editing

Once again the Purdue University Online Writing Lab comes through with some good strategies for proofreading. You should take these to heart, because this is where the battle is won or lost.

Producing a clear, concise document is one part writing, but it is several parts rewriting, editing, and proofreading.

Cyberspace, Hypertext, & Critical Theory

This is a pretty serious site, done by George Landow, who also did the Victorian Web and the Postcolonial Web. I have used all these sites in an academic setting, and they all work very well. They're a good mixture of professorial stuff, student research and writitng, and things you won't find anywhere else.

Educause

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. They're a decent group, and I worked a lot with them at my previous place of employment, where I worked on a grant called "Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers in Technology," or something close to that.

As we rely more and more on technology, our old teaching methods are becoming outdated, and many new teachers aren't up on the newest stuff. Organizations like EDUCAUSE and grants like the PT3 are crucial in keeping education current.

Lore

Lore, An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing, seems to be a decent place. It seems pitched to adjuncts and grad students, although it also claims to address asst. profs. Having been both a grad student (an OK time) and an adjunct (a truly violated life), and now an asst. prof (Ah, I remember the days of assoc. prof fondly), I'm thinking of submitting something about this class and blogging to learn writing.

Big names in the field

Here are some important figures in the field. They do good work, think big thoughts, and still tag up where the rubber hits the road. I like that.
Victor Vitanza is a Professor of English at the University of TX @ Arlington, where he teaches courses in literacy and electracy.
Daniel Anderson does good work, and he's at my alma mater, to boot.

Purdue OWL

Well, I thought that I should get myself into gear on this, if I was requiring it for the rest of you. So I'll focus on the idea of writing and computers in this blog. I've been blogging for a few years now (and I'll tell you a story about how one of my blogs almost got me fired), but this is the first blog I've done specifically for a class. Anyway, here goes.

The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) is a great spot for almost any kind of writing. I've used it for many other classes, so I'll begin with it here. This link is a handout on writing with computers. It may be basic, but it's full of solid advice.

Doing Research, Writing Why

Your blogging assignment is a critical part of your work this semester. In your blog, you're going to assume the role of an expert, or at least the role of a curious and interested person, on one subject. You'll be posting to your blog at least three times per week during the semester, so you'll finish the semester with at least 45 posts in your blog.

The first thing you'll need to do is set up a blog. You can do that here at blogger.com. This is a good free space for blogs, with nice feeds and decent editing capabilities (I've been doing this here for a few years). Unless you have your own site that can handle the feed from blogger, publish your blog here, too. Spend some time under the covers here, checking out what you can and can't do with the editing tools and the templates here. There are a lot of preset options, but the most exciting ones are where you get into the code yourself and change things around.

Then you'll have to pick a topic that you're interested in. However, you can't choose either a musician or an actor (or movie, or album), because those people (and things) already have enough sites about them, and you won't be doing anything except collating fan comments and the like. Instead, think of your blog as a one-stop shop for someone interested in your topic. For example, if I were to do a blog on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, I would check out what's on the web, make some decisions about whether or not I wanted to link to it, and then offer reasons why each link is worth a visitor's time. I might start with a biography of the man, then link to some of his poetry online, then look at some reviews, assessments, or articles on him.

With every entry, every link, you should offer a justification for why its there. Being first in the queue at Google doesn't cut it as a reason for why it's on your blog. You should assess the site you're linking to, and present an argument for its presence. Of course, there may be times when you don't want to include a link, and just offer your opinion, or something taken from somewhere other than the web on your blog. This is fine, but these posts shouldn't predominate in your blog.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Making Links

Links are easy, once you know the code. Here's the breakdown:

1. All links are enclosed in angle brackets (which, for the purposes of this example, will be replaced by asterisks):
*

2. Links are, in html, anchors. The abbreviations for anchors in code is the letter "a":
*a

3. Links refer somewhere else, which abbreviates to href (html reference):
*a href

4. The a href equals something, so:
*a href=

5. The Universal Resource Locator (URL) you're going to is next, enclosed in quotation marks:
*a href="http://www.google.com"

6. That's it, for the first part, so close the angle bracket:
*a href="http://www.google.com"*

7. But that link wouldn't even appear on a page, because it needs something, either text or a picture, to work on:
*a href="http://www.google.com"*link to google

8. And then it needs to be told to stop working, so turn off the tag, which is a repetition of the tag with the front slash on it:
*a href="http://www.google.com"*link to google*/a*

That's it -- you've now included a working link.