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| schematic, "screencube" installation |
what's this?
This is the course blog, a portal for assignments, tips, encouragement, and generally helpful resources. Because I can link everything here, you will not need to purchase a textbook for this course (you're welcome!).
I will also use Bb to coordinate class information (via announcements), but for the most part, this is the place. Eventually, as I get more facile with Slack and Basecamp, we'll perhaps move over to that paired communication option, but to start, I want to keep it very simple.
You're invited (and required) to write regularly for this course; this offers you a way to interact meaningfully and in an archived fashion with what we're experiencing affectively, creatively, ethically, intellectually, rhetorically, and in community.
Don't love writing with or for others? We'll help you get over that. You see, writers share. Most knowledge evolves in this way, through sharing, giving and receiving feedback, revising, and polishing to pleasing effect. Granted, the process isn't always pretty. Often, we have to WERQ in order to be polite and respectful to others. Practice helps!
Write with care, here, and in all venues. With this in mind, I'd like to encourage you to avoid rants or attacks. Most of all, I want to use the course blog and your individual blogs to help each and every student to feel a part of our writing community.
essential concepts
I will also use Bb to coordinate class information (via announcements), but for the most part, this is the place. Eventually, as I get more facile with Slack and Basecamp, we'll perhaps move over to that paired communication option, but to start, I want to keep it very simple.
In addition to using simple tools, I want you to have a space for exploring information structures in a publication venue that resembles published web texts. In this way, as you compose, review and revise, you gain insight into the moves composers and information designers and architects use to shape the information we encounter, use, consume, resist, and sometimes just don't get. For now, I don't fully "get" much more than these simple compositional spaces, though I've used many web platforms. We'll talk more about this in our opening Zoom meeting.
To be clear, keep up with class Announcements via Bb; it's already integrated with your WSU email, so you should receive notifications whenever a course announcements is made. These announcements are often about updating assignment and due date information, reminding you of things we've explored in class, things that require follow-up.
To be clear, keep up with class Announcements via Bb; it's already integrated with your WSU email, so you should receive notifications whenever a course announcements is made. These announcements are often about updating assignment and due date information, reminding you of things we've explored in class, things that require follow-up.
how will you be present at this blog?
You're invited (and required) to write regularly for this course; this offers you a way to interact meaningfully and in an archived fashion with what we're experiencing affectively, creatively, ethically, intellectually, rhetorically, and in community.
Please plan to write once-weekly reflective blog posts at a blog you'll create. Your blog will be featured at the blogroll (@ right). Please see the subsequent post for information on creating and designing your blog. Note: Blogger blogs are quite simple. Making and designing them requires little effort, but when in doubt, a Google search usually offers answers. In fact, a recent update to the platform brought changes that required me to do a google search in order to find where the new HTML button is in the editor. One screenshot away.
Please design your blog so that it reflects a sense of who you are. What does this mean? We'll talk about it. To be sure, you'll want to create something lovely, but remember that you're writing for an audience of your class peers and professor, so keep it professional and fun and readable and all should go well. You're invited to play with some elemental design skills, which we'll refine throughout the semester.
I hope you'll create a blog that invites you to write often. Often, something we're discussing in class provides a natural topic. Or, perhaps you attended an campus event, and either I've asked you to write about it, or you are simply drawn to think it through a bit more, in writing.
Please design your blog so that it reflects a sense of who you are. What does this mean? We'll talk about it. To be sure, you'll want to create something lovely, but remember that you're writing for an audience of your class peers and professor, so keep it professional and fun and readable and all should go well. You're invited to play with some elemental design skills, which we'll refine throughout the semester.
I hope you'll create a blog that invites you to write often. Often, something we're discussing in class provides a natural topic. Or, perhaps you attended an campus event, and either I've asked you to write about it, or you are simply drawn to think it through a bit more, in writing.
how does this blog create and sustain community?
Learning in communities for writers and thinkers often provides motivation and new ways of approaching new material. This blog is designed to help create and sustain community, especially given that we're unable to meet face-to-face in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. So, in addition to writing at your blog, you are also assigned blog responses.
Writing and responding to your peers' entries offers you a model of how many writers write -- in writing communities. A moment for "writers." "Writers" includes information architects, content designers, and more of the kinds of people we imagine when we consider working as information professionals). Our blogs, and other forms of asynchronous community-oriented writing platforms -- afford us a sense of community for those times when we are not face to face. This is especially meaningful given how inspiration often finds us not in front of a keyboard at our carefully designed workspace. Jotting a few notes and latter adding them to a blog entry is easy. Or, you may want to create the option to save a draft and/or publish directly from your smartphone or other portable device. In fact, so much writing happens in just this way, as digital media and internet access makes such collaborations easy and productive.
Don't love writing with or for others? We'll help you get over that. You see, writers share. Most knowledge evolves in this way, through sharing, giving and receiving feedback, revising, and polishing to pleasing effect. Granted, the process isn't always pretty. Often, we have to WERQ in order to be polite and respectful to others. Practice helps!
Write with care, here, and in all venues. With this in mind, I'd like to encourage you to avoid rants or attacks. Most of all, I want to use the course blog and your individual blogs to help each and every student to feel a part of our writing community.
essential concepts
The work of this course should be relatively easy for you because you already know a lot of what I am going to teach you. You know it from your life experience and immersion in literate culture(s). This could mean that this knowledge is very general and maybe something you don't think about very conscientiously. We're going to bring it into the light for contemplation and practice. Essentially, I am going to reanimate 4 key concepts, about which you may already have some deep knowledge. They are:
- Data takes many forms.
- Data is rendered as information.
- The rendering is rhetorical ... and thus
- The production, reception, and circulation of information involves affect and material effects; thus, it's ethically complex, and requires attention and care.
We'll build on your existing knowledge and skill and reanimate it. This course should help you develop productively flexible strategies for making wise choices toward effective communication. This course focuses particularly upon a range of skills routinely used by academic writers, but these skills apply in any rhetorical situation (within and beyond the academy).
What to do with the writing you've done? Post as your first blog entry at the blog you'll create. Instructions are found in the next post.
Welcome to the course!
Welcome to the course!
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