Unit Two
Announcements & Assignments


03/13/08: True to the theme of "Ms. D slowly loses everything she owns over the course of the semester," I have managed to lose my copy of Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave. But never fear! This is what YouTube is for.

We will meet in Hodges Library Viewing Room 212 today for class, and we will watch various sections of Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave: Zero and One, Late Show, Sharkey's Day, How To Write, Kokoku, Radar, Talk Normal, Language Is A Virus, and Sharkey's Night. We will discuss multimedia in general, and I will pass around some interesting multimedia examples of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which you will begin reading over Spring Break. We will begin watching the film Stardust when we come back from Spring Break.

I have posted the End of Unit 2 Summary and Blog Assignment, so please review and begin working on this assignment over the break. It will be due Thursday, March 27th.

We will meet again on Tuesday, March 25th, in Hodges Library 212. Over Spring Break:
  • Read as far into Stardust as you can. We will begin watching the movie when we get back.
  • Start working on the End of Unit 2 Blog Assignment. It will be due Thursday, March 27th.
  • Make sure to post any extra credit options you choose to participate in over Spring Break.
Have a Great Spring Break!!! :)


03/11/08: Remember that we will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook today. We will open the floor to any questions about the Research Project, discuss our findings from the online assignment on Thursday, and talk about what multimedia has to do with "delivery" of online text, including weblogs. I will also focus on the Annotated Bibliography component of the research project, which will be due Tuesday, April 1st.

Annotated Bibliography: Cornell University has a strong and succinct explanation and example of an annotated bibliography. Basically, your annotated bibliography will require at least four citations in MLA format, with about 150 words of description/evaluation after each one. (Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has a good explanation of various citations in MLA format here.) Please note that your final project will require at least eight sources, but four seems like a good place to start.

For Thursday:
  • We will be meeting in the Hodges Library Viewing Room 212 to watch Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave -- an excellent example of early multimedia in performance art.
  • You do not have a required blog assignment or required reading for Thursday. (Hint: Use this time for researching the sources you will need for your Annotated Bibliography, or get a head-start on reading Stardust -- we will be very busy just after Spring Break!)
  • I will discuss three extra credit options in class today that may be completed over the Spring Break holiday. This will probably be the last chance for extra credit, as we will spend the rest of the semester focused on the remaining books and our Research Project.
As always, please feel free to contact me with questions! See you in class!


03/06/08: Remember that we will NOT be meeting face-to-face for class today! Instead, we will be participating in an Online Class. Please complete the following assignments sometime today: I have also posted information regarding the end-of-semester Research Project. Please take a few minutes to review the timeline and let me know if you have any questions. For Tuesday: We will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Tuesday. I look forward to seeing you then!


03/04/08: Remember that we are meeting in Estabrook today. Today, we will wrap up our discussion of the social functions of online journals in America, and we will break up into groups for a class activity exploring the history of the online diary -- paying close attention to how "diaries" and "weblogs" developed and meshed together over the past decade.

We will be having class "online" on Thursday, which means we will not be meeting face-to-face for class. You will need to complete the following assignment on Thursday:
  • Please explore the archives of weblogs and websites concerning major national and world events, such as the September 11th attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Please take a look through the following websites -- or search for your own -- and find some examples to share of interesting entries, comments, questions, etc. related to these themes.
  • Please post an entry to the Class Blog sharing a link to a weblog or website that describes a historical event firsthand. Explain why you find this particular blog/website so compelling and interesting. Give us your personal feedback to the site, and why you feel it is an interesting presentation of the event it describes.
  • Be thinking about what you might want to pick as your topic for the final research project. I will post a handout outlining the nuts-and-bolts of this assignment in more detail on Thursday.
  • Do check back with the website sometime on Thursday for homework information and reminders. Also, please do remember I won't be holding office hours on Thursday.
Feel free to email me with questions!


02/28/2008: Remember that we are meeting in Estabrook today. Today, we'll wrap up our discussion about the differences and similarities between weblogs and paper diaries. We'll also take a look at Sabrina Ward Harrison's work, as well as the EMBODIMENT LiveJournal community and PostSecret. Some of the themes for discussion will include multimedia and multimodal formats used in paper journal writings (and possible reasons for that), the concept of writing in a "private" paper journal for an audience, and the idea of posting "confessions" or "secrets" in a public forum anonymously. We will also explore what weblogging has to do with transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the American Dream, looking to Vivianne Serfaty in "Social Functions of Online Diaries in America" to figure that out. I'll also take you through a very brief and tremendously sketchy history of the "online diary". For Tuesday:
  • Read the short blurb on Diarist.net about Journals and Weblogs.
  • Read Vivianne Serfaty's "Offline and Online Diaries," handed out today in class.
  • Read Laurel A. Clyde's "Overview of the weblog and blogging phenomenon," focusing specifically on "The History of Weblogs" -- also handed out today in class.
  • Skim over the Online Diary History Project for examples and perspectives of online writing in the late 1990s.
  • Update your personal blog.
  • Be sure to comment on your peers' blog entries.
  • Optional Extra credit: Find other sites like EMBODIMENT and PostSecret where handwritten journals or journal-type writings/collages/etc. are published in a public forum, anonymously or otherwise. Share the link with the class on the Class Blog and provide some commentary/interpretation.
Come prepared for a Reading Quiz over these reading assignments on Tuesday. We will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Tuesday.


02/26/2008: Remember that we are meeting in Estabrook today. We will be reviewing the readings from the weekend, and we will contemplate the differences and similarities between paper diaries and online blogs. For Thursday:
  • Read the handout on "Social Functions of Online Diaries in America" and be prepared for class discussion on Thursday.
  • Explore the weblogs EMBODIMENT and PostSecret and be prepared to discuss on Thursday.
  • Post an entry to the Class Blog about your personal experience with the paper journal and how it was similar/different/etc. than the weblog (with possible references to the above texts, if that helps.)
We will be meeting in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Thursday.


02/21/2008: End of Unit 1 Blog Assignment Due Tonight at Midnight! Make sure you have posted your 600 word essay to the Class Blog by that time. Click here to review the prompts.

Today, we will be meeting in Special Collections at the Hoskins Library today (see map). We will investigating the process of research in the special collections library and looking at historical exemplars of diaries and journals.

For Tuesday: We will meet in our regular classroom in Estabrook on Tuesday. Let me know if you have any questions, and have a great weekend!

02/19/2008: Today, we begin our historical overview of the origins and influences of weblogs. I have archived the announcements and assignments from Unit One, so if you need to review the prompts for the End Of Unit One Blog Assignment, you can find those here. (The End of Unit Blog Assignment is due on Thursday.) Today we will examine the basic features and general history of the diary genre. We will explore/discuss the following diaries out loud in class, in case you are interested in exploring them further: Samuel Pepys on the Fire of London, Excerpts from Anne Frank, Child in a Prison Camp, and Zlata's Diary.

On Thursday, we will be meeting at Special Collections in the Hoskins Library. We'll be meeting in the upper lobby area. Be sure to review the General Regulations before then. Also, you can view a map of how to get to Hoskins here.

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