First, I got caught up/sucked into a few things yesterday and today that have put me slightly behind in the YouTube articles for the second part of this week. Look for places to post and some brief introductions mid-day tomorrow instead of tonight.

Second, if you haven’t voted in the Doodle poll yet about an optional face to face meeting for Friday, why not visit the site and cast your vote? The running between the three possible times is quite close right now, so the more input the better.

As the winter break starts to come to an end, I thought I’d give everyone an update on the schedule and where we’re at with the annotated bibliography project.

First, the schedule is about as current as it’s going to get.  It’s a tricky thing:  as I was going through and trying to pick readings and activities, I wanted to have stuff that is as “bleeding edge” as we can get; but at the same time, because a lot of this is stuff I haven’t read yet, there are no guarantees here as to how good/informative all of these assignments will be.  And on yet another hand, it also would have been easy enough for me to assign two or three times as much stuff.

In any event, it is what it is.

A couple of other issues about these readings for the second part of the term:

• Careful observers will notice that I took out a unit on blogging and I rearranged a couple of things.  It’s somewhat arbitrary, but it’s also based on some of the things that just seem to be most relevant right now in the world that is teaching writing with technology.
• If anyone has suggestions for the readings, please feel free to pass them along.

And now, about the annotated bibliography:

First off, let’s review the assignment, as it’s described as a part of the research project:

Annotated Bibliography on the English 516 Annotated Bib Wiki. By “annotated bibliography” entry, I merely mean citations that include a paragraph or so summary regarding that citation. These sources can be things like journal articles, books, book chapters, web sites, etc. The “English 516 Wiki” is the wiki site where you will post your entries, along with reading and commenting on the entries of other students.You will need to have a list of at least 20 different sources from different publications, up to half of which can be online (in all likelihood, web-based) sources. You should strive for including a variety of publications in your annotated bibliography (don’t have 20 articles all from different issues of one journal, for example), and I would strongly urge you to take advantage of the academic resources available to you at the EMU library. Obviously, you don’t need to use all of the entries in your annotated bibliography in your final research project. In fact, I would assume that all of you will have some entries on your annotated bibliographies which aren’t directly about your project but which helped you focus your project and which pointed the way to better readings. I do assume though that all of the resources/references you include in your final research project will be posted on the annotated bibliography wiki.You will post each of these entries on the English 516 Annotated Bib Wiki; we will discuss in class and online the options we have for how these entries will be posted. The first ten of these entries will be due by March 12; the second ten of these entries will be due by April 7.

I’m assuming folks have some questions; let me try to anticipate a few of them:

• Naturally, I’m sure folks will have questions along the lines of “how do I work this thing?”  However, before you email me that question, I’d like you to do the following:

Log in based on the account I sent you to your email. As far as I can tell, most (none?) of you haven’t done this yet.  If your password/account is no longer valid, let me know and I’ll have the wiki resend that information to you.

Try playing around with it a bit. I specifically set up a “sandbox” page, which is linked on the English 516 page on the wiki site, so that you can do pretty much whatever you want with no fears of messing stuff up.  Further, keep in mind that one of the great things about wikis is you can always revert to previous versions and every change gets saved.

Check out the help page, which is in the “navigation” sidebar menu.  It should be enough to get you started.

• I have two examples of entries on the annotated bibliography right now: one for Dan Anderson’s article, and one for the “Medieval Helpdesk with English Subtitles.”  Go and hunt around the wiki a bit to find them, but let me mention a couple of important things here about those entries:

These are kind of “cheating” on my part because one thing that you can’t include in your annotated bibliography– at least not toward the 20 required entires– are any materials assigned from the class.

Each of these entries is itself a separate page on the wiki, which are easy to create.  Probably the easiest way to do this is to actually create the link first on one of the index pages (the “A” page, the “B” page, and so on), save that page, and then click on that new link.  This will take you to a blank wiki page, ready for your entry. Obviously, I’m suggesting that this be organized alphabetically, which means you will want to add your link/page to the right letter (e.g., “Anderson” under “A”).

You should use MLA style.  Now, you will note though that I am not super-duper rule obsessed about getting MLA style exactly right, in part because sometimes we have to make educated guesses with MLA style, as I do with my citation of the YouTube page.  Having said that, your citation style should be close enough to MLA style that it is recognizable as such.

If you are citing something that has a link on the web– a web page, an electronic journal, etc.– try to link to it in the wiki itself.  It’s not hard to do, and after all, it is one of the points of all things web 2.0/internet-like:  they are easy to connect.

You will be able to “cut and paste” basic textual information into the wiki, but keep in mind that you will have to do some formatting– notably italics and any kind of links– in the wiki itself.  It’s not hard, but it is that one more step you’ll need to do. Also, because the technology doesn’t really allow for it and it isn’t really that necessary, don’t worry about stuff like double-spacing and hanging indents.

It’s perfectly acceptable for more than one person to include an annotation in her bibliography.  That just seems completely logical to me since many of you are working on similar topics.  But if you want to do that, add your annotation to that page.

• These annotations are short; yours should be too.  “But-but-but– I’ve got so much to say about this book/article/web site/whatever!” That may be true, but these annotations are designed  to be useful to other readers, which means a brief (150 words, tops), accurate, and neutral annotation is what we want.  Save the long explanations, evaluations, and judgements for your own notes, not to mention your own writing projects.
• Finally, don’t forget the deadlines! The first 10 entries are due March 12, which is a week from today!

One last bit of business here is a call for yet another optional class gathering at The Corner.  The day is Friday, March 12, and the times I’m proposing (and you all should vote on the doodle poll!) are at 4 pm, 5 pm, and 6pm.  This would be a great opportunity to talk about your research projects, about questions/concerns with the wiki, and also just for having a nice time.  Do vote, even if you can’t make it!

Here’s a brief video about a few things to keep in mind going into the break:

Take a look at it when you get a chance. In the meantime, I need to get my nose back to the grading grindstone….