics. As fun as this sounds (it does sound fun, right?) the "higher purpose" of this exercise will be to practice thinking about authors' writing in multi-modal forms. Since our main authors for this class usually stick to prose writing, determining stylistic differences between an author's "blog" and his/her "book writing" may be difficult. However, the style of a song is obviously going to be very different than that of a blog, so this will allow us to examine different "styles" of writing under the same author. Also, we may want to think about how our own styles of writing may change based on subject matter, audience, etc. Here are a few musical artists who keep active blogs: Moby, and his song We Are All Made Of Stars; Mike Doughty, and his song Busting Up A Starbucks; and Kristin Hersh and her song Your Ghost. For Thursday: Please begin exploring blogs on your own. Google Blog Search is a great place to begin, and there are also random listings of available blogs that might be interesting to some of us: Celebrity Blogs, The Best Author Blogs, Featured Travel Blogs, The Black Blogz Webring, Forbes.com's listing of the Best War Blogs inspired by Iraq (you have to click for their pop-up window), and SportsBlogs.org. Once you find a blog that interests you, check to see if it has an RSS feed and then subscribe to it with your Friends List. (If you have any problems with this step, please email me.) Post an entry to the Class Blog with a link to the direct website of the blog, letting your classmates know: what type of blog this is (notebook, filter, blog, or something else); what the most-used rhetorical appeal of the blog is (ethos, pathos, or logos); who the audience of the blog seems to be; and what specifically appeals to you about this blog -- why you feel it is worth a read. Continue reading Mentally Incontinent -- at *least* through page 36 for Thursday. Read the handouts on Evaluating Sources that I distributed in class. Also, get your hands on a copy of Rhetoric of Inquiry long enough to read through Chapter 3 on Reading for Relevance of Sources pg. 41-48. There are copies available for loan at the reference desk of Hodges Library. Class will be held in our usual classroom in Estabrook on Thursday. Thanks, and see you there! 1/24/08: We will not be meeting face-to-face today for class because I am still recovering from strep throat. However, I will request that you participate in the following online activities so that we won't fall too far behind with the overall class schedule: I have posted Reading Quiz #1 online. Due to the chaos of this week, it will be open-book. Simply send me the answers in an email to dasdell@utk.edu. I have posted a "class discussion blog entry" to the class blog. Section 37's activity can be found here and Section 64's activity can be found here. Read my "discussion prompts" and respond to one or two of them by simply posting a comment to my blog entry. Also, respond to one or two of your classmates' comments, and be sure to read all of the comments because I will be attempting to respond and elaborate on themes brought up in "class" throughout our actual class period. If you have any questions, I will be available via email and also AIM (MissDevon42) during my regular office hours of 12:15-1:45. Try to use those options instead of calling, as my throat is *very* sore and it is *extremely* difficult to talk, but if you have no other option, that is fine, too. For class on Tuesday: Begin Mentally Incontinent. There is no set page range as of yet -- just start getting into the book. Post an entry to your personal blog. Remember that we will be meeting in HSS 202 for class on Tuesday. Again, thank you so much with your patience through all of this. I greatly appreciate it, and I *will* see you Tuesday! 01/22/08: Class has been cancelled for today due to the illness of instructor. We will take our first reading quiz and have our class discussion over The Weblog Handbook on Thursday. In addition, please do complete the following assignments for Thursday: Please explore Rebecca's Pocket and think of questions, comments, and observations to bring up in class discussion on Friday. If possible, bring your laptop to class. Please respond to one of the following questions in the Class Blog: Looking at the list of questions on page 43 of The Weblog Handbook concerning blog software interface, how do you think LiveJournal measures up? Does it meet Rebecca Blood's demands? Why or why not? Thinking about Rebecca Blood's thoughts on the common purpose of most weblogs (pg. 60-64), what do you envision as the main purpose of your own personal blog? Who is your main audience, and what rhetorical appeal (ethos, pathos, logos) do you see yourself using the most? After reading the chapter "Living Online" (pg. 127-145), do you have any concerns about keeping a public online journal? What are those concerns, and how do you plan to address them throughout the semester? Make sure that you have purchased Joe the Peacock's Mentally Incontinent. We will be meeting in our usual classroom in Estabrook on Thursday. Thanks for being so understanding and patient with the last-minute change. I look forward to seeing you all in class on Thursday. 01/17/08: In class today, we will explore the use of the "Friends List" as a syndication tool through the process of subscribing to RSS feeds in LiveJournal. We will also discuss quizzes, memes, and basic LiveJournal etiquette, and we will further customize our journals with individual userpics. For Tuesday: Finish customizing your Livejournal Post an entry to your personal blog, keeping in mind Blood's advice on the various types of weblogs Add Rebecca's Pocket as an LJ friend and start reading the entries that appear in your Friends List Keep up with your Friends List and comment on your peers' blog entries Finish The Weblog Handbook -- there will be a reading quiz on Tuesday We will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Tuesday 01/15/08: Today in class, we will vote on a name for our class blog and go through step-by-step creating LiveJournal accounts to use for our blogs this semester. We will also learn how to join communitites and add friends. For Thursday: post an entry introducing yourself to the class blog comment on at least two of your classmates' entries customize basic user info (name, interests, etc.) read Preface, chapters 1-5 pg. xi-99 in Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook on Thursday bring pictures you would like to work with for your LiveJournal userpic(s) be sure to email me your LiveJournal username We will be meeting in the HSS 202 Computer Lab again on Thursday, January 17th. 01/10/08: Welcome to English 102! Please be sure to complete the following for class on Tuesday: Please take time to review the course syllabus, and feel free to email me (dasdell@utk.edu) any questions you may have about the objectives, requirements, etc. Send me a brief email letting me know if you have any previous technological experience, why you are interested in this class, and what you think we should name our class blog. Please secure a copy of Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook by Tuesday, and begin reading the preface and first few chapters if possible. We have a number of books that we will read through quickly in this class, so if you have the time available to read this weekend, you should take advantage of that fact. We will be meeting in the HSS 202 Computer Lab on Tuesday, January 15th. At that point we will begin setting up our blogs.

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