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The end is HERE!!

That’s right:  we are now beyond the end of time! (Scary, huh?)

It’s been a great semester and I’ve enjoyed working with all of you quite a bit– thanks for making it an interesting and fun term for me, too.

My first task will be to continue to pass back my audio comments to you via your EMU email address.  It’s an mp3 file and should be easy enough to open on your computer; let me know if you have any problems with this, and I will try to help you out.  I have some very brief written comments on all of your projects, but again, the bulk of the comments are in the audio file– please do listen to it!

I have started reading/grading your finals, and I will finish up reading them and figuring out final grades between now and Saturday morning. I don’t give comments at this stage since I am mostly interested in figuring out grades and it is too late to make any changes and such anyway.  However, if you do want some specific comments on the final or if you have any questions about your grade, ask.  I am a very firm believer that I am obligated as a professor to explain any questions or concerns about the grade you earned for any of your work and for the class as a whole.  However, you have the obligation to ask if you have any questions or concerns about the grades you earned.

Again, thanks for a good term, congrats to those of you who are graduating and/or going on with your lives, and I will see the rest of you around EMU next year and beyond!

Oh, and PS:  there is a function at Christine Neufeld’s house this evening for graduate students– you should have received an email about it.  Perhaps I will see you there, too!

Posted in Class Announcements.

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By Steve K. – April 23, 2010

Don’t forget! The end is near!!

Just a reminder to everyone about something I think you all already know:  the end of time is Friday, April 23, at 5 pm (Michigan Time), and that is when the final is due.  I’m almost done reading and commenting on everyone’s projects and I will email you my audio comments on Friday, more or less when you turn in the finals.

Any other questions or comments?  Don’t be shy!

Posted in Class Announcements.

2 comments

By Steve K. – April 21, 2010

Interesting Readings: A few links I wanted to share

These are links to things that I thought were interesting myself, and given what we were talking about this semester, I thought some of you might find them interesting too.

  • Writing with Video web site, which is a program at U of Illinois we read about earlier this term.
  • Reading and Writing New Media web site, with links to stuff about the chapters, etc., etc.  Very cool, albeit a bit late for our purposes!
  • The Call for Proposals for the 2011 CCCCs. Next year’s conference is going to be in Atlanta, which is drivable (well, a really LONG drive).  Perhaps something you’re working on this term might be a good proposal?  I’m toying with the idea of putting together an EMU roundtable playing off the “contested spaces” part of things because we will be all experiencing a lot of “contested space” next year as we are out of Pray-Harrold.
  • The Screencasting Category from the blog “I’d Rather be Writing.” There’s a bunch of good advice here for recording videos and podcasts that I think would be really useful to think about for the next time I teach this class and for some other classes I teach, too.

Posted in Interesting Readings.

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By Steve K. – April 19, 2010

The Final is up and running!

Yep, you read that right:  the final is now available right here!

Go ahead there, read it over, and if you’ve got any questions or concerns, be sure to post them in the comments here.

Posted in Class Announcements, Class Assignments.

2 comments

By Steve K. – April 16, 2010

What did you think of the wordpress set up for the class?

I’m in my office right now hopefully for the last time for at least 18 months– Pray-Harrold will be closing this May for renovation, as I’m sure that most of you have heard– working on writing up the final, among other things.  But for right now, I’ve got a question, especially for those of you who have taken online classes before with the emuonline course shell:  what did you think of this set-up, the class web site/blog like this?

Posted in Class Discussions.

18 comments

By Steve K. – April 15, 2010

So, any peer review wrap-up questions? Questions/comments on the wiki?

I thought I’d post here to see if anyone had any questions or comments about the peer review process for the projects.  From what I’ve been able to tell, it seems like it’s gone/is going okay, though I am also sensing that folks are pretty busy writing/revising their own projects right now too.  Which is also good.  Anyway, here’s your chance to ask whatever questions you might have about all that.

I’m also curious to find out what you think of the wiki experience.  I have sort of mixed feelings, personally.  I like using the set-up I have for some fairly technical reasons, and I like the idea that each of you has to wrestle a tiny bit with the code– it is called computers and writing after all, and a little wiki code isn’t so hard to master.  I also like that you can search it– and by the way, if you haven’t done so yet, do use the search function on the wiki to try to do some keyword searches for your topic.  You might discover some research that your classmates did that will be useful for your work too.

On the other hand, it is a little technical/a little geeky to use, and I personally wish that I knew more about how the mediawiki software worked so I could do more to set it up/get it to work.  Anyway, again let me know what you think.

Posted in Class Activities, Class Announcements, Class Discussions.

15 comments

By Steve K. – April 13, 2010

Heading into Peer Review & “The End of Time!”

Be sure to watch the video, which is where I discuss some of the calendar details and other bits of information about how stuff will go for the rest of the term.  But here are some other important details:

Peer Review:

Here are the peer review groups for discussing the drafts of the research project, drafts you should strive to post by Friday or Saturday at the very latest!

  • Group 1:  Andrea L., Angie L., Cristin B.
  • Group 2:  Brian R., Ashlee W., Gloria S.
  • Group 3:  Dave N., Carrie L., Judy W., Renee L.

I’m going to assume that all of you have been through some kind of peer review experience before; in some very basic ways, I don’t think doing this sort of activity for a graduate class is a whole lot different than doing it for first year writing.  The goal here is to both give your colleagues some feedback on their drafts and to also learn something from each other by engaging in each others’ research projects.  The hardest part to doing good peer review, I think, is trying to balance good advice and directness with kindness.  You don’t want to be a jerk in your critiques, of course; at the same time, just sparing your colleagues’ feelings by not telling them anything constructive isn’t that useful either.

In any event, what I suggest is that you simply visit each others’ blogs and the drafts that are available there and post comments.  I’ll be checking in on the process too, though I probably won’t post any comments until others do, if that makes sense– don’t want to influence things too much.  Like I said, begin this by Friday or Saturday and finish it by Wednesday of next week!

The Corner:

We are on for tomorrow at The Corner Brewery at 5 pm on Friday, April 9.  Here’s a link to the Corner Brewery’s web site.  The address is 720 Norris Street in Ypsilanti; here’s that on a Google Map.

The stuff during Finals week:

Now, the final draft of your research project is due by 5 pm on Friday, April 16! This means you need to have your project posted up on your blog/wordpress.com site for me and everyone/anyone else to read and experience.  Also on Friday, 16, I will post the final for the class.  I talk about this in the video a bit, but the key thing is that as long as you’ve kept up with the readings and the discussions, you should be fine.

While you are working on your finals, I will be working on reading and commenting on your final projects with audio comments.  Roughly speaking, when you turn in your final to me, I will send you back my audio comments and grade comments for your final projects.

Also during finals week: I will ask of you all to once again email me to let me know what grade you think you ought to get for participation for the second half of the class.  This is something I’ll remind you about again.

And finally, the end of time:  It’s Friday, April 23, 5 pm, Michigan time!

Posted in Class Announcements, Class Assignments.

7 comments

By Steve K. – April 8, 2010

Hesse responds to Selfe; Selfe responds back

This where we’ll talk about Hesse’s and Selfe’s exchange about “The Movement of Air.”
Continued…

Posted in Class Assignments, Class Discussions.

16 comments

By Steve K. – April 7, 2010

Selfe’s “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning”

This is where we’ll discuss Cynthia L. Selfe’s “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning:  Aurality and Multimodal Composing.”

Continued…

Posted in Class Discussions.

19 comments

By Steve K. – April 6, 2010

Discussing Comstock and Hocks, “Voice in the Cultural Soundscape”

This is where we’ll discuss Michelle Comstock and Mary E. Hocks, “Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies.“

Continued…

Posted in Class Discussions.

23 comments

By Steve K. – April 5, 2010

Ball and Moeller, “Converging ASS[umptions] between U and ME”

This is where we will discuss Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller, “Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies.”
Continued…

Posted in Class Discussions.

23 comments

By Steve K. – April 5, 2010

An annoucement about peer review & Friday

In the fall term, I always feel like anytime after Thanksgiving is sort of a “mad dash” to the end.  In the winter term, it’s pretty much whenever we get into April, and the pleasant weather of late makes me feel even more like “oh, aren’t we done yet?”  Probably not a good thing, but there it is….

Anyway, as we head into the “mad dash” that is the end of the term and this week’s readings, I wanted to make a couple of annoucements:

  • I will be setting up peer review groups Wednesday or so of this week.  Because we are at 10 students, I will have two groups of three and one group of four, and I am hoping to set these groups up as fairly as possible.  Stay tuned for details.
  • Let me remind you also that I am trying to set up an optional but potentially useful get together on Friday at the Corner. See the doodle calendar and vote for all the times that work for you; as of right now, the favored time seems to be 6 pm, but again, whatever gets the most votes.
  • Oh, and last but not least, I am also of course very willing to meet with you individually about your project or just about anything else.  Let me know and we’ll set up an appointment!

Posted in Class Announcements.

6 comments

By Steve K. – April 5, 2010

Interesting reading: “The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now”

This is from the NY Times from a while back:  “The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now.” I think I have actually checked all of these things….

Posted in Interesting Readings.

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By Steve K. – April 3, 2010

“Spring” “Break,” Wiki comments, and one last optional meeting (maybe?)

For various religious/public institution readings, we’re celebrating “spring break” instead of Easter this Friday/weekend, and for various timing issues we’re all familiar with, the “break” is but one day.  Always remember that one of the good things about EMU is we are going to be done by the end of the month.  Yea!

In any event, I’m planning on having a bit of a “working vacation” this weekend, doing some school stuff but doing a lot of gardening/outdoor stuff too.  Before I head into that time proper, here’s some housekeeping/class announcements to keep in mind:

Continued…

Posted in Class Activities, Class Announcements.

3 comments

By Steve K. – April 2, 2010

Discussing three CHE articles about online teaching

This is where we’ll discuss Todd Gilman’s “Combating Myths About Distance Education,” David Glenn’s “Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say,” and Marc Parry’s “They Thought Globally, but Now Colleges Push Online Programs Locally.” All three are from the main trade newspaper for higher education in the U.S., The Chronicle of Higher Education, and I think that all three are pretty accessible reads that touch on some commonly brought up issues regarding online classes.

Continued…

Posted in Class Assignments, Class Discussions.

15 comments

By Steve K. – March 31, 2010