For Monday, March 3

Finish your research plans and post them on your Blog. This post, along with the exploratory posts where you developed your research plan will be Blog 6. On Monday in class, each of you will give a brief presentation to the class on your research project.

Also, over the weekend, go to bloglines and del.icio.us to set up a feed and bookmarks for your blogon your research topic. Then begin reading some of the articles/web sites you find using this software. In class Wednesday, we will talk over how del.icio.us is working for you.

For Wednesday, February 27

Work on your research plan. Using the process posted in the previous entry will give you the kind of broad view that will allow you to make sure you have a valid question and that their is sufficient material "out there" for you to pose an in-depth exploration of that question. Doing the reading is probably the most important part of the planning process. Read what others have written. Examine their questions.

For Wednesday you will be expected to have a draft research plan on your blog. Go into detail for each of the following points:

Detailed statement of your research question

Statement of purpose (what you hope to show/discover)

List of the information you need to gather

Preliminary list of sources

Plan for gathering your information

Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web 2.0

In class on Wednesday - you will give and recieve feedback on your plan. On Monday March 3, you will give a presentation on your research plan.

Develop a research plan

1. Familiarize yourself with your topic:

Do some general reading about what others have written on your topic

Create some brief summaries of what others have written (keep track of your sources)

Make a list of the ideas/questions other researchers are bring to your topic

2. Identify a research question:

Develop a list of questions you might want to explore with respect to your topic

Strategies to deepen and focus your question:

List ideas connected to one or two of your questions + generate questions to open up those ideas

Deepen these questions even further by asking about: causes and effects; classification or definitions of the concepts your are studying; relative value or importance; history and evolution (etiology); consequences for users or some other group associated with your topic; relationships among actors, actions, context and consequences in your subject..

Organize the questions you by focus

3. Decide what you need to know to answer your research question:

do some focused reading with respect to your question + note the questions other
researchers have asked + how they answered them
using what you have found from your reading, map out the kind of information you will
need to answer your question

4. Formulate a research plan that includes:

Detailed statement of your research question

Statement of purpose (what you hope to show/discover)

List of the information you need to gather

Preliminary list of sources

Plan for gathering your information

Links to sample web texts:

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.1/binder.html?topoi/warner/index.html

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/10.1/binder2.html?coverweb/lindgren/index.htm

Finding your topic + FAQs for your web essay

In class today you did some writing to identify/clarify/ develop your topic for your web essay. Specifically, after writing about 100 words on your topic, you got some feedback from classmates with respect to : additional issues/questions you might want to raide; how the topic connects to concepts in ENG 3080; ideas about who might use an essay on this topic; & references, examples, or connections to "experts."

We then had a brief discussion of the reading from Johnson-Eilola, and you started on exercise 1, on page 19 - only you did your search and analysis for sites related to your topic.

For Blog 5, due on Monday, read through what you have so far on your topic and present a detailed description of what you plan to write about and the users you expect to connect to. Post as much (or all) of the writing you did in class as you need to explain your concept your issues/ideas for your essay.

Also - read Johnson-Eilola, 61-85.

See you Monday.

FAQs for your Web essay

* Is the essay just supposed to be our research and ideas about our topic?

This is not supposed to be a report - where you simply state what others have written on your topic - but neither is it supposed to be experimental research - where you create a situation and collect data on that situation. It is essentially a research project where you gather information from a range of sources and put that information together in a new way so as to come up with an original interpretation or idea with respect to your topic. For example, if you are writing about "illegal" activities associated with web forums such as craig's list - you might explore what the most frequent kinds of "crimes" that are connected to a particular forum, whether people are convicted more or less frequently for doing similar things using print media, whether and how both spaces are policed, and so on. Then - after reading through what you find from a number of sources - you will pose an explanation or "theory" for what you have found. For example, if you found that there were about the same number of "illegal" activities advertised for on craig's list as in regular newspapers, but that people generally went to jail for print violations but not digital violations - would come to some conclusion about what that means.


* What are the hyperlinks supposed to be hyper-linking to? Sites? Articles?

This should become more clear as we work through the web design materials. You should have external links to web sites that you analyze, as well as other articles on your topics. The internal links will reflect the structure of your essay. You will use one of the structures (set up in this weekend's reading assignment) to set forward your material.

* Are there length requirements? I am not going to give a word length - because presentation/design of your site makes those numbers not significant. You are expected to cover a subject in sufficient depth to develop some original thinking around that subject.

*When is it due? At the end of the term.

* Are you going to give us an assignment sheet that states the specific requirements?
I will give you a sheet that lists the criteria for the purpose of the assignment, a description of the assignment, and the criteria for the grade after you do the Wikipedia assignment. I hold off on giving the assignment sheet during the brainstorming phase because students regularly come up with ideas/topics that stretch my ideas of what will make a good project. This results in a revised assignment sheet - and I like to leave that possibility open.

Happy President's Day

Class discussion and writing on Wednesday, February 13th

As you may have noticed - we did not do the "exploratory writing" listed on the calendar, andyou were not required to turn it in as a separate assignment. You did some writing to help identify a focus for your project at the beginning of class today, and you can use that writing as your post - or you can write deeper into the ideas we developed. The idea is that you need to do some serious thinking about a subject for your web essay. The writing in class was to help you identify a topic that connected to your interests - and that you might want to use for a purpose (publish it on the web) other than completing the requirements for this course.

We then discussed McCloud, and the link at the slide show site - which the lab computers couldn't open (so we looked at the presentation on my computer). McCloud's ideas explore questions surrounding how and why we interpret icons and "cartoons" the way we do. Write into this. What he implies about how humans "are a very self-centered race" in that they see themselves in everything, connected with the fact that cartoons are as much a way of seeing as a way of drawing - applies to the internet because. . . .? As you develop your answer - think abou the nature of representation on the internet - its spatial organization, its complexity, and its use of image and icon. Hmmmm.

Due Monday, February 18 (yeah, I know you don't have class).

Blog 3: summaries and exploration of Glister + Rheingold => connections to possible topics
Blog 4: summaries and exploration Jenkins + McCloud => possible topics. The exploratory writing regarding your topic should be posted as part of Blog 4.

I will read over your blogs and have some comments for you by Wednesday (or shortly after - depending on whether everyone turns in their posts at midnight on Monday rather than sometime during the weekend).

Due Wednesday, February 20:
Read: Johnson-Eilola, 1-20

I will be meeting with Ricky on Wednesday, Feb 20 at 3:30 (right?). If have not yet had a conference - or if you want another one - let me know and we will schedule some time.

What to do for class, Wednesday, February 13

To follow up on class discussion, look around sites associated with fan fiction and think about the questions we began considering. Fan fiction raises many significant questions about digital spaces and digital interactions (many of which take place through writing). There might be an idea for a project in there.

In class Wednesday we will talk about The Vocabulary of Comics. In class Monday I asked you to think about why I was asking you to read an graphic text on comics for a "Writing in Cyberspace" class. You indicated it was because the internet uses spacial and visual rhetorics (though you said it differently) and I agree. We talked briefly about the fact that in some ways, digital spaces were a "remediation" of comics. Think about some of the ways the internet remediates conventions for making meaning used in comics. There are some interesting ideas in there. To take a look at one scholar's discussion of connections between comics and rhetoric/making meanings in general - take a look at slideshare a site where speakers share powerpoints. Slide 10 of Kevin Brooks talk on Scott McCloud's 'Big Triangle' provides a graphic representation of how we make meanings. It is worth while to think about the way the author has laid out relationships among abstract meanings (at the top); scientific prose/reaslistic images; and icons/verbal cliches. Something to think about.

Reading assignment for Monday, February 11

In class Monday we will discuss the piece on Fan fiction by Henry Jenkins. If you want to read some of the real thing - go to fanfiction.net and set up an account and read some of what's out there. Or you might want to look at a site devoted entirely to Harry Potter fanfic.

You might also want to visit The Daily Prophet, the site Heather Lawver created.


Also, you might want to think about how the two following sites comment on digital "writers" assumptions and values about who owns the images and ideas they use to write with.

Badgers is a classic nonsense sound and image clip, and the Potter site, created by professional artists is a kind of "fan fic" on the original. So what are the copyright claims?

As you look around at examples of Fanfic available on the net, think about the following questions.

1. Why are writers creating fan fiction? What is their motive ? (Yeah, I know - there is more than one.)

2. What literacy skills do fan fiction writers seem to be cultivating? How do these compare to what you learn in school?

3. What do these sites suggest about how fan fiction communities function? (how do you join, can you get thrown out, who is in charge, how are disputes moderated, how do decisions get made, and so on)

4. And what do you think it means that fan fiction is not defended by the ACLU and EFF?

Class Wednesday, February 6

So we are switched from Google.groups to Cyberspace homepage. From now on, the summary of class & what you need to do for next class will be on this page.

Thursday, February 6
Today we began by clearing up the contradictions on the calendar regarding the confusing blog entries.

Blog 1: Summary Woolley & reflection

Blog 2: Summary Heim & Bolter and Grusin, + reflections, what you might be interested in

Blog 3: Discussions/summaries of Glister + Rheingold - anything in class discussion that you found interesting - beginnings of exploration of what you might write about

As stated in class, these blogs are a combination journal and preparatory writing for your projects for the course. Summarizing the beginning readings will help you become conversant with the basic vocabulary and concepts for the course. As you do the readings, pay particular attention to the other scholars/authors/groups the writers refer to. The key terms and scholarly references from these readings can be your search terms as you get started on your research.

I also reviewed the schedule for your conferences. These conferences are to make sure you are OK with the blog/writing requirements for the class, and for me to get an idea about what you are interested in pursuing for your research/hyperlinked essay. As of now I am expecting to see you on the following schedule:

Friday, Febraury 8: Leyna: 11:40
Monday, February 11: James: 11:30; Marie: 12
Tuesday, February 12: Jennifer: 12:30; Jaclyn: 2:00
Wednesday, February 12: Angela: 11:00 ; Daphne: 3:30

We spent the rest of the class discussing Howard Rheingold's article on "smart mobs" and checking out what's happening in the real world in terms of flash or smart mobs as they have come to be called. I encouraged you to use a search engine you didn't usually use - and to see if you noticed any differences. We got a little involved in the search - so there wasn't much comment on differences in the search engines. If how different search engines is something that interests you, you might follow up on that in your blog. We read about specific events including political activism (thank you Daphne & James) watched clips on utube of crowds chasing random people (thank you Ricky), and looked at scheduled pillow fight events (thank you Angela & Leyna). After looking at sites, we started to think about what we could tell about the people who participate in smart mobs (what we could tell from the videos) - and that was kind of interesting because it turns out that it is not "everyone" => that different interest groups have different members. So what does it mean that interest groups - even when race, gender & age are invisible - turn out to represent particular demographic groups? Maybe it is not surprising - but what does it mean about "equal opportunity" and "democratic values"?

Also, Leyna showed us a site that listed LOTS of smart mob events. Sites such as these (for example: http://improveverywhere.ning.com/ ) use the web to coordinate "spontaneous events.

Our discussion of Rheingold identified the features of smart mobs - and defined terms associated with how smart mobs work. We paid talked about cooperation thresholds, emergent properties and discussed how these features of smart mob events drive the nature of the experience.

I will look over your blogs - and send you some written feedback via email by Friday night. That way you will have an idea how I am evaluating the blog before you have written to many.

I think that is about all to report for today. If you have questions - or if I forgot something - or if I am being unclear -post a comment!!

See you on Monday.

Exodus: From Google Groups to Blogger

Apparently, Dr. Chandler and I found that Google Groups decided not to work. In light of this, we decided to make this place home base for the course. All the links to your classmates' blogs are on the right along with the PDF readings for the course. News will be updated by Dr. Chandler herself in this blog from now on. To add links like the ones on this page, use the tutorial posted on this blog.

Remember that the links to your classmates' blogs are for all of you to comment and create some immersion, interactivity, and information intensity on the net. Good day everyone and welcome back.

( It would be wise to link to this blog too: http://www.3080sp08.blogspot.net )

Tutorial: How to link to your classmates' blogs

First Log onto Blogger.com

You should be taken to the Dashboard; if not, click "customize"

in the top right-hand corner of your blog.

Google updated their blog generator recently so there should be a link that says "Layout" instead of Template as shown in the picture.

Either way, it should take you to the Template/Layout page where you click

on the "Page Elements" tab.

Click the "Add Page Elements" link.

Choose "Link List" to make a list of your classmates' blogs.

(Remember you can add other page elements to pretty up and customize your blog;

dont be afraid to try it out).

Now add the Title of the Link List.

Then leave the second field blank and sort it as you choose (or not).

Add the specific website address or your classmate like in the example.

Have the Site Name be the classmate's name.

Click "add link" for each link you enter; if you look below, it will start listing your links.

http://angelacastillo86.blogspot.com/ - Angela
http://cyberreaderdaphne.blogspot.com/ - Daphne
http://jaclynberry.blogspot.com/ - Jackie
http://jalanmetzger.blogspot.com/ - James
http://jenniferwritforcyberspace.blogspot.com/ - Jennifer
http://leynanerlino.blogspot.com/ - Leyna
http://marieacot.blogspot.com/ - Marie
http://richard1-richard.blogspot.com/ - Richard
http://rickydworzanski.blogspot.com/ - Ricky

Oh and let's not forget Dr. Chandler's blog at http://0380fall05.blogspot.com/

When you're completely done with the list, click on "Save changes."

You can add other links that would help you navigate around the websites you need besides your classmates' blogs.

Here are some examples: Gmail, Google Groups (our group), etc.

Hope this was helpful.