Any blog posts that you did not complete by their original deadline can be made up for a maximum of 2 points each (instead of 4). Extra credit posts that you did not complete by their original deadline can be made up for a maximum of 1 extra point each (instead of 2).

Rules:

• you have to send me an e-mail that alerts me of their presence: send a link to each post, and tell me which assignment it is making up
• you must do this by Wednesday, May 5th, at 5pm

First, a note. DTC students, always check your work against this example. If your work is similar to it, ur doin’ it wrong.

As for the final projects, a note for everyone: if your argument sounds like the description of the course itself (as seen in the syllabus), remember that is where we started; the course “facilitate[d] student exploration into the cultural impact of electronic media, especially the World Wide Web and social networking systems” and the “guiding question for the course is, broadly, how does cyberspace and online communities reinforce, transform, and/or resist inequalities found in what we can affectionately call “meatspace” (or “real life”)?”—we saw in the question on the mid-term. So, naturally, by the end of the course, your projects should in some way answer the question WHY or HOW with regards to one very specific aspect of the above, linking together topics: “X is Y because Z, as shown in A” or some such. Not “X is Y”, or “Z is awesome” or “we should do A”—those do not go far enough.

Additionally, remember that there should not be any questions asked explicitly in the text of your projects; it is your job in an analytical argumentative essay—especially at this level—to anticipate and answer those questions as part of the support that builds your argument.

I have seen some of the responses from this week’s presentations, and they range from critical to, shall we say, “punting,” in which everything is awesome and there are puppies and ice cream for everyone. As per usual, everyone should look at the critical responses.

Good luck.

Good presentations on Tuesday—it was good to know that Angel can speak! Apparently she was saving it up for a great presentation.

As most of these projects are, of course, further along than those we heard about earlier in the semester, I had fewer comments on them in general. Dan, Angel, Derek, and Kristin are headed down a good path with few bumps in sight. I think as a class we brought to light some issues for consideration in both Mike’s and Lee’s presentations. Tomorrow we’ll hear from Brent, Cynthia, Neil, Josh, and Saundra, then I’ll leave some responsible soul with the course evaluations and you’ll be off to finish up those papers due Thursday 5/6 at 9pm via e-mail.

Thought it might be useful for you to see an example “A” essay from the mid-term. There were several “A” essays in the mid-term, with various styles and voices, but this is an example of a straight-ahead analytical argumentative essay that answered one of the questions asked.

Although your final essays will be much longer—2 to 2.5x the length of this essay—you can see in this one all the hallmarks of a good paper: clear introduction/context, argument, examples, woven quotations, citations, conclusion, works cited. Contrary to popular belief, many students received 24 or 25 points (out of 25) on many of their essays on the mid-term, so this essay was not some sort of anomaly [of the people who completed all 4 questions on the midterm, the grade spread was: 6 A, 5 B+, 5 B, 5 B-, 2 C+, 3 C, 1 C-, 4 less than that—pretty typical].

The next bit of information is this grade forecast document. In this document you’ll see (very roughly) how your final grade will work out, depending on how you perform on the final essay. Read the note at the top of the document, especially the part about these being generalizations but good guides. I’m not going to entertain specific questions about specific grades. Just do your best work, understand what’s being asked of you on the final exam assignment sheet, and spend time with the tutors in the writing center (or hook up with some of the very skilled essay writers in the class and workshop your stuff). As an aside, the difference between an mid-term essay that received a 23/25 and a revised version that helped a student get a distinction on the WSU Junior Writing Portfolio was simply an opening paragraph that included a clear thesis and good contextualization of the topic at hand.

Good presentations today, folks! You can see how we’ve gone further along and people are closer to arguments and structures and what not (which is good, having less to say, since we have more people at the end…)

It was fun to see Dena have her scholarly epiphanic moment, to hear how Michelle has quietly pulled together a bunch of research in an interesting way, to see what Brittany is working on, to hear about stuff in WoW from not-as-quiet Mark (James’s question about audience was a good one, but in this situation Mark will be assuming an interested scholarly audience with a minimal knowledge of WoW, meaning that he doesn’t have to make it accessible for anyone’s grandmother), and to hear from Kris how we’re mistaken if we think the digital divide is just about access and knowledge…

Tuesday will be Dan, Lee, Mike, Angel, Derek, Kristin; Thursday will be Brent, Cynthia, Neil, Josh, and Saundra.

Since we only had three presenters and plenty of time to prattle on after each of their 10-minute presentations, I don’t really have anything to add besides that.

I’ve seen several people post their notes/comments on Tuesday’s presentations, so that’s good and timely. Looking forward to the next set on Thursday. We have six people, so it’s pretty crunched together, time-wise.

I don’t really have any detailed comments besides “I read them all and assigned credit where credit was due to everyone who did their blogs and any extra credit that was still available”.

Fascinating, I know!

As I said last week, it is very easy to get all 4 points on these last 4 blog assignments regarding presentations, and the vast majority of people did on this one as well. Engaging with the presentations in some way and offering suggestions or notes of problem areas was the point, and many many of you did that to a great extent. Presenters, go read ‘em!

The four extra credit blog opportunities have now passed (ok, technically you could still do EC#4 by Friday at 5pm for reduced credit, per the late policies in the syllabus). For those of you who did the extra credit, it really helped your grades, as designed! Very interesting stuff, too.

Today was the second round of presentations, which were all very good. Much like last time, there are already plenty of good comments up on peoples’ blogs for the presenters.

To recap: Katie, keep going with your the administrative/business proposal and follow that template I gave you and be as detailed a possible—with you, the argument is implicit in the genre of writing you are performing; Beau, keep all your great examples and focus on that technology-gaming-culture-gaming-technology loop as a way to show how people just need to get over the scary gamer thing; James, focus on “representational competence” like we discussed and do something new with it; Hans, focus tightly on those three Cs and how mobile tech interrelates/interoperates, and try not to get caught up too much in the ancillary stuff.

Edited to add: Spencer just rightly called me out that I forgot him in the recap. I don’t know how that happened. SPENCER: be very clear what you’re arguing against (e.g. that increased virtual training has some serious negatives) and make sure you link up the “virtual” aspects of avatars/the body—again, arguing against the sort of positive take on virtual interactions that we’ve seen (mostly) throughout.

[sorry...]

Since blog posts are due at 5pm and this assignment (as well as the remaining blog assignments) does not have the commenting component as part of it, I was able to simply check off all the ones that were complete by the due date—there were 29 people eligible to do this blog assignment (because they were at the presentations), and 18 did so. I didn’t see anyone do extra credit #3 by the due date. I will circle back around next week and award credit-with-deduction-for-lateness per usual.

It is very easy to get all 4 points on these last 4 blog assignments regarding presentations, and the vast majority of people did on this one. Engaging with the presentations in some way and offering suggestions or notes of problem areas was the point, and many many of you did that to a great extent. I am especially happy to see those of you who pointed out issues of argument and support. Nice job! Presenters, you have a lot of material to work with.

Today was the first round of presentations, which I thought went perfectly fine. Those of you who were taking notes in order to do your blog assignment right then and there (or soon thereafter)—smart move! For presenters, it means you already have some feedback to review.

It is assumed that these first two weeks or so of project presentations are presentations of projects still in the “in process state.” The last two weeks of project presentation are likely to be much closer to the finished state. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but just a general expectation given the amount of time you’ve had the assignment. If you are unsure of what to present, both the final paper assignment sheet and the “more information about the presentation” sheet have information. Note that presentations will always be 8-10 minutes; even if there isn’t a full lineup in your presentation day, the genre of the 8-10 minute presentation is what we’re going for here (e.g. that’s a specific skill).

As to the content of your presentations, I will take the opportunity to raise issues I might have with the path of your research (the validity of support and whether or not it fulfills the assignment, not whatever your conclusions may be). Above all else, in your presentations make it very clear what your argument is or probably will be (based on ongoing research), and what concepts you are linking together.

I will leave you with this, from everyone’s friend Howard Rheingold: