Assignment due Friday February 27 at midnight

 

Overview: What Happened In Class on Tuesday?

 

Each person please comment about what your group accomplished on Tuesday Feb. 24. I am aware that Blogger’s commenting feature was experiencing trauma (as were bloggers who wanted to comment). Amazing timing for us, yes?  I suggested that anyone affected reset your comments to Anyone Can Comment and remove the word-verification feature. Since then I’ve been able to post to both Victor’s and Joe’s blogs WITH word verification. So the problem must be solved. And I recommended that you share intended comments via email, if necessary, so as to perform the in-class assignment. So now I’d like to know how you fared on Tuesday. Please refer to the in-class handout file for my expectations, which I hope were not entirely dashed.

  1. Did you read your designated blogger’s comments? Were you able to generalize from these comments and point to new directions for your designated blogger? Did you craft your assessment carefully once you got homje and post it to your designated blogger’s comment screen?  Tell me about it. Do it.
  2. Did you read through the post titles and have some fun re-working them? Tell me about it.

 

Assignment to prepare for Tuesday, March 3 due at the beginning of class

 

Overview: Edit your blog.

 

The Huffington Post will tell you that “perfect is the enemy of done.” I see their point and we will discuss the value of letting go and not returning to obsess over our writings, but because English 320 is a professional writing course for serious writers, I want you to go back over your previous posts with an eagle eye with the Edit Posts screen up and running. As I have read through your blogs, I’ve suggested to each of you stuff that you want to think over carefully—from typos to alignments to broken links to just plain careless writing. So I want you to spend from Saturday to Tuesday going over your blog posts with an eye to obsessive perfection. I’ll paste in below the list I made on the in-class handout:

 

Common issues across all your blogs:

--You link to an article or video but do not tell readers anything about what they’re going to read or why you want them to watch.  “Cool” is not a sufficient framing device. 

--You link to an article but do not really comment on it. “This article is about cats” is not enough; instead take a clip (a quotation)—get it up front—and talk about it.

--You perform sloppy writing—syntax, capitalization, orthography.

--You’ve not updated your profile and are still “following” people’s practice blogs and not their real blogs.  

--Some of your links are not working.

--You need to do a readability check. A good many of you have background/font relationships that are considered very hard to read. Experiment with changes and ask group mates about readability.

--You need to lean on group-mates to help you correct oddities in your banners or other areas. If you don’t have an html/css expert in your group, at least note what needs fixing and tell me about it.

--For your most recent posts, make sure you are giving readers strong incentives to comment. Check other blogs for ideas.

 

 

Finally—I see that many of you—most of you—have done to date produced some really really fine work. I’m actually amazed by your ingenuity, responsiveness to comments, energy, and levels of creativity.  We’ll talk Tuesday about some of your predilections which I take to be typical of your generation.  Your blogs are a pleasure to read—I spend about 30 to 45 minutes on each one and am on my second round now—with the Green Chile/is. I’m getting quite an education.

 

On Tuesday I’ll also have some guidelines in place for your journals. Thanks to those who lent me yours last week.

 

 

I STILL NEED VOLUNTEER(s):

Creative Commons

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Your job is to make this site useful to class members, maybe using class blogs topics/themes as examples.

 

NEED VOLUNTEER(s):

Alternative Templates

Your job is to showcase your best picks for alternative templates compatible with Blogger, e.g., http://www.pyzam.com/ and others of your choice.

Job description: How to roam efficiently through these sites. How to import the code and troubleshoot incompatibilities.

 

NEED VOLUNTEER(s):

Advanced Image Editing

Are you somewhat competent in PhotoShop or other advanced image editing or drawing software? If so, develop a presentation geared toward novices who need more than Picasa or Picasa-like programs offer. I will need to find and load Department copies of the selected software on our projection machine—so I need prep time.

 

NEED VOLUNTEER(s):

Code

Your job would be to introduce basic HTML or CSS training for novices. Your presentation would be narrowly focused—providing a few principles but only enough to allow novices to spot and manipulate or add features pertinent to Blogger. Gear the presentation to the enthusiastic and intrepid novice. Use your practice blog to demo.

 

NEED VOLUNTEER(s):

Deep Blogger

Your job is to take classmates into some of the inner chambers of Blogger capabilities.  This would entail consulting with me and classmates about what features not readily visible will enhance your site or your writing process. Start with http://help.blogger.com/

 

 

What else would you like to know or present?