Instructions for Newsletter Draft Workshop #1

Posting Your Newsletter Draft

1. Complete a draft of your newsletter by Thursday, April 7.
2. Save your newsletter as a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro, which is available on the computers in the Downtown Library, bottom floor.
3. Upload the PDF version of your newsletter draft to your Google Docs site by Thursday, April 7, at 1 p.m. Be sure that you copy the web address for your document before exiting Google Docs.
4. Create a “New Page” on your English 301 blog that links to the Google Docs site where your draft is located.

Responding to Your Partner’s Draft

1. Review your partner’s draft using the peer review questions I post to our course blog (see “Peer Review Questions, Newsletter Draft Workshop #1” under the “Pages” column).
2. By Friday, April 8, at 1 p.m., post your revision suggestions to your partner’s blog. Use the “Comment” function on the Page where your partner posted his or her Newsletter draft.

Group assignments for this draft workshop:

• Team Awesome: Will Foreman, Melissa Rhodes
• Team Brilliance: Andrew Holbrook, Jocelyn Waggoner
• Team Cool: Chris Kees, Rosemarry Curfman
• Team Dynamite: Danny Kelleher, Rachel Mort
• The Force-To-Be-Reckoned-With Team: Jared Lathrop, Francesca Gaglianello
• Team Coming-On-Like Gangbusters: Joe Rinaldi (read Allison’s newsletter); Rachel Tibbs (read Joe’s newsletter); Allison Wright-George (read Rachel’s newsletter)
• The Hypnotize You With Our Brilliance Team: Peter Rondy, Bridget Feeney
• The Imposing Team: Mackenzie Mays, Andrew Strittmater
• Their Writing Brilliance Will Make Your Jaw Drop Team: Erin Fitzwilliams,  Kate Everly

Course Blog Assignment #4

Review three of your classmates’ blogs. What have you learned from your peers’ work about strategies for blogging and/or strategies for writing about a public issue? What strategies do you see yourself trying to incorporate into your own writing about your particular issue? Post your 200-word response using the "Comment" function below.

Discussing Strategies for Your Public Issue Blogs

1.     What’s the aim of a blog post?

•  “For starters, I've learned that every post doesn't need to be earth shattering or contain tons and tons of evidence or research; they can be based on one or two facts and expanded upon with opinion or an analysis of the current state of things.”
•  “It showed that me it is quite possible to open up the eyes of readers about a topic even when it isn’t covered in the media day in and day out.”
•  “I loved how informative the blog is, but yet it doesn’t come across as a Public Service Announcement.”
•  “I think that she makes great use of factual evidence and she also places her opinion in the right areas and she doesn't over do it or go on a tirade and just preach about the issue.”

2.     What’s an appropriate way for thinking about the relationship between posts?

3.     How do you create effective “ethos” in your blog posts?

4.     What’s an appropriate “tone” for blog posts? What characterizes that tone? How do you create that tone?

5.     What’s the role of links, of information, of examples in blog posts?

6.     What’s the difference between simply reviewing a source and analyzing it in a novel way? 

Course Blog Assignment #3

Review three of your classmates’ blogs (accessible via the "English 301 Student Blogs" column on the right-hand side of this page). What have you learned from your peers’ work about strategies for blogging and/or strategies for writing about a public issue? Post your 200-word response using the "Comment" function below.

"Is my professor, like, behind the times?"

An interesting article from New York Times examines how many younger writers are moving away from blogs and toward sites such as Twitter and Facebook to attract a larger, more actively engaged audience for their work. Among the article's highlights are statistical data to describe this trend and major reasons motivating writers' moves toward these sites:

• The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.
• Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

Course Blog Assignment #2

Review three of your classmates’ blogs (accessible via the "English 301 Student Blogs" column on the right-hand side of this page). What have you learned from your peers’ work about strategies for blogging and/or strategies for writing about a public issue? Post your 200-word response using the "Comment" function below.

Proposal for the Profile Essay

As we will discuss in class tomorrow, you need to start thinking about your interview subjects and your interview for the profile essay. This proposal below should help you to get thinking about your interview subject and the interview itself. By next Tuesday, 1 p.m., please respond to the following prompts by using the "Comment" function at the end of this post.

1. Identify three or four potential interview subjects. Please include the organization that the person's affiliated with as well as the person's title within the organization.
2. Why would the audience for your blog be interested in learning more about these different people and their work on this issue?
3. Besides the interview itself, what are other sources of information that you might be able to use in order to learn more about this person (e.g., websites, publications that the person has written, on-site observations, articles likely written about the person, organizations the person is affiliated with)?
4. What is the likelihood of you interviewing each of these subjects? NOTE: Make every effort to contact these subjects within the next week to see if they would be interested in being interviewed.
5. Provide the contact information for each of the interview subjects here. Email and phone are the most useful. If you need to keep your information confidential, please let me know here that you indeed located the information you need in order to make contact with this individual.
6. Identify dates when you would be able to/hope to interview your subject. Although you need to accommodate your subject's schedule, you should also consider your own academic/work/personal schedule and look at due dates in our course syllabus. You need to have a typed transcript of your interview by Tuesday, February 22, so plan your interview accordingly. If you have already scheduled your interview, let me know the date you have chosen.
7. What questions or concerns do you have about your interview?