Due Friday April 10

The purpose of this week’s virtual class meeting is to help you prepare for the final exam and the portfolio you’ll assemble for your final grade. In other words, here draft stuff that you’ll use later. Look closely at what your classmates write. Learn from their observations and incorporated their insights into your own understanding.

Choose one of your own posts that lends itself to the exercise, even if you do not consider this post entirely successful. You are not looking for “good” or “effective” at this point. You’re just stepping away and looking at your writing as a “found” object. Your analysis tears the post apart in order to look at these parts; it then explains how these parts attempt to work together. In fact blogging could be called the art of making composites—positioning the components of writing together on a small screen. Below is an example and below that is a list of components to consider.

1. Identify some important components or parts of your post
2. Explain how these components work together to create “effects.” This is the harder question.
3. When you answer, please embed the title of the individual post using HTML. This is a small writerly move with big consequences. If you don’t embed the link, I’ll just bet that I’ll be the only one who bothers to take a look, and I'll have to put a lot of energy into doing so. This is also called hypertextual writing and you definitely need to know how to do it.

Example:
Joe’s post titled The Athletic Culture in the States.

Visual and Verbal Composite: Both elements are present. How do they work together? I’d begin by asking which dominates on the screen and would answer myself by saying that even though the visual is placed high on the page, the verbal dominates. Why do I think so? Because you can’t see any faces in the visual—it’s a huddle of athletes. In the verbal, on the other hand, the personal narrative maintains attention. It has more “face” than the image. Yet the two work together to ask whether the experience of one athlete is the experience of the rest. Now, did Joe do all of this intentionally? Probably not. Nonetheless his actions have effects.

Academic Argument and Personal Narrative Composite: Joe’s post has clear elements of academic training: a kind of thesis-like statement at the bottom of the first paragraph and clear examples that prove his point. It’s an argument (straight from English 102), yet the argument is cast in highly personal terms.

Narrative Past Tense and Immediacy Composite: “Two years ago” places the personal experience in the past. So although the “I’m currently an athlete” impression is alive, the “immediacy” factor is reduced by the past tense. Again—this is a compositor’s decision that has its effect; not a right/wrong sort of thing.

Education and Entertainment Composite: The funny elements of this post create a form of spectacle or entertainment: we like seeing what happens to a living being who gets removed from its natural habitat. Yet the post is also educational and informational; we learn.

The List: Elements that make unique meaning when you combine them
This is not necessarily an exercise in finding opposites. Instead consider that these elements may be combined in endless variety—in large or small measure. This is NOT a complete list—create your own components as you see them happening and recognize what you've talked about before. Have a little fun looking closely what you’ve created in your blogspaces. WHEN YOU'RE DONE PLAYING WITH THIS ASSIGNMENT, YOU'LL HAVE A PIECE OF YOUR EXAM WELL DRAFTED.

Visual (film or image)
Verbal (words)
Audio
Educational
Informational/expository
Personal
Argument
Narrative
Color
Motion
Aesthetic or poetic
Entertainment
Lets reader be passive (social distance increased)
Calls reader into the space—requests action (social distance decreased)
Uses I to diminish social distance
Avoids I to increase social distance
Immediacy (like status update): I AM HERE NOW DOING X
Pastness: Last week, earlier in my life I . . . . In medieval times . . . .
Humor or the comic (verbal or visual)
Seriousness
Nonsensical
Surprise
Novelty—the unusual, the unknown
Random (from Status Update)
Irony
Snarkiness
Parody
Politeness
Sincerity
Attraction—stay here and read/view/do
Distraction—go over there and read/view/do
Web 2.0—you create and manipulate materials on line (comments, polls, other)

What else?

Due Tuesday April 14

Remember that there will be class on April 14 but NO CLASS on APRIL 21.

For Tuesday, consult your own plan of action.

All should attend to the challenge of gaining a broader audience.

All should edit for typos and misspellings.

Post.

Comment on class blogs.

Comment on outside blogs.