Monthly Archives: April 2021

Week 14 (5/4 and 5/6): Beginning Your Portfolio

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These last couple weeks of class, we’ll primarily just be focusing on getting your final portfolios together. This week will hopefully be a pretty lowkey week with limited new work for you to do, and plenty of time to just work on your portfolio, do makeup work, or just focus on other things in your life.

Click here for the End of Semester Overview

What To Do Before Zoom Class (Tuesday, 5/4)

Readings:

If you do not plan on attending class:

  • Watch this video and follow the instructions to create your own portfolio site

What We’ll Do During Class

  • Talk through the portfolio and mini project
  • I’ll walk you through how to make your own sites
  • We’ll talk about anything else y’all want to talk about

What To Do Async Thursday (5/6)

Structure & Accountability Folks:

  • Email me a plan for your portfolio. This should include which unit project you plan on revising, what you plan on doing for your mini-project, ideas for how you want to design your portfolio website, when you plan on doing the work, and anything else you want to tell me.

Recommended for Everyone:

  • Download this Semester Checklist, compare it with your grades in Blackboard, and figure out for yourself what you’re missing, what you plan on making up, and when you plan on doing it
  • Begin working on your portfolio! Even though a lot of the components are just building off of work you’ve already done, it takes time to design and build a website.

I’ve made a bunch of videos to show you how to do different stuff on the Commons if you would like some audiovisual guidance:

Intro to the WordPress Dashboard
Posts and Pages, Block and Classic Editor
Themes, Customizing, and Home Page Settings
Menus
Uploading/Embedding Files
Privacy Settings/Sharing
How WordPress Is Different On Your Phone

Preparing for Next Class (Tuesday 5/11) – Last Class!

Begin working on your mini-project! Folks on the Structure & Accountability Plan should turn in a draft of their web genre analysis by the end of the day on Tuesday.

Final Mini-Project Instructions

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The final mini-project is one of the required components for your portfolio. It is due May 20 along with the rest of your portfolio. I’m just uploading instructions separately. Click here for full portfolio instructions.

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More Detailed Instructions

On the instructions sheet, I’ve provided some examples of internet genres in the instructions for the project. Other scholars of the internet have identified the following as some other examples of internet genres:

  • The home page
  • The hotlist (hotlists are often but not always automatically-generated. examples of hotlists are your bookmarks bar, or the “frequently accessed” menu when you open a new web browser window or open Google Docs)
  • The FAQ page
  • The About page
  • The Contact Us page
  • The business email
  • The academic email
  • The blog post (subtypes include journal blog, travel blog, food blog, etc.)
  • The spam email
  • The advertising email
  • The sidebar ad
  • The Wiki page (both on Wikipedia and on other kinds of wikis, pages are constructed in a similar manner)

You could choose any of these, any of the examples I gave on the assignment sheet, or another genre of your choosing. (Here’s a tweet about the “genre” of “ads for bedding” — like the ads for Brooklinen, Casper, Parachute, etc. you used to see on the MTA).

Writing Your Web Genre Analysis

After you’ve collected and examined many different examples of your chosen genre, please write approximately 2 (or more) pages analyzing the rules and norms of that genre. Please write this in paragraph form.

Here are some questions to guide you:

  1. How would you describe this genre to someone who has never used the internet before?
  2. What kind(s) of content is included?
  3. How is that content typically presented or arranged?
  4. What design/formatting choices are typical of this genre?
  5. What observations have you made about the style of writing in this genre?
  6. If you were to instruct someone about how to write in this genre from scratch, what is the step-by-step process?
  7. What is the purpose of this genre?
  8. Who is the intended audience of this genre?
  9. How is the genre well-suited (or not well-suited) to that purpose and audience?

Another suggestion: If you can convince someone in your life to participate, try teaching someone how to write in this genre. See what they do that feels “wrong” to you, that you may not have thought of when doing your initial analysis.

End of Semester Overview (5/4-5/20)

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Last stretch! Last unit overview! We’re almost there!

We only have 2 weeks of class left in the regular semester, and then 1 week of “finals.” In this class, we don’t have a final exam. Instead, you’ll be creating a digital portfolio showcasing your work this semester. Part of that portfolio will be a final mini-project, where you get to show off your genre analysis skills.

Scheduling Notes: We will have Zoom class Tuesday 5/4 and 5/11. 5/11 will be our last class time together.

Writing for the End of the Semester

Just like you did in English 101, you will be making digital portfolios showcasing your work this semester. Your portfolios will include a mini-project based around a genre of your choice and some additional reflections.

Grading/Checklist for the End of the Semester

The portfolio is worth 20% of your final grade. All other assignments from this section of the semester will belong to the “Beginning/End of Semester” grading category (20%). I’ll write out the full list separately so you can have a clear view.

Structure & Accountability Plan (End of Semester)

  1. Email me a plan for your portfolio- 2 points, completion
  2. Web genre analysis draft — 2 points, completion
  3. “Yourself as a reader and writer” assignment — 2 points, completion
  4. Portfolio

Maximum Flexibility Plan (End of Semester)

  1. Just the “Yourself as a reader and writer” assignment– 2 points, completion
  2. Portfolio

Extra Credit

You can still attend a writing center workshop for extra credit, or sign up for a 1:1 writing center session. There are several workshops between now and the end of the semester. I will receive a log of all attendance at the end of the semester, and I will input these points then.

Late Work

Please be aware that we are getting close to the late work deadline. All late work is due by the end of the day on Thursday, May 20. 

 

Week 13 (4/27 and 4/29): Finishing Unit 3!

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Click here for an overview of the whole unit.
Click here for the Unit 3 project instructions/rubric.

What To Do Before Zoom Class (Tuesday, 4/27)

  • Prepare an update on your project to share with the class — you don’t need to turn anything in, just plan what you want to say.  What is your topic? How are things going? What writing difficulties have you run into, or what questions do you have?
  • If you haven’t started yet, do some brainstorming and share what you plan to do

Due By End of Day: Peer review comments for those of you participating, due to me and to your partner

What We’ll Do During Class

  • Share project updates
  • Revisit rubric, instructions, APA formatting
  • Look at and discuss End of Semester Overview
  • I expect we will end early, but we’ll see.

What To Do For Async Thursday (4/29)

Readings: None!

Assignments, due for Everyone:

Preparing For Next Class (Tuesday, 5/4)

  • Read over the “Portfolio Instructions” 
  • If you are not planning on attending class, watch the “Creating Your Portfolio” video (I will also upload this later in the week)

Unit 3 Reflection Prompts

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Reflections are due Thursday, 4/29

Please respond to the following questions in your reflection.

  1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before?
  2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about?
  3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about?
  4. What are the strengths of your unit project? What are you most proud of?
  5. If you were to revise your unit project, what would you want to do differently?
  6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit?
  7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful?
  8. What skills or habits do you want to bring with you to next semester, and what habits do you want to leave behind?
  9. What was your favorite unit this semester and why?
  10. Do you have any suggestions for what I should change when I revise this class for next semester?

Week 12 (4/20 and 4/22): Writing and Feedback

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Click here for an overview of the whole unit.
Click here for the Unit 3 project instructions/rubric.

Scheduling Note: NO ZOOM CLASS on Tuesday, 4/20. 

What To Do For Async Tuesday (4/20)

Readings (Optional):

More examples of student ethnographies

An example from one of my students last semester– now, this is much more in-depth than what I am requiring you to do, since she used her entire time in the US Army as her fieldwork, rather than conducting new fieldwork for this unit. So, her project and analysis are much deeper than yours needs to be. But, it’s also an excellent example of ethnographic writing and analysis.

Another example from last semester — this student chose to do an ethnography of a restaurant he and his friends went to eat at

Assignments Due (Structure & Accountability Plan, AND anyone else who signs up for peer review):

First draft of mini-ethnography due by the end of the day! Please send to me AND to your peer review partner.

If you are not participating in peer review, you are still welcome to turn in a draft and I will send you feedback. 🙂

What To Do for Async Thursday (4/22)

Nothing except for continuing to work on your projects!

Preparing for Next Class (Tuesday 4/27)

We will have Zoom class on this day.

Readings: None!

Assignments: For those participating, Peer Review Reports + comments are due to me and your partner by the end of the day.

Optional: More Memes Scholarship

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Many of you wrote in your responses and reflections that you particularly liked the analysis of memes that we read in Unit 1. I was looking up “lifespan of a meme” tonight (for a book chapter I’m writing about online bisexual culture), and found this much longer/more detailed analysis of memes: https://baec.aua.am/files/2018/11/Noubar_Ounjian_Analysis-and-the-Elements-of-the-Lifespan-of-Memes-from-the-scope-of-Semiotics-and-Darwinian-Theory_Capstone.pdf

If you’re interested in linguistics and semiotic theory, take a skim through the text, but if not, it’s worth a scroll-through just to see the screenshots of a bunch of good memes that are included and some interesting charts on the different memes’ popularity over time. This was written as somebody’s senior thesis for an English and Communications degree.

Optional: Example of Misleading Graph

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In thinking about our discussions on misleading science, I wanted to share with you this graph I came across today while reading about Biden’s proposed budget for 2022.

This makes it look like Biden wants to invest a ton of money into education, commerce, health and human services, and the EPA, right? Certainly things that many Democrats support.

However, what these actual bars and percentages represent is not what PROPORTION of the budget Biden wants to invest into these things– he’s not proposing that 40% of all federal discretionary spending go to education.

As the label says, it’s “2021 enacted discretionary spending budget vs. Biden’s 2022 proposal.” So, what these actually show is how much Biden wants to increase these areas COMPARED TO the current year. It doesn’t tell us anything about how much is actually being spent in each area.

For example, the 2021 “enacted budget” (so, not what Trump proposed for this year, but what actually happened for this year) for education was $73 billion, and Biden’s proposal for 2022 is $102.8 billion– the 40% increase in the chart. However, these numbers are just on a different scale than the Pentagon budget– which is a very small bar in the chart. The 2021 budget for THAT is $703.7 billion, and Biden’s proposal is $715 billion.

So, Biden’s proposed budget for military spending looks very small in the chart (1.6%), but it’s only small in relation to this year– the total amount of spending is still very high, and still 7 times higher than education spending.

So, it’s not FAKE/LIES, the chart is saying TRUE information, but it does send particular messages that obscure other facts!