Writ 121 Online Activities/Writing Exercises for Week 9

(Tip: the hover buttons and table below are to help find your way around these assignments and to other pages and places related to the course.  I suggest you read through the page first and use the links when you need to review a specific section.)

As your Syllabus states, ten percent of your grade is based on the online activities and practice writing that we'll call Online Activities/Writing Exercises.

For week 9, we're going to include

Blackboard Discussion Board online conversation (two initial postings)

a chat session, and

an Online Activity letter

Do note that the order I present these may vary from week to week, depending on what we're doing.

Step 1: Post a response to the Blackboard Discussion Board.

Use the week 9 online conversation forum.

• Share a TV or movie story.

• In other words, tell us about a time when something involving TV or movies was particularly significant, odd, compelling, bizarre, monumental or such in your life.

• The story can be from your childhood or from last night.  But it should be very narrow, and should potentially interest others.

• Here's an example:

Step 2: Post another response to Blackboard Discussion Board.

Choose a passage from Ehrenreich, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, or Pollack and explain what is significant, interesting or curious about it. (The catch? You cannot choose a passage that has already been chosen by another class member.)

Follow closely the following steps: this is practice for using sources in your essay following MLA style.

• First: Present the quotation, using MLA parenthetic citation (see WW 431-34). Here's an example from WW, "Strategies for Revision":

• Second: Explain how the writer uses the passage you choose. Is this the main point of the article? Is this a statement to show why those who disagree with the author are wrong? Is this part of the introduction or body of the discussion? In other words, show us the context of the passage--the part this quotation plays--so that we can see how it fits within the overall point of the reading.

• Third: Explain how you might use this passage in your paper.

• Is this an example of a position that supports what you want to give us insight about, or
  • is it an example of a different viewpoint than yours that you want to show is too narrow, ignoring your experience?
• Does the quotation present effective evidence to support the point it's making?

In other words, show us why you find this quotation significant.

Step 3: Read and reply to other class members' Blackboard postings.

• You can agree, disagree, question, qualify what your fellow class member says.

• You also need to explain why you think so, again with support from your own experiences and observations, or from another article or web page.

You will need to respond at least twice to fulfill attendance requirements. However, you may enjoy responding to more.

• And you likely will find yourself writing a stronger letter with fuller participation.

Step 4: Attend a scheduled chat session (a schedule is available under chat in the table of contents above):

Use the Blackboard Chat.

However, I suggest for a back up that you all have at your disposal AOL Instant Messenger. If you don't already have it, you can download it at http://www.aim.com . (And if for some reason you cannot use either Instant Messenger or the Blackboard Chat on your home computer? I suggest you go to the LCC computer lab.)

You do not need to be a member of AOL to use Instant Messenger and it's free.

• Email me your user name, and I'll add it to the Scheduled Chat Times page, if you haven't done so already.

Again, your chat will be moderated by a class member rather than by me. See the scheduled chat session page link at the top of this page.

• If your moderator doesn't show up on time, decide among yourselves who will moderate; whoever does will earn extra points on his or her  activity letter, as long as it is mentioned.
  • See the chat session page for moderator duties.

1. Share one of the articles that I assigned for your Essay 4 prewriting annotated bibliography.

• You can show each other web pages in the group browser. Just type the URL in "Enter Address" box.

• Explain briefly what the article is about, and what you think about it.

2. Share your response to the video we watched, Does TV Kill?

• What surprised you?
• What looked very familiar to you?
• Which issues brought up in the video would you like to find more research on?

3. Share ideas you're considering for essay four--

• try to brainstorm together as many possible insightful positions you can think of about TV and movies.

• And after brainstorming possible topic positions, as a group decide on three to share with the rest of us on the Blackboard Discussion board, our week 9 online conversation forum.

• Here's the catch, though. If another group has already posted, you can't repeat any of their topic positions.

And moderator, please post your group's three topic positions as soon after the chat as possible.

Step 5: Write Online Activity letter.

Tell me about your experience on the Blackboard discussion board and in chat discussing the assigned articles and ideas for essay four.

And choose one response on the discussion board from another class member that you think was particularly interesting, thoughtful, or insightful, and explain why you think so.

• It can either be an initial response, or a reply.
• And make sure to note the class member's name.

Again, I would like you to include quotations from the Blackboard discussion board and/or your chat session.  You should be able to copy text from Netscape or Internet Explorer from the Edit pull down menu.

• And again, make sure to use names, so it is clear whom you are talking about.

Step 6: Email online activity letter.

• These letters will be e-mailed to me at dholt@lcc.edu, single spaced, though I suggest generating them first in your word processor as a TXT file, then pasting into or attaching onto your e-mail as a safety precaution (plus you can use your spell check, which I strongly encourage you to do).

• If you want to keep any formatting, such as italics or bold, save your files as rich text format (RTF) and attach to your email.

• Please use the following format for the Subject heading of your e-mail letters:

• writ121weekX--topic

• Example: writ121week9--activity letter
  • (note: everything before the dash is one word--my email software will love you for it!)

These letters are due by Saturday midnight, 3/20/04.

It is true that you have a 24 hour grace period for the letter (see the syllabus about our late policy) but this doesn't extend to the online activities. The discussion board activities and chat cannot be completed past Saturday midnight. Otherwise, you will be counted absent.

Also, I will be available during my office hours by phone, in person, through email, and on AOL Instant Messenger (my user name: profdan1032)  if you want to talk about the assignments. (If you want to meet at some other time, contact me and we can arrange such.)

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Created 10/20/1997
Revised 15 Mar 2004 05:00 PM -0500