Category:Ongoing Wiki Prompts
From WRIT-2510 Spring 2007 Wiki
Since this is a class in web writing and communication, you got it, you’ll be expected to communicate with one another in both face-to-face and online environments. To facilitate that online conversation, we’ll be maintaining a class wiki to discuss the various issues that technology raises, the kinds of media you are experimenting with, and the technical strategies and skills you are developing.
This “writing space” (see Bolter) will serve as an extension of our class conversations and will follow similar rules as our in-class discussions—you’ll be expected to refer to specific texts, make a claim or arguments, support your arguments with evidence and respond respectfully to your peers. You will also be expected to use full sentences, standard written English, proper punctuation and spelling.
Over the course of the semester you will respond to each of the specific prompts and post three responses to your colleagues' posts (a total of six posts by semester's end). Because I know you're busy, I'm going giving too many official deadlines. You need to have made at least one post by March 13 and you need to have all six posts done by the last class day May 1.
There are three varieties of posts that you must make. You will make a wiki post related to web communication issues, experiment with a new technology and report critical findings, or teach your colleagues a cool trick, either in terms of technical design or writing skills (you may also troubleshoot a technique that challenged your or your peers, oops, I guess that’s four options, but since these last two options are peer-teaching related, I’ll group them together as one).
1) Post your thoughts and reactions to a web-related communication issue. This would be similar to a classic blog [make hyperlink and describe blog posts—rebecca blood, etc.] posting that includes a link to an article or webpage that details a particular event, news item, or controversy about the web or new media. You would need to then summarize the essay in a way that the author would not find offensive, and then discuss your own interpretation or thoughts on the controversy. You will also need to discuss the implications of the news event (i.e., the “so-what” factor which explains to your colleagues why they should care). You will need to include evidence (in the form of a properly cited quotation and/or url) to back-up your claim. This may involve a bit of research, but it should not be onerous. The point is to have you make an educated contribution to the conversation about the issue, and not simply spout off what you think without considering how others have also thought about it. Your quotation can come from another news source, a blogger, a scholarly article, or any other source that you feel will strengthen your argument.
2) Try out a new technology or writing medium and explain the merits and disadvantages to your peers. You can do something you have experience with—establishing a MySpace or Facebook profile, or sending a text message to someone’s phone using the web, or you might try something more unusual—you can establish your own blog or wiki, find a wiki on a subject of interest to you and edit the page (we’ll be exploring wikis in more detail in unit 2), post a comment to someone else’s blog, use an online chat program to communicate with your class colleagues or me, use a phone to do IM, play around with an e-commerce site (I’m not requiring that you actually buy something, but you should do enough browsing to get a sense of how it works), listen to or create a podcast, join an academic list-serv in your field and “lurk” for a week or two and then report your assessment of the audience, check out an online community like Craig’s List, try a new tool like del.icio.us, flikr, or….???? If you can think of something else and justify it as a form of web-based communication you may write about your experiences using it. Some things to think about and discuss are how do these tools envision and enact the “writing space?” How is your writing process impacted by them, (i.e, how does something like del.icio.us help or hinder the writing process)? What kind of writing does it encourage?
The goal of these posts is to expose you to the wide variety of genres that get included as web or multimedia communication. For these posts, you will need to introduce your classmates to the genre conventions of the technology, so you will need to explain what the technology is (it is probably helpful to list other examples of the genre), what’s its intended purpose is or was and what it’s actual purpose is (if these things are different) why it is important, who is its main audience, what are the communication issues that it brings up, and what are its strengths and weaknesses. You should also describe a way in which the application could be a useful pedagogical, business, or collaborative tool, or imagine another practical use for it in a professional or educational context. Like option one, you will need to do some research to link to some examples and point to some well-known conventions.
3) Offer a tutorial for a neat trick that you have discovered or taught yourself using someone else’s hints or troubleshoot something that you did not find easy to accomplish. This type of post could highlight a variety of technical skills--how to implement some of the CSS hacks or fixes from Cederholm’s text, how to do something we haven’t learned in our in-class workshops (fancy tricks with Photoshop), how to include audio, video, or anything else you did that you thought your peers might benefit from knowing how to do. You will need to come up with a title for your post that explains what it is you’re going to teach, some short directions geared to your primary audience—your class colleagues and me, and some images that help walk us through the process. Since writing itself is one of the skills you’ll be developing and improving in this course, you may also use this type of post to discuss strategies you found helpful for your writing. You may refer to Lanham’s text and include samples of your own work demonstrating how you’ve incorporated his or someone else’s techniques. You might also discuss your experiences visiting the Center for Communication Practices (in Folsom Library) or you could try using an online writing tutorial or centers at another university. You might try Virgil at University of Texas’s Undergraduate Writing Center, for example.
Over the course of the semester, you need to do at least one of each type of posting,and to make three responses to others' posts. Requirements Posts should be at least ½ page- 1 page single-spaced (in 12 pt font) or at least 175-300 words. Although wikis as a genre tend to invite more “fast and loose” communication, remember that the wiki you are posting to is a class wiki, meaning that all the conventions of academic writing (the use of proper punctuation, full sentences, and correct spelling) apply. The idea of this wiki space is for you to have a chance to experiment, practice your writing, collaborate, and get to know your colleagues, writing habits, and technical tools a bit better. Your responses should be respectful in tone and should refer back to the original post you’re responding to. Remember they also need to be ½-1 page or175-300 words, so saying “Yeah, I agree with that” or “No, I disagree” isn’t going to cut it. You might, however, complicate someone’s understanding of the genre by modifying a convention, point out a different feature which then alters the definition they set forth, or you might add an additional example and explain why it’s similar or different, stronger or weaker, or you might link the issues raised in one post to another set of related issues. Remember Bolter talks about developing networks and creating relationships among different kinds of information. Think of your job as one of many authors of this wiki as being a “connecter” who finds links and relationships among the posts. Again, if these instructions seem a little vague, it’s because I want to leave it open for you to write about what you find compelling.
You are not limited to the six posts, and I’ve found that these conversations work best when people are interested in what their colleagues have to say and contribute on their own without the required prompt. I’ve been teaching long enough to know, however, that many students won’t do it unless they know they’re getting credit. To that end, I will not give explicit extra credit for additional postings, but you are welcome and invited to make them.
Hint: If at the end of the semester, however, you find yourself in between grades and you’re arguing for the higher grade, the fact that you’ve been a substantial contributor to the conversation (above and beyond the weekly requirements) can only help your argument.
