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Blog
Entries & Community Analysis
Purpose
There are three primary purposes for the blog entry assignment:
- First, the research blog entries help you to supplement the assigned readings for the course by giving the individual students an opportunity to do research on the topic(s) that you will be focused on for the rest of the course projects. Therefore, it is recommended that you focus your choices around a single, relatively narrow topic
- Second, this is a writing in the disciplines exercise in which you will be given some generic expectations and parameters to follow. By following these guidelines you are practicing the production of scholarship within the discourse community of writing studies and distance education
- Third, this is a writing to learn exercise in which the process of writing up the blog entry helps you understand the content and how to articulate this understanding to the discourse community. The instructor's feedback will help you with this goal
Instructions
for research entries–Choosing
Articles
For each entry, you will want to find one academic, refereed article or chapter about a cybercultures and digital writing-related topic that you plan to be the focus of your course projects. There are many topics related to cyberculture and digital writing; use part of your entry to justify why the article fits with this course.
You will find a total of five articles. These texts...
- should be based upon issues that you are interested in learning more about
- should be based upon ideas that you want to both support and refute
- cannot be text assigned for the class
- cannot be texts your peers have already discussed in a Blog Entry for this class
Refereed scholarship has been judged worthy of publication by other experts in fields related to this course's topics. Consult the resource page for a list of related journals; additionally consult various edited collections.
Other texts that qualify include...
- academic journal articles
- chapters from an edited collection
- chapters from an academic monographs (no more than two chapters per book)
Texts that do not qualify include...
- most popular publications, such as certain magazines and web pages (consult instructor)
- newsletters
- book reviews
- academics' websites
This list, of course, are not exhaustive. If you have any questions whether an article or chapter qualifies, consult the instructor. Entries for texts that do not qualify will not get credit.
Also you are discouraged from pulling chapters from a "how-to" text. While some of these are written by academics and published by academic presses, they do better at explaining what to do, than why to do it.
Variations from these parameters are acceptable, but consult the instructor first.
Instructions for research entries-Writing
For each blog entry, you will want to...
- Compose a bibliographic citation for the article you have read. You should use MLA or APA formatting; be consistent.
- Under
each citation write a 300-500
word review of one article. For each entry...
- identify the author's argument (sometimes it will be explicit; other times it will be inferred)
- briefly summarize the main points that the author makes to support the argument
- briefly review the article: Would you recommend this article to your peers or scholars in the field? Why or why not? Or under what circumstances would you make the recommendation? (You are encouraged to use the first-person singular pronoun to distinguish your voice from the author(s) you are reviewing)
While these three points need to be addressed, this list does not define the order in which these points need to be presented.
After you compose your first entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.
Instructions for metaphor entry-Writing
Choose a short text in which technology is depicted. Recommended texts include advertisements, cartoons, commercials, and short YouTube Videos.
Write a 500-750 word entry in which you analyze the metaphor that is being articulated about technology by drawing upon the readings for the class and the research you have done thus far. Some questions you will want to start with are...
- what technologies get represented in this text?
- what does the text say about the technologies' capabilities? what does the text say about humans' capabilities? what is the relationship between the technology and humans?
- what is the technologies' relationship to power in the text? do they have power in and of themselves? do they enhance power?
- what is being emphasized, the hardware or the software?
- describe the people using the technology, as well as those not using, afraid of, uncertain, or ignorant of the technology
- ask other questions of the text that are relevant to helping you understand this specific work
You are not limited by these questions, nor do you need to answer all of them. Focus on composing a thoughtful and cohesive text.
Instructions for status entry-Writing
Write a 500-750 word entry in which you simply report what you have accomplished so far and what you have learned from your research at this stage in your process (i.e., preliminary analysis of your data put into conversation with the field). This will give you the opportunity to do some pre-writing that can be expanded upon in latter assignments and to get feedback from the instructor as you work through this process.
You can keep track of your classmates blogs at...
Criteria
Logistics for research entries:
- between 300-500 words per entry; this is an exercise in writing brief, yet detailed texts
- single spaced
-
The five submission deadlines for the annotated bibliography are...
After you compose your entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.
- The Blog
Entry assignment will cumulatively be worth 50 points. All students
will start with 40 points and your grade will be adjusted according
to the evaluation of each of the five entries. Each entry will be graded
using the following scale...
check (or 0) = You did the work satisfactorily and on time. If it is an earlier entry, use the instructor's comments to guide how you compose future entries
+1, +2= You demonstrated various degrees of engagement with the ideas and you turned it in on time. Use features that the instructor liked as a model for future entries
–1, -2= Your work demonstrates a misunderstanding of the assignment or minimal effort, shows that you do not understand what an academic text entails, or was not turned in on time.
- 4 = No submission
In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...
- a sense of audience–do you provide enough information and detail about the article that your audience of peers gets a clear sense of the article's content? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
- an informed understanding and discussion of cybercultures and digital writing, as well as other topics the text covers
- do you provide a substantiated opinion of the text?
- a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
- appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting
Logistics for Metaphor Entry and Status Report Entry
- 500-750 words
- single-spaced
- 25 points each
In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...
- a sense of audience–do you provide enough context to help your audience understand the metaphor? what you have done and are doing with your research?
- thoughtful analysis based upon the course readings for the metaphor analysis
- clear articulation of what you have accomplished and your preliminary findings
- an ability to apply scholarship for both entries
- a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
- appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting