Monday, February 23, 2009

Class February 23

Feedback on your blogs + grades for your literacy narratives should be in your email. If you feel that I did not correctly/fairly evaluate your narrative, please schedule a conference and we can talk about it. If you are not satisfied with your grade, you may revise your writing and re-submit it. Overall this writing was well done. What a pleasure to read these stories. Thank you for your good work.

In class today Kathy and Jenna gave their presentation on the wikipedia article. They provided us with some of the history of the site and introduced the collaborative nature of the site "where everyone is a groundskeeper," along with wikipedia's version of vandalism, John Broughton's "missing manual," instruction creep, deletionism, and the "Article Rescue Squadron. . . a small group that opposes "extremist deletion.""

The presentation intimated the social nature of the site (which I then picked up on in the presentation of your assignment. As the author of "The Charms of Wikipedia," Nicholson Baker points out, "Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball."

We discussed the assignment, you created your accounts, and then did some exploring to identify your topic (in terms of what is posted on wikipedia & what needs expanding)and figure out how to construct a post. Read the information on wikipedia about how to post; take advantage of the discussions and practice in the sandbox or by making small edits and checking out the code.

For Thursday-
Read: references for your wikipedia post
Blog 8: Exploratory writing for your wikipedia post

Remember to keep in mind that your wikipedia post can set up your research project - and that the focus for both needs to connect to literacy, technology, digital writing and "cyberspace" => the focus of the course.

See you on Thursday.

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