About Homework Assignments
The assignments that are listed on this page are to be completed before class starts the day they are due. The latest assignment will be placed at the top to reduce scrolling.
for Thursday, Dec 3
Please read Tim O’Reilly’s (2005) What is Web 2.0?, which introduced the term Web 2.0 to a wider audience, and spend some time using the interactive site created by Jonathan Harris (2006). We Feel Fine. For the purposes of this assignment, please use the Interactive Version of the site—you will see a link to it in the bottom navigation bar. (Do take a look at the Book, which was just published, as we may talk about it in class, but we are primarily concerned with the Interactive Version.) Before using the site, please read through the site’s mission statement as well as the description of the site’s various movements. If you like We Feel Fine, you can see Jonathan Harris’s other interesting work on his web site.
for Tuesday, Dec 1
Please watch the following video, entitled “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.” Please not that it runs 55 minutes, so you may want to watch it in more than one sitting.
for Thursday, Nov. 19
Please read Wired magazine articles: Turkle (1995) “Who Am We?” and Kelly (2005) “We Are the Web.” As written below, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
for Tuesday, Nov 17
Please read Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” Steve Johnson’s “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live,” and David Silver’s “The Difference Between Thin and Think Tweets.”
For next Tuesday, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
And, of course, start your Twittering and start following people! For all Tweets about or relating to class in some way, please be sure to use the #tfwf09 hashtag somewhere in your tweet. Remember, you are to post at least 3 tweets per day up to and including December 11. The more you tweet, the more comfortable you will feel using Twitter.
for Thursday, Nov 12
Please read Selfe (1999) “Literacy and Technology Linked” and Gee “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a Waste of Time?”
There is no formal prompt for these readings—and there will be no formal prompt for the rest of the module, only the suggestion that your responses to assigned texts be about the equivalent of 1/2 page, single space, Times New Roman, font 12. When composing your posts, write them as if you are writing for the whole WWW audience—not just for this class and these students and this professor. Because, in fact, anyone in the world can read your responses if they find the blog in a search or stumble upon it through this or other Web sites. Discuss, critique, cite—whatever you wish to do; just remember that blogging is all about authority. I also encourage you to comment on each other’s posts. Blogs are also about feedback, so let’s start giving ourselves some feedback.
Remember that each student is responsible for posting a total of 3 posts per week to their group blog, 1 of which must be on the readings. The other 2 can/should be on topics of your own interest as long as they relate to the overall theme of your blog. Don’t leave these blog posts until the end of the module (doing so will negatively impact your grade)—be diligent and stay with it. Once you get rolling, it will be hard to stop.
To get to know your blogs a bit more, please see WordPress.com’s new (and, unfortunately, now rather difficult) support page. By classtime on Thursday, I would like you to learn how to do the following using the support page linked-to above, and the create a post that contains all three of the below listed items. Use the Topics keywords (also known as ‘tags’) to get you started. I suggest using the search box if the lists are unhelpful. The subject of this post should be on a subject that is related to your professional, and/or educational interests, but employing the following activities:
- add / write a link
- add an image
- emded / post a YouTube video
To get an idea of the wonderful, if not wacky, things people blog about, please also look at the following blogs: PostSecret, The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Literally-A Web Log, Why That Plate, Lowercase L, Jeff the Giant Orange Cat, A Food Coma, and Bathroom Graffiti Project.
for Tuesday, Nov 10
By classtime, please read Bolter (2001) “Writing as Technology” and post a response to the following on your brand new, super-exciting collaborative blog:
“Writing as Technology” introduces two of the key terms we will be discussing this module: writing spaces and remediation. For this post, please identify three of the writing spaces you use most frequently, discuss their characteristics, and what makes them unique. Then, choose two of those spaces, and using Bolter’s and Grusin’s definition of remediation, discuss how one remediates the other (or how they remediate themselves).
Please draft your response using Microsoft Word (or other word processor), check it for spelling, and then paste it in the blog post field. Have your response be at least 1/2 page, single space, using Times New Roman font size 12, on a page with 1″ margins.
Essays are available for download on the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
To access your blog dashboard, to go http://www.wordpress.com and log in using the username and password set up in class (if you were absent this will be done in class on Thursday; do not create an account from home). At the top op the browser window you will see a gray bar. On the left of the bar, click on Dashboard. From there, look to the left navigation bar. Click on Post and then “New Post.” Add a title, paste in your text, and then click on Publish. You can see what your blog looks like by clicking on your blog: Chalkboard Chat, Literacy Alive, Sh0w and T3ll, The Bologna Blog, and The Instruction Company.
for Thursday, Nov 5 (1st class of module 3)
Please download, print, and read the syllabus (.pdf), which is available on the syllabus page. Come to class with any questions you may have.
Please first read Axelrod and Cooper’s “Strategies for Reading Critically” and use the annotation techniques they describe when you read: Rettberg (2008) “What is a Blog?” I will check the copies of your readings in class to see how you have annotated the texts. These, and all readings, are linked off the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
For the first part of this assignment, I’d like you to identify your personal, educational, and professional “interest spheres.” These spheres are the subjects, ideas, communities, etc., that you are interested in and/or curious about on a personal level. Often, when we think about our personal, educational, and professional interests we say, “Oh, I’m a Writing Arts major and I’m interested in journalism.” Or, “Oh, I’m an Writing Arts/Education double major and I’m interested in creative non-fiction.”
Those statements are quite useful, but the areas “journalism” and others, like “elementary education” or “law” or “creative writing” are quite broad. For example, what specific area of journalism are you interested in: op/ed, sports, politics, environmental, journalist ethics, etc.? These are subclasses of the larger field of journalism. We can do the same with elementary education: No Child Left Behind, funding of education, politics and education, special needs students, art in education, technology in the el ed classroom, and so forth. Each of these areas offers a very specific community wherein people are exchanging ideas, best practices, and proposals for future changes. Similar things can be done with personal and educational interests. Here, for example, is a breakdown of my professional and personal:
- higher education (professional)
- technology and education
- web 2.0
- classification systems
- photography (personal)
- black and white
- Holga
- infrared
I would like you to locate 3 or 4 specific areas of professional, educational, and personal interests. Create a hierarchy as above, and bring it with you to class. Then, using the blog search engine technorati or google begin searching for blogs in that particular specific area. So, for example, I might look for blogs that discuss “web 2.0.” If you have trouble with the subareas, try the overall subject area and then narrow based on what you see. You might also try putting a phrase like “education blogs” into Google and see what you get. By doing that, the first result is to a page that discusses the Top 100 Education Blogs, which itself contains a link to edublogs.org, a site that hosts more than 30,000 blogs.
Update, 9/5/09, 10:50am: Please also take a look at this short video, “The First Blogger,” by Scott Rosenberg. Rosenberg is the author Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What’s It’s Becoming, and Why it Matters.
for Tuesday, Oct 27
Please read Tim O’Reilly’s (2005) What is Web 2.0?, which introduced the term Web 2.0 to a wider audience, and spend some time using the interactive site created by Jonathan Harris (2006). We Feel Fine. Before using the site, please read through the site’s mission statement as well as the description of the site’s various movements. If you like We Feel Fine, you can see Jonathan Harris’s other interesting work on his web site.
for Thursday, Oct 22
Please watch the following video, entitled “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.” Please not that it runs 55 minutes, so you may want to watch it in more than one sitting.
for Tuesday, Oct 20
Please read Wired magazine articles: Turkle (1995) “Who Am We?” and Kelly (2005) “We Are the Web.” As written below, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, The Difference Between Thin and Think Tweets, 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
for Thursday, Oct 15
Please read Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” and Steve Johnson’s “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.”
Please also look at the following blogs: PostSecret, The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Literally-A Web Log, Why That Plate, Lowercase L, Jeff the Giant Orange Cat, A Food Coma, and Bathroom Graffiti Project.
For next Tuesday, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, The Difference Between Thin and Think Tweets, 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
And, of course, start your Twittering and start following people! For all Tweets about or relating to class in some way, please be sure to use the #tfwf09 hashtag somewhere in your tweet. Remember, you are to post at least 3 tweets per day for the following 25 days (up to and including November 6). The more you tweet, the more comfortable you will feel using Twitter.
for Tuesday, Oct 13
Please read Selfe (1999) “Literacy and Technology Linked” and Gee “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a Waste of Time?”
There is no formal prompt for these readings—and there will be no formal prompt for the rest of the module, only the suggestion that your responses to assigned texts be about the equivalent of 1/2 page, single space, Times New Roman, font 12. When composing your posts, write them as if you are writing for the whole WWW audience—not just for this class and these students and this professor. Because, in fact, anyone in the world can read your responses if they find the blog in a search or stumble upon it through this or other Web sites. Discuss, critique, cite—whatever you wish to do; just remember that blogging is all about authority. I also encourage you to comment on each other’s posts. Blogs are also about feedback, so let’s start giving ourselves some feedback.
To access your blog dashboard, to go http://www.wordpress.com and log in using the username and password set up in class (if you were absent this will be done in class on Thursday; do not create an account from home). At the top op the browser window you will see a gray bar. On the left of the bar, click on Dashboard. From there, look to the left navigation bar. Click on Post and then “New Post.” Add a title, paste in your text, and then click on Publish. You can see what your blog looks like by clicking on your blog: “Oh Behave,” Special T’s, Teaching Tots Big and Small, and Write-Aholics Anonymous.
Remember that each student is responsible for posting a total of 3 posts per week to their group blog, 1 of which must be on the readings. The other 3 can/should be on topics of your own interest as long as they relate to the overall theme of your blog. Don’t leave these blog posts until the end of the module (doing so will negatively impact your grade)—be diligent and stay with it. Once you get rolling, it will be hard to stop.
To get to know your blogs a bit more, please see WordPress.com’s new (and, unfortunately, now rather difficult) support page. By classtime on Thursday, I would like you to learn how to do the following using the support page linked-to above, and the create a post that contains all three of the below listed items. Use the Topics keywords (also known as ‘tags’) to get you started. I suggest using the search box if the lists are unhelpful. The subject of this post should be on a subject that is related to your professional, and/or educational interests, but employing the following activities:
- add / write a link
- add an image
- emded / post a YouTube video
To get an idea of the wonderful, if not wacky, things people blog about, please also look at the following blogs: PostSecret, The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Literally-A Web Log, Why That Plate, Lowercase L, Jeff the Giant Orange Cat, A Food Coma, and Bathroom Graffiti Project.
for Thursday, Oct 8
Please read Bolter (2001) “Writing as Technology” and bring to class an electronic version (via email, on CD, on flash drive, etc.) of a response to the following:
“Writing as Technology” introduces two of the key terms we will be discussing this module: writing spaces and remediation. For this post, please identify three of the writing spaces you use most frequently, discuss their characteristics, and what makes them unique. Then, choose two of those spaces, and using Bolter’s and Grusin’s definition of remediation, discuss how one remediates the other (or how they remediate themselves).
Please draft your response using Microsoft Word (or other word processor), check it for spelling, and then paste it in the blog post field. Have your response be at least 1/2 page, single space, using Times New Roman font size 12, on a page with 1″ margins.
The essay is available for download on the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
I am asking you to have an electronic version available because we are going to post it to your group blog in class.
for Tuesday, Oct 6 (1st class of module 2)
Please download, print, and read the syllabus (.pdf), which is available on the syllabus page. Come to class with any questions you may have.
Please first read Axelrod and Cooper’s “Strategies for Reading Critically” and use the annotation techniques they describe when you read: Rettberg (2008) “What is a Blog?” I will check the copies of your readings in class to see how you have annotated the texts. These, and all readings, are linked off the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
For the first part of this assignment, I’d like you to identify your personal, educational, and professional “interest spheres.” These spheres are the subjects, ideas, communities, etc., that you are interested in and/or curious about on a personal level. Often, when we think about our personal, educational, and professional interests we say, “Oh, I’m a Writing Arts major and I’m interested in journalism.” Or, “Oh, I’m an Writing Arts/Education double major and I’m interested in creative non-fiction.”
Those statements are quite useful, but the areas “journalism” and others, like “elementary education” or “law” or “creative writing” are quite broad. For example, what specific area of journalism are you interested in: op/ed, sports, politics, environmental, journalist ethics, etc.? These are subclasses of the larger field of journalism. We can do the same with elementary education: No Child Left Behind, funding of education, politics and education, special needs students, art in education, technology in the el ed classroom, and so forth. Each of these areas offers a very specific community wherein people are exchanging ideas, best practices, and proposals for future changes. Similar things can be done with personal and educational interests. Here, for example, is a breakdown of my professional and personal:
- higher education (professional)
- technology and education
- web 2.0
- classification systems
- photography (personal)
- black and white
- Holga
- infrared
I would like you to locate 3 or 4 specific areas of professional, educational, and personal interests. Create a hierarchy as above, and bring it with you to class. Then, using the blog search engine technorati or google begin searching for blogs in that particular specific area. So, for example, I might look for blogs that discuss “web 2.0.” If you have trouble with the subareas, try the overall subject area and then narrow based on what you see. You might also try putting a phrase like “education blogs” into Google and see what you get. By doing that, the first result is to a page that discusses the Top 100 Education Blogs, which itself contains a link to edublogs.org, a site that hosts more than 30,000 blogs.
Update, 9/5/09, 10:50am: Please also take a look at this short video, “The First Blogger,” by Scott Rosenberg. Rosenberg is the author Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What’s It’s Becoming, and Why it Matters.
for Tuesday, Sept 29
Please read Tim O’Reilly’s (2005) What is Web 2.0?, which introduced the term Web 2.0 to a wider audience, and spend some time using the interactive site created by Jonathan Harris (2006). We Feel Fine. Before using the site, please read through the site’s mission statement as well as the description of the site’s various movements. If you like We Feel Fine, you can see Jonathan Harris’s other interesting work on his web site.
for Thursday, Sept 24
Please watch the following video, entitled “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.” Please not that it runs 55 minutes, so you may want to watch it in more than one sitting.
for Tuesday, Sept 22
Please read Wired magazine articles: Turkle (1995) “Who Am We?” and Kelly (2005) “We Are the Web.” As written below, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, The Difference Between Thin and Think Tweets, 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
for Thursday, Sept 17
Please read Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” and Steve Johnson’s “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.”
Please also look at the following blogs: PostSecret, The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Literally-A Web Log, Why That Plate, Lowercase L, Jeff the Giant Orange Cat, A Food Coma, and Bathroom Graffiti Project.
For next Tuesday, please also browse through the following blog posts about Twitter: How Twitter was Born, 10 Types of Tweets, The Difference Between Thin and Think Tweets, 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter, and 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter.
And, of course, start your Twittering and start following people! For all Tweets about or relating to class in some way, please be sure to use the #tfwf09 hashtag somewhere in your tweet. Remember, you are to post at least 3 tweets per day for the following 26 days (up to and including October 29). The more you tweet, the more comfortable you will feel.
for Tuesday, Sept 15
Please read Selfe (1999) “Literacy and Technology Linked” and Gee “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a Waste of Time?”
Please post a response to these articles on your blog by the start of class on Tuesday. There is no formal prompt—and there will be no formal prompt for the rest of the module, only the suggestion that your responses to assigned texts be about the equivalent of 1/2 page, single space, Times New Roman, font 12. When composing your posts, write them as if you are writing for the whole WWW audience—not just for this class and these students and this professor. Because, in fact, anyone in the world can read your responses if they find the blog in a search or stumble upon it through this or other Web sites. Discuss, critique, cite—whatever you wish to do; just remember that blogging is all about authority. I also encourage you to comment on each other’s posts. Blogs are also about feedback, so let’s start giving ourselves some feedback.
Remember that each student is responsible for posting a total of 3 posts per week to their group blog, 1 of which must be on the readings. The other 3 can/should be on topics of your own interest as long as they relate to the overall theme of your blog. Don’t leave these blog posts until the end of the module (doing so will negatively impact your grade)—be diligent and stay with it. Once you get rolling, it will be hard to stop.
To get to know your blogs a bit more, please see WordPress.com’s new (and, unfortunately, now rather difficult) support page. By classtime on Thursday, I would like you to learn how to do the following using the support page linked-to above, and the create a post that contains all three of the below listed items. Use the Topics keywords (also known as ‘tags’) to get you started. I suggest using the search box if the lists are unhelpful. The subject of this post should be on a subject that is related to your professional, and/or educational interests, but employing the following activities:
- add / write a link
- add an image
- emded / post a YouTube video
for Thursday, Sept 10
By classtime, please read Bolter (2001) “Writing as Technology” and post a response to the following on your brand new, super-exciting collaborative blog:
“Writing as Technology” introduces two of the key terms we will be discussing this module: writing spaces and remediation. For this post, please identify three of the writing spaces you use most frequently, discuss their characteristics, and what makes them unique. Then, choose two of those spaces, and using Bolter’s and Grusin’s definition of remediation, discuss how one remediates the other (or how they remediate themselves).
Please draft your response using Microsoft Word (or other word processor), check it for spelling, and then paste it in the blog post field. Have your response be at least 1/2 page, single space, using Times New Roman font size 12, on a page with 1″ margins.
Essays are available for download on the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
To access your blog dashboard, to go http://www.wordpress.com and log in using the username and password set up in class (if you were absent this will be done in class on Thursday; do not create an account from home). At the top op the browser window you will see a gray bar. On the left of the bar, click on Dashboard. From there, look to the left navigation bar. Click on Post and then “New Post.” Add a title, paste in your text, and then click on Publish. You can see what your blog looks like by clicking on your blog: Film Kids, Technology in the Elementary Classroom, The Vorpal Sword, Tiny Tots to Teens and Their Learning Techniques, and Too Special.
for Tuesday, Sept 8
Please download, print, and read the syllabus (.pdf), which is available on the syllabus page. Come to class with any questions you may have.
Please first read Axelrod and Cooper’s “Strategies for Reading Critically” and use the annotation techniques they describe when you read: Rettberg (2008) “What is a Blog?” I will check the copies of your readings in class to see how you have annotated the texts. These, and all readings, are linked off the readings page, which is password protected. Please email me if you forgot the password.
For the first part of this assignment, I’d like you to identify your personal, educational, and professional “interest spheres.” These spheres are the subjects, ideas, communities, etc., that you are interested in and/or curious about on a personal level. Often, when we think about our personal, educational, and professional interests we say, “Oh, I’m a Writing Arts major and I’m interested in journalism.” Or, “Oh, I’m an Writing Arts/Education double major and I’m interested in creative non-fiction.”
Those statements are quite useful, but the areas “journalism” and others, like “elementary education” or “law” or “creative writing” are quite broad. For example, what specific area of journalism are you interested in: op/ed, sports, politics, environmental, journalist ethics, etc.? These are subclasses of the larger field of journalism. We can do the same with elementary education: No Child Left Behind, funding of education, politics and education, special needs students, art in education, technology in the el ed classroom, and so forth. Each of these areas offers a very specific community wherein people are exchanging ideas, best practices, and proposals for future changes. Similar things can be done with personal and educational interests. Here, for example, is a breakdown of my professional and personal:
- higher education (professional)
- technology and education
- web 2.0
- classification systems
- photography (personal)
- black and white
- Holga
- infrared
I would like you to locate 3 or 4 specific areas of professional, educational, and personal interests. Create a hierarchy as above, and bring it with you to class. Then, using the blog search engine technorati or google begin searching for blogs in that particular specific area. So, for example, I might look for blogs that discuss “web 2.0.” If you have trouble with the subareas, try the overall subject area and then narrow based on what you see. You might also try putting a phrase like “education blogs” into Google and see what you get. By doing that, the first result is to a page that discusses the Top 100 Education Blogs, which itself contains a link to edublogs.org, a site that hosts more than 30,000 blogs.
Update, 9/5/09, 10:50am: Please also take a look at this short video, “The First Blogger,” by Scott Rosenberg. Rosenberg is the author Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What’s It’s Becoming, and Why it Matters.