As peer review for the ancient style and YouTube project wraps up, I want to remind everyone that for each of your peers, you need to fill out the survey/form about your thoughts on your peers’ essay.  The link for it is there for everyone on emuonline; here’s that link one more time.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&pli=1&formkey=dENiTjVyc2dmc3hyOGhYcUh2OWxfRFE6MA#gid=0

This is really important for you to fill out!  Besides being useful (hopefully) in giving your peers better feedback, this form also helps me figure out who is and who isn’t giving good peer review to their classmates.  Not filling out this form for each of your peers will cost you in terms of the participation grade.

And remember:  you fill out the same form for each of the different essays you will read!

First, my apologies for being more tardy on commenting on your essays than I had planned.  It never ceases to amaze me how much of my job has nothing to do with my teaching.  In any event, you should be able to see my comments on your Google docs, and you should be able to see my end comments and the grade on the dropbox on emuonline.  Let me know if you have any problems with that.

I know you’re all working on the ancient style and youtube project too, and this is a good time for me to point you all to the next project, the two part “Using and ‘Remaking’ Style Guides” assignment.  For the first part of this assignment, you’ll revise either the first project (the one I just passed back) or the second one (the one you’re working on right now).  So as you read through my comments and as you read through the style manuals, keep that part of things in mind!

I talk about these things in this short video, but in brief:

• Yes indeed, we will be beginning our next peer review on the ancient style project Wednesday! The idea here is to push things along in the class so you have some options when it comes to revising things and also so we have time at the end of the term to worry about making movies and the like.  The next peer review will be a little different from this one in that I will ask you to fill out a form on Google docs and it will follow a little more of a specific process– you’ll see what I mean.
• I was happy to see a “perfect score” from students when it comes to handing in the draft of the “Invent Your Own Writing Technology” projects in on time.  I will start commenting on those essays asap (hopefully this afternoon/this evening) and have those back to you as soon as I can, certainly before next week.  Incidentally, you will notice I won’t give a ton of comments on these, in part because I want you to think about revision in relation to the style guides we’ll read and base your changes on that.
• Participation in class has been pretty good, but it has slowed down/fallen off a bit as people have gotten busy with this class and (I assume) other things.  Don’t forget!  Post at the beginning of the discussion periods!

I think that’s it for now.  While you work on a draft of the ancient style youtube video project, I’ll be working on reading your essays and setting up the next peer review.

As we head into the weekend here, I am sure many/most of you are earnestly working on final touches on your “Invent Your Own Writing Technology” essay, which is due by the end of the day on Monday.  Remember:  I will dock you a letter grade for every 72 hours it is late, so be sure to get it in on time!

Now, you may be wondering “how do you want me to hand this in?”  Let me see if I can explain this, and if you have questions, by all means ask!

• First, make your revisions/changes to the Google Doc you shared with your classmates.  DO NOT upload a whole new document!  This is because I am interested in seeing as part of the process here how you responded to your peers’ suggestions.  This is also how you will hand in any revisions you might decide to make.
• Second, make sure your Google Doc is shared so that a) Anyone with the link can see it, and b) Access is set up so that anyone can edit it.  For some reason, the “access” is easy for people to forget (I forget to do this myself often when I’m setting up things for sharing), but it’s important to be checked so I can leave comments on your essay.   When you save your settings, you’ll get a link you can share.  Copy that.
• Third, login to emuonline and go to our class site.  Once there:
• Click on “Dropbox.”
• Click on the dropbox item “Invent your Own Writing Tech.”
• Instead of attaching a file, paste the link to your Google Doc in the small discussion space that’s available.
• Click save, and if it all worked, I should have the link to your Google Doc.
• I’ll start reading and commenting on these by Tuesday of next week, and if I see you did something wrong with how you sent me a link to your Google Doc, I’ll be sure to let you know.  Of course, if there’s nothing in the Dropbox, then you will most certainly be late.

I think that’s it.  Like I said, if you have questions about this, ask.

I’ve been reading through your blogs last night and this morning, especially about the peer review process.  Let me mention as an aside about the blog writing assignments:  the most important part of them is that you complete them on time.  And remember: your blog posts have a time stamp to them.  The second (and third, I suppose) most important parts of them are issues of quantity and quality.  You don’t have to write long posts, but they should also typically be longer than a couple of sentences.  And, as is the case with most things in life, more thoughtful comments and posts are recommended.

In any event, some more quotes and the like after the “continued” part, but I wanted to address one issue I thought was kind of interesting:  a number of you expressed being peer review “haters.”  I think that’s kind of an odd sentiment especially since all of you must be interested in writing, and I say that because it’s the only reason you would take English 328.  After all, you are all either minoring or majoring in Written Communication, Writing, Language Literature and Writing for Teachers, Journalism, PR, or some other flavor of “English.”  So it would seem to me that most students who are majoring in these things are really interested in learning more/studying more about their own writing and the writing of classmates, which is one of the points of peer review.

In any event, my hope is that some of what we try this semester helps reduce the hate a little.  Like I said, more after continued:

Continued…