English 1006
Prompt #35
14 November 2013

A working day, and beyond

Housekeeping again

There has been at least one further response to the feedback survey. As I said last time, I'll leave it open through tomorrow. I would suggest that there's probably not much point in duplicating what people have already said, but if you see something that you think is wrong, or not shared by everybody, or needs elaboration or modification, that you respond to the survey for that item alone. I'll add any new responses to the feedback page over the weekend.

I've had a couple of family issues (one of which took me out of town all day yesterday) which has meant that I haven't yet had time to respond to all of the people who have responded to my invitation to discuss the learning reflection documents. That will happen by this evening. Similarly with emails about records.

Documenting sources: during class time today

As I followed the postings appearing in response to the last prompt's "documenting sources" assignment, I realized that many people had apparently not understood this:
Have a look at the postings (the original ones, with information that was found) of the two people whose names appear below yours in the alphabetical list on the records page . . .
The reason for organizing this this way was to make sure everyone's posting got looked at, usually twice, and that people tried to extract the appropriate information from at least two report postings. I'd like to make sure that's actually happened before we spend time working with these. So, between the time I send everybody away and 4:00, one assignment you have is to go to the records page and identify the three or four names below yours in the list, and then go to the Information about Poe and "The Tell-Tale Heart" forum and make sure you've posted your "Looking for sources" reply to the correct posting. If you haven't, do so. This will take a bit of care, because there are a lot of postings on this forum now, so make sure that you have the correct post on your screen when you press "reply," and of course that you use "Looking for Sources" as the subject line.

You should have posted replies to two of them (at least) when you're finished. If there isn't a posting by one of the people on your list, go to the next name; if the posting is there but gives you nothing at all to go on, post a "Looking for Sources" reply which says that, and then go on to the next name. If someone's already posted a "Looking for Sources" reply, see if you can do better. Do this by 4:00.

Documenting sources: for next time

What we are going to do with these is to find the ones that give us sufficient information to use it as a reference in a "research essay" and list it in a standard bibliographical form. For this exercise, we're going to use the Modern Language Association format -- that's the one that most humanities departments use. In preparation for Tuesday's class, you should read this page from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab. This will probably not be exactly easy reading, because it's in the middle of a much longer document, and assumes you know things you may not. For example, it presumes that you know what a "reference list" is and should look like. Thus, before 1:00 Tuesday, post on the Questions about the OWL forum at least three questions about the document (more is better). If the questions are actually answerable, much the better.

Funny stuff: starting now

There is a wide range of examples on the This is funny . . . I think forum. I should have anticipated, but didn't, that virtually all of them would be visual rather than text-based, but we can use them anyway. Here's your assignment, for class time Tuesday. Look at all of them. Think about which of them you could answer these questions about:
  1. What does a reader/viewer have to know already in order to find this funny?
  2. What does a reader have to think is important (or values the reader has to hold) in order to find this funny?
  3. Do you think the creator of this had a particular kind of person in mind as she created it?
If you find one about which you think you could answer these questions, post a reply to the posting in which you answer them. Use a clever subject line. Then find a second one, and do the same thing. Do this before class time Tuesday.

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