Week 3 Reminders

Hello all,

Some quick reminders:

• Please vote once in the poll above to determine where reminders and announcements like this should be posted. Remeber that you can subscribe to the feed of this blog and make announcements show up in your sharklink page, your blogger dashboard, in your own blog, or any number of other "feed readers."

• There are reading and writing assignments this week from the textbook. For Tuesday, for instance, you will read chapter 1, including two short essays by Powell and Goldberg. You will answer the “Questions for Active Reading” after each essay (you do not have to answer the “Questions for Thinking Critically”). There is a journal entry due as well, the assignment sheet for which is available on WebCT.

• The following people have not sent me the URLs (web addresses, like http://comp100.blogspot.com) to their blogs: B. Astudillo, C. Orr, C. Duty, D. Williams, G. Moppert, P. Daniels, A. Manuel, S. Pascucci. If you do not give me your URL, I can neither grade your work nor add a link to the course blog so other students can access your work. Starting next week, the late work policy in the syllabus will be enforced for blogs. Send me your info, or if you already sent your URL to me, but I somehow missed it, let me know at ericmaso@nova.edu . you cancheck the list of student blogs on the course blog to make sure your blog has been added.

• Per the instructions given during class and available on WebCT, I need you to add the “Subscriptions” gadget to your blogs. Even if you have already added it, you should check to make sure it is possible to subscribe to posts and to comments. This is necessary for me to keep track of those times (like this Thursday), when you will be asked to comment on each others’ blogs.

• You can always update your blog title if you find that it is too similar to other students’ blog titles. Feel free to add different gadgets, designs, images, and such to your blogs. You have the ability to change other things about your blog as well, such as your user name and even the URL of your site. Changing these last two should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, however, as it will make it impossible for me to give you credit for your blog if I can’t find it or don’t recognize your username.

• You may want to read over the assignment sheet for Project 1 before Tuesday’s class, if you haven’t done so already. It’s available on WebCT under “Course Documents.”

As always, email me if you have questions (ericmaso@nova.edu) .

Best,
Eric Mason

Why blog in a COMP 1000 course?

Hi all,

You may be new to blogging, or you may be a veteran. Based on what you read online, you might already associate blogs with the partisan discourse of online politics, the narcissistic discourse of online diaries, or with the technical discourse of collaborative professional communities. Blogs are all these things and more. We are not blogging in this class because it is something brand new (it isn't); we are not blogging because you will need to be able to blog to get a job (in some cases, your blog may hurt your career); and we are not blogging because I want to get you to write more personally (this is besides the point).

We are blogging because, no matter how skilled the writer, maintaining a blog is an effective way to imrpove the author's ability to write effectively, and on the author's ability to engage critically with texts written by others. These are two qualities that any writing class should seek to improve. Writers in past centuries kept what were called"commonplace books"--collections of text drawn from many different sources. Basically, authors wrote down things they read or heard so they could remember them and reflect on them. These passages were copied down to be remembered for future use, to be used as evidence in future arguments, or as models for future writing.

Commonplace books were effective means of imrpoving one's writing because writing is not a skill one can improve by writing occasionally--you really have to make it a habit. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea" should be your motto if you want to improve your writing: "Not a day without a line." Besides encouraging you to write daily, our blogging will also be used to facilitate class discussion and to share resources you can use this semester and in the future. Along the way, we'll be able to explore first-hand the following:

• How to track your own writing process so you don't lose key insights or resources
• How to enable critical reflection
• How to produce and disseminate writing to the public sphere
• How to establish an appropriate ethos in your writing
• How to network (on the network) with peers

Dr. Mason will maintain this blog as a way to disseminate information and resources useful for this class. During the second week of class, we will discuss policies related to your own blogs, which is how you will keep your writing/thinking journal. Once you create your blogs, this site will link to all of them, so that you may easily find the blogs of your classmates.

See you in class.

~ Dr. Mason