Will Hochman
English 200
Spring 2007
April-May Plans
Dear Students, the following will outline our work for the rest of this term. These plans are based on your abilities and needs and may change according to your input, interests, and progress. All questions are welcome. Please review these plans carefully and often. I hope you will continue to question them as we enact them. As always, I’m happy to help with revisions and any other writing concerns and encourage you to use my office hours, writing center tutors, and research librarians as much as possible.
Week 11
4/2 &4/4
Complete second essay—determine assignment #3 as a class. Begin thinking about Bits and Atoms (Negroponte handout) and about how ideas concerning cyberspace evolved from and reflect our culture (“Swordfish” from Horsefeathers by the Marx Brothers)
Week 12
4/9
Review plans, ideas for web pages, future seeing in TED lectures by Nicholas Negroponte and Neil Gershenfeld
HW: Read Academic Blogging (link)
4/11
Web workshop to set up and begin our web page for the class
HW: Read Part II in Zinsser and handout on Designing Web Sites, begin your Writing Studio Blog on becoming a writer on the internet by comparing writing advice from Zinsser to handout advice on web designing.
Week 13
4/16 Discuss Blog beginnings, web concerns, Zinsser points.
HW Read & View the slide show of “A Video History of YouTubeFrom lip-sync videos to $1.65 billion in 14 months” by Paul Boutin in Slate at http://www.slate.com/id/2151744/
Read “A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpacePoint-and-click sites that don't tell you what to do”By Paul Boutin in Slate at http://www.slate.com/id/2140635/
Write blog entries about this viewing and reading work.
4/18
Discuss “Youtubing,” visual literacy, and the ways digital images are changing the way we write. Work on web pages.
HW: read “Are College Students Techno-Idiots? http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/15/infolit and add your response to the commentary. Include this work as part of your blog.
Week 14
4/23 Learning and teaching writing videos from Take 20 and writing activity based on Take 20 questions
HW: Blog
4/25 Paired Fiction Writing with Psychoderelict by Peter Townshend
HW: Blog, Read Zinsser, Part IV
Week 15
4/30 Discuss Zinsser and all writing concerns. Workshop #1
HW: Blog
5/2 Workshop #2
HW: Blog
Week 16
5/7 Final Workshop
HW: Final Blog entry
5/9 Final Letter to Will,Web Portfolio & Class Notebooks Due
During the time scheduled for our final exam, you will be welcome to visit with Will in his office to discuss the course and your final grade, as well as pick up your class notebooks.
Writing Assignment #3
Compose a web page to present your best work in this class. You may use any tools you have access to, but we will begin our web space using university software and servers.
First you should present yourself as an explorer and writer about cyberspace in this class who is interested in the ideas you chose to write about this term. While introducing yourself, you should include at least 5 links to the best writing resources you like to use.
The introductory page may include a picture or graphic image, and it should also include links to your essays.
You are not only required to update and revise your essays and post them on your web site as your final portfolio, but you are also required to write a short introduction for web readers of the essay, and you are required to follow up each essay with at least 5 suggested links for readers.
You are encouraged to go beyond the basic requirements of the assignment to create a web page that stakes your claim to your new writing and thinking space on the internet. Students are strongly encouraged to work with STARS students in computer labs, and to seek help from Will during office hours.
Goals
Establish your identity in cyberspace by presenting essays as issues that affect your life in cyberspace and yourself as a writer who is critically questioning assumptions and creatively solving problems
Study the shift from writing paper essays to presenting them as hypertexts on the internet
Find an individual sense of coherence and context by working to present course work online
Learn web literacy skills and practice academic discourse
Structure
Class web pages will not have the time and resources to get very complex but each student should create a Writer’s page (see your own work in The Writing Studio) that offers links to your two main essays, as well as other links and texts that you want to include.
Grading
This third assignment will be part of the portfolio grade. In addition to the main criteria for the two essays (see our class rubric), the grading for the web page will address the following values.
Design—does the web page present the writer and her or his work effectively?
Content—does the web page and portfolio of essays show that the writer is a critical and creative thinker who is able to analyze and research important ideas?
Coherence—does the writer find a way to compose her or his work on the internet in a way that advances the work when it was handed in on paper?
Presentation—does the writer meet and exceed academic and online expectations of readers so that the work presented is clear, interesting, and relatively free of error.
Time Management
4/11 Begin cyberspace for Web Page
Conference with Will anytime until the end of the term
5/9 Portfolio due