And now for something completely different
So you've spent some of the last couple of days with Robert Picton and some with Revelations. Let's step back a bit from the apocalyptic.
Some groups
What I would like to do this afternoon is work with the selections people have made and the questions they've asked about them to make two decisions: first, can we select a limited number to talk about right now, and, second, a similarly limited number to discuss on line. To do that, I've set up some groups for today's work. (If you haven't got your english.doc(x) page, you can't participate.)
I wanted to set up some groups in which people would be looking at choices of passages from drafts they weren't involved in writing, but not everybody in the group would be from the same inquiry group. Here's how that worked out, according to my computer.
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Abby Derrah Ryan Nowlan Rachel Augustine Riley Patles |
Jeremy Altman Paige O'Blenes Libby Boudreau Kayla Robbins |
Doug Jamieson Erin Hachey Blaine Reid Erica Messenger |
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Lindsay Kingston Catherine Terry Lexia Dorr Alannah Russell |
Cylin Leavitt Victoria Vienneau Haile McBride Jessica Williams |
Kelly Rittenhouse Schae Williamson Rebekah Lockhart
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What to do now
We'll get each group a set of three or four of the english13.doc pages we have to work with; in each case they will be from the Frankendraft nobody in that group worked on.
What you should do is select one page that you agree has a question (or more than one) that's most immediately worth talking about. Remember what the assignment said: they should be questions
that you think a reader might help with. The questions should be specific -- not, in other words, is this clear? is this smooth? is this concise and to the point? what grade would you give this? They should be questions about phrasing, sentences, organization, and (especially) about the point your writing is trying to make and what the readers think the point is, what it assumes they believe and what they actually believe.The first thing you should do as you work is cross out, or put aside, all the questions which only the author could answer, or which are directed at the inquiry group -- we're interested at this point in questions a reader might answer. You should also cross out, or put aside, all the questions which might be answered satisfactorily with one word, or a short phrase. Look for the ones that ask questions that might push a reader to think a bit. When you find a page which poses at least one such question, keep it in the middle of the table. When you've agreed on the strongest, put a #1 at the top of the page, and highlight the question (or questions) you think it would be most worth talking about.
Then select a #2 passage, mark it at the top, and highlight what you think are the most useful questions. We'll take what time we have to talk about the questions from the first set. When we're done I'll collect all the english13.doc pages and decide whether there are questions still remaining that I think it would be worth discussing; if so, I'll set up an online forum and we'll discuss them there.
For next Tuesday
Read through the Frankendraft from the group whose text you were working with today (that is, if you were in groups 1 or 2 you should read the Aum Shinrikyo group's draft, and so forth). Find a passage in which the report quotes or paraphrases from an external source (or where you thnk what's happening is that the report is quoting or paraphrasing, though it may not say so explicitly). Try to locate a passage where either you think the group did a good job of solving the problem of how to make clear where the source was drawn from, or where they seem to have run into a problem that it would be useful to help them with. Go to the online version of the report (there are links to them both from the main Truth in Society page and the main English 1006T page), and copy the section into a new file, called (surprise!) english14.doc. Save it, as before, in your subfolder of your group's dropbox folder. At the bottom of the quoted section, explain in a couple of sentences why you chose it. Make sure your name's at the top of your file, and print it out. Bring it to class Tuesday.