Bill Wolff's Composing Spaces

wordles of the #on911 hashtag: a brief analysis

In this post I briefly analyze Wordles of the first 1123 tweets posted with the #on911 hashtag. The Wordles contain 1000, 100, 10, and 1 words.

the word TV as depicted in a one-word Wordle

what the web looked like on 9/11

This post showcases screen shots of news web sites I archived throughout the day on September 11, 2001. It also discuses a project I started when a grad student, "From Shock to Spectacle: Remediating the Terrorist Attack of September 11, 2001."

Screen shot of cnn.com on september 11, 2001, taken at 2:37 pm. The site has the heading, Test Story; Don't Publish.

6 recommendations for teaching with the flip video camera

This post describes how I integrated the Flip Video camera and related software applications into an undergraduate upper level writing course in spring 2009.

Screen shot of Bill in a YouTube video holding the Flip Video camera as he explains to the viewer the purpose of the class.

using twitter in the graduate classroom

Using Twitter reinforced my belief that micro-blogging is an important communication medium for burgeoning writers to understand it both theoretically and practically. For graduate students, this involves a thorough engagement with Twitter and the Twitter community.

Screen shot of Bill's students' Twitter discussion.

concerns about newsweek’s oprah cover photo

I am concerned about the kind of editing that might have taken place on this image to darken Oprah's skin and highlight shadows, just as we saw with images of OJ on Time and Newsweek

Side-by-side photos of Oprah, one a manipulated image that appeared on the Newsweek cover, the other the original

teaching students how to create meaningful tags

I have found that engaging students in the activity of creating and interpreting a tag cloud of one of their own posts is an effective way to introduce students to the concept of tagging.

Screen shot of three tag clouds, each one from different student blogs.

one laptop per child announces 2008 campaign

November 18, 2008

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One Laptop per Child (OLPC) has announced its 2008 Give One, Get One campaign. This year individuals have the ability to Give One (for $199) or Give One and Get One (for $399). In coordination with this announcement, OLPC has released a video of students talking about how much they like their laptop have provided a [...]

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about that analog to digital cable tv switch

November 14, 2008

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This about says it all:

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palin Africa reports result of elaborate internet hoax

November 13, 2008

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On November 6, 2008, reports began circulating online and on TV that Sarah Palin did not know (or could not grasp the idea) that Africa was a continent and not a country. The story, embedded with other Palin-McCain-infighting-related revelations that were, according to FoxNews’ Carl Cameron (see below), “put off the record until after the [...]

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