Topic: Computer Issue
We will write our essays using the standard format described in our syllabus. Your computer issue essay should be at least 5 pages in length (not including the Works Cited page). You are encouraged to develop your own individual approach to solving the challenge of this researched essay writing assignment. How you integrate your own story of learning about your selected computer issue, and how you select important insights and points for research and argumentation is up to you. The key is being able to blend good story telling with good academic writing that lets your voice ³talk² with sources as a peer in cyberspace. In other words, use the authority of your own experience and research story to discuss a specific computer issue so that your readers become interested in you essay. Please avoid writing about computers in general‹making obvious statements about computers tends to bore readers. You are challenged to select an issue, narrow your focus, and become knowledgeable about a specific issue as you gather interesting information and write about the issue.
Here are some of the general issues we mentioned in class. Use them as a beginning point to narrow your focus and to select a specific issue to write about.
Computers in the Third World‹Is There a Global Digital Divide?
Computers in the Third World‹How Outsourcing is Thriving
Internet Business‹What Does a Consumer Need to Know?
Internet Business‹What Does It Take to Succeed?
Music Downloading‹What is the Law and Is It Fair?
Music Downloading‹How Did It Become Big Business?
Internet Advertising‹How does it work?
Internet Advertising‹How Spam is Killing the Internet
Computers and Learning‹How computers affect the ways we learn ________ .
Identity Theft
How Computers Change Language
How Computers affect Democracy and voting
How Computers affect learning at SCSU
These are just some of the issues we mentioned. You are encouraged to use the list above to start your selection process, but you are not limited to the list¹s issues.
5 Goals for Writers of Essay #1
Write an essay about an issue linked in any way to computers and cyberspace. Try to write about your selected issue so the reader believes your insights about cyberspace are intelligent, researched, creative, and true.
Do writing and research that helps you pursue and understand key ideas about your selected cyber-issue that are interesting to readers who don¹t know you.
Generate writing from an your perspective and the perspectives of others so that key insights and points are supported and developed with and beyond your own, individual experience.
Practice and customize individual composing, research and revision processes.
Practice using mechanical elements of academic discourses such as vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, MLA style of documentation, and neat presentation of writing.
We all have individual concerns about how cyberspace is forming and increasingly becoming part of our lives. Think about your own experiences and the best ideas you know about computer use to develop a narrowed and interesting thesis about a specific computer issue. How you tell your story, how you research the details and insights, and how you present your work as both story and researched essay are creative opportunities that require imagination, planning, research, and academic as well as creative writing.
We will use idea structuring (hopefully a skill you practiced in English 101) to establish our plans for our first essay. Go to : http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/Ideastructuring and begin to think about a possible thesis, conclusion, outline, and sources for your computer issue essay.
Any and all attempts at composing a working thesis and detailed outline will help you make good thinking progress toward your writing. Also, while sharpening and organizing your writing ideas, you should be doing some quick research in the assigned readings, in the library, in your own worlds, and online. The purpose of this step is to understand how writers learn to encounter and change thinking through planning, research and writing to improve their ideas.
Step 3: Drafting, More Researching, Revising, Finishing
We will use peer response, writing center and professorial resources, online research, library research, and our class discussions to understand and enhance our writing experiences.
Required Sources: At
least 5 sources are required in the Works Cited List. At least 3 of those
sources must include (in any combination) Birkerts, Barlowe, Paglia, Postman,
or Tannen. You are encouraged to exceed the minimum sources and to include
other sources (Baron, Woolley, Turkle, other authors in CyberReader, library
sources, net sources, etc.) to add as much support for your points as
possible. You don¹t need to
simply match their ideas to yours‹you can analyze their points and make them
work for you even if you are using them to set up your disagreement! Outside
sources may be useful to find factual support for your points. You are required
to use at least 2 outside sources.
Special Provisions: If you are feeling blocked or confused and you are not certain about how to begin or how to proceed through any of the assignment steps, you are strongly urged to stop into my office during office hours (or by appointment) for help. You are also strongly encouraged to try working with a librarian. I also recommend working with a Writing Center tutor. Feel free to raise questions and express concerns to me via email or by phone during office hours.
You may have written about a computer issue previously. If you want to continue your previous work, attach a copy of the writing you want to advance to your idea structure and explain why the essay needs to go beyond what you have already done.
Time Management:
Idea Structuring due March 29‹please have a copy to hand in, and copy on disk
Complete Draft of #1 due 4/5‹please have a copy to hand in, and copy on disk
Final Draft of #1 due 4/12