WRIT 1622: Winter Quarter 2017

This blog provides the daily assignments, homework assignments, major assignments, week-by-week overview, and course policies for students enrolled in Dr. Kt's writing course while they explore literacies practices of the past, present, and future.

[ktaczak]

Portfolio:

Part of the assessment process for ALL WRIT 1122/1622 students.

You will be getting emails from the Assistant Director of the Writing Program, Richard Colby, about submitting a “portfolio” for this class. It’s not really any extra work except that you have to put a few pieces of your writing together and submit it. Please DO NOT FOLLOW THE WRITING PROMPT he puts in the email -- you need to follow my prompt. 

**Follow MY prompt and MY guidelines**

3 Pieces of Writing:

One of them is your reflection (project 3) for this class. It should be the first thing in the portfolio.

Two of them are assignments completed during the quarter: 1 major writing assignment including cover letter (so either project 1, project 2, or the extra + project) AND 3 different Tumblr posts (please also include the Tumblr post title). 

Where to Upload

Assessment.Du.Edu – see instructions below. You WILL NOT receive your grade for the class, if you don’t upload the Portfolio to Assessment.Du.Edu. This is not my rule, this is the university’s policy.

Once you have completed your reflection (project 3), you should upload it to the DU Assessment System:

1. Go to http://assessment.du.edu

2. Log in to the system using your DU ID and passcode

3. You will see a list of all of your current assessment assignments. Click the 'Start' link next to each assignment to begin.Please upload this file into the DU Assessment system before the end of final exam

Again, you MUST DO THIS in order to receive a grade for this course. There is NO new writing for this. You are literally putting 3 pieces of your writing from this class together in a single document and uploading it. 

[ktaczak]

Dear Past Self

Throughout the past quarter, you have been thinking and theorizing about your understanding of writing - the practice of it and the knowledges found within it -- your identity as a writer and defining what it means to be literate in the 21st century. In short, you’ve been thinking about and thinking through what writing  means to you, to others, and to the future. For post, you are going to write a letter to your 14-15 year old self who is just about to begin high school. It has to be in letter form (which means it follow the format of a traditional letter). This is a great way to be reflective by looking backwards so that you can move forward in productive ways. In this letter you are going to address the importance of learning to read/write, what to pay attention to, what you'll need to know in college, and so on. The purpose of this letter is to (a) be reflective, (b) be engaging, and (c) start to bring together all that we've been reading, discussing, and writing about for the last 8 weeks. This is a good prequel to Project 3 as you'll be discussing similar things.

No responses for peers!

DUE by class time on Tuesday, February 28, 2017

[ktaczak]

Essentially, Brandt is creating an argument in Chapter #3 about young adults being writers. You, being a young adult, should have something to say about this. Using the chapter as support, please respond to this notion -- you are a writer? How? Why? How does your understanding of this respond to Brandt’s chapter? How does it resist it? 

Are you a writer? 

Writer: a person who writes in a very specific way (dictionary.com definition).

Writer: a person who creates with words vast worlds either through facts or pure imagination (Urban Dictionary). 

Writer: a scribe (the OED). 

Writer: a person who uses written words in various styles and techniques to communicate their idea (wiki). 

Writer: the seller of an option who opens a position to collect a premium payment from the buyer (Investopedia definition).  Writer: a writer is a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job (collins dictionary). 

And many, many more definitions of what a writer is/means. 

How would you define you, yourself, the writer? 

Response to peers: please pick 2 peers to respond to and engage in a conversation about his/her response to “are you a writer” -- in other words, please just have a conversation with your peers about how they see themselves as writers. 

DUE by class time on Tuesday, February 14, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

Let’s have a Moment

I want you to develop three moments in which you describe, explain, explore, and create your ideas about what you’re learning as part of this course that relates to you as a writer, a thinker, and a learner. Draw connections inside of the classroom and outside of the classroom. Another way to look at this would be as a way to “catch your breath” so to speak by bringing together the last five weeks to figure out what you have learned/are learning/continue to learn. 

What must be included within these moments: (1) one gif and/or meme; (2) one short clip of a video; (3) at least 2 different readings; and (4) one class discussion. These serve as points of evidence for your moments. 

Don’t just give me what you think I want to read ... show me what you are learning. 

Response to peers (also due by midnight! so don’t wait to post): please pick 2 peers to have a conversation with in response to what you’ve been learning. The conversation is up to you so long as it’s critical and engaging. 

DUE by midnight on Thursday, February 9, 2017 as part of your attendance for class. 

[ktaczak]

Theory of Writing: Take 2

Most of the Tumblr posts serve as a point of reflection -- very intentional, directed reflection. Reflection is a way to help you become an active agent in your learning. You are an active participant by not simply being someone who is fed information, but someone who questions, explores, muses, theorizes, and reflects ... 

One thread that runs through the course is the creation of a theory of writing -- your theory of writing. You have already done at least one direct post on your theory of writing, but you’ve also done a lot of in-direct reflecting on it.

Reminder of the purpose of the theory of writing (TOW): 

The students’ theory of writing gives them the opportunity to think about their relationship with writing—their writing processes, their understanding of the key terms they enact in their own writing, and their ability to create a knowledge-base of writing and its practices for application in other contexts. It is within this theory of writing that students are able to articulate what they’ve learned about writing and where they can take this learning. Questions to help ground your thinking but do not necessarily need to be answered: 

What are your key terms for writing? How does it expand your writing practices to understand these key terms? How do these terms help you to understand what writing is and how it functions within your own life? 

Who are you as a writer? How does considering key terms contribute to the development of your writerly identity? 

What is writing? What is good writing? 

How does literacy practices connect to good writing? Do they have to connect to “good” writing? 

The goal of this Tumblr post is to create another iteration of your theory of writing -- you’ll provide some context and set-up and then you’ll create the actual theory in a Dr. Seuss’ style (feel free to fully invoke him by creating new words and new ideas but the main goal is to rhyme). 

DUE by class time on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. NO response to peers for this post. 

[ktaczak]

Conferences 

As part of your contract, you must attend at minimum 2 conferences with me this quarter (to fulfill the expectations of a B contract). This week is designated opportunity for you to do so. 

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

AAC 380S 

12:30 until 5:00 

Draft #2 of Project #1 (revised past what you did for the first draft by incorporating suggestions from your peers and from Julia)

You do not need to sign up for an appointment, please just stop on by. If someone is in my office, please just have a seat and come on in after that person is finished. 

This is not a mandatory conference, it is an opportunity for you to fulfill one of your contractual obligations, to receive feedback on your project, and to discuss the class in general (i.e. are you meeting the expectations of the contract). There will be other opportunities and/or you can always make a conference appointment with me. 

[ktaczak]

The Rise of Writing

As we begin to dig into Deborah Brandt’s book, The Rise of Writing, you are going to take a more traditional approach to this Tumblr post and do what’s called an “SRR” or “Summary, Respond, Reflect.” 

Summarize: Clearly and accurately as you can, please explain/summarize/describe the reading. In other words, what was the purpose of the reading? Who might the intended audience be? Make sure you give specific details, and you quote directly from the reading.  

Respond: Discuss the overall effect of the first few chapters, what was your reaction? You cannot simply say “I did not like” or “I really enjoyed” with no discussion. Engage with the reading on a more personal level.

Reflect: Situate the reading within our class in other words draw connections between the reading and the purpose of the course. How does the reading respond to what we have been discussing? How does the reading apply to your own thinking? Your own understanding of writing? 

Response to peers: please pick 2 peers who you have not responded to yet this quarter, and comment on his/her reflection -- do you agree with the connections? What can you add to them? 

DUE by class time on Tuesday, January 31, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

As part of your “attendance” on Thursday, you’ll be completing this Tumblr post based on/responding to the “Literacy” definition chapter that you read over the weekend. Close to a month into the quarter, you are going to take the time to define “literacy” and “literacy practices” in the 21st century as you understand it in this moment -- in other words, building on what you knew coming into this course, and connecting it to what we’ve read, discussed, and wrote about, define literacy. To do so, I want you to pull from at least 2 of our readings using direct evidence from them as well as one other outside piece of evidence (either from a newspaper, a magazine, a book, a video, etc.). It doesn’t matter how you define it, so long as (a) you support your definition with direct evidence, (b) you clearly define it as you understand it, and (c) you are reflective in nature. 

Once you complete your response, please then take all your words and copy and paste them into a word cloud maker (wordle.net; tagul.com; tagxedo.com -- there are tons of different free word cloud makers online, you just need to make sure your flash is up-to-date on your computer). Play around with the word cloud and then depending on the program either save it or screen shot it and add it to your Tumblr post. 

To conclude your post, look at your word cloud. Does it represent your definition? In other words, how you view and understand literacy, does it come through in the word cloud? If it doesn’t, what happened? If it does, explain. 

No response to peers. 

DUE by midnight on Thursday, January 26, 2017 as part of your attendance for class. 

[ktaczak]

What is (Good) Writing?

We know and understand that writing is a major part of being a literate human being, thus, we are going to take a moment as we head into the fourth week and explore what writing actually is, what it means, and why it’s so important for success. Thus, the main question driving this homework post is “what is (good) writing?” To help getting you to think about this response, please feel free to use these questions to springboard your thinking: 

(a) what is writing, in other words, what are the definitions, ideas, thoughts, expressions, etc.associated with writing. What makes writing good to you? Why is writing so important to being successful? 

(b) What type of writer do you see yourself as? Do you believe you are a novice or an expert? Why?

(c) What’s a list of 5-8 key, rhetorical terms you believe defines good writing.

We are taught at a young age that writing is singular; it’s either a noun or a verb; it’s about responding to the teacher; it’s formulaic; and so on. What we learn in K-12 serves a purpose for that moment, but writing is actually much more rich, varied, and complex than that -- it’s the one subject that all universities agree on ... almost every single university in the United States requires first year writing. Yet many students come into the first year classroom either (a) dreading it, (b) thinking that they don’t need it, or (c) not willing/wanting to write about writing (see Calvin and Hobbes above “light” example of this). In other words, there’s a lot of resistance to a topic that research (across disciplines) clearly indicates aids in success beyond college. Why? 

The goal of this Tumblr post is for you to allow yourself to dig a little deeper into what writing means and what it is -- feel free to respond to the question as you best see fit to do. 

NO response to peers for this post.

DUE by class time on Tuesday, January 24, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

Reading Is ...

In an Onion-like fashion, you are going to create a create a response to what reading’s place is in literacy practices (whether that’s the reading practices of yesterday or today ... it just can’t be future yet). The piece you read for homework is similar, in some ways, to Carr  -- it’s an attempt to push back on what literacy means and what we mean by a literate culture (that includes technologies, digitalities, and in a sense, freedom). 

To complete this Tumblr post, please do the following: (1) complete the statement, “reading is ...”; (2) create a fictionalized account of your response to what reading is by connecting it to 1 reading we’ve read (i.e. your response to what reading is must connect to a theorist we’ve read in class, for example, Ong); (3) as is the case with Onion pieces, there must be some element of truth; and (4) focus on honing in what your “voice” and style is as a writer, in other words, start to work on really pulling out your writerly identity so that it’s clear that it’s you. 

Response to a peer you’ve never responded to (so someone different than last week): pull out the truth(s) in the piece -- what do you believe the truth is and how effective was the writer in creating the argument about reading? 

DUE by class time on Thursday, January 19, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

In effort to help get you in the right mind space for the homework over the weekend, here is a throw back to a 90s video. Though the lyrics are more political, you can definitely take the idea behind the lyrics and apply it to your theory of writing -- free your mind!

[ktaczak]

Connecting Your Writing Dots

Two weeks into the quarter, we’ve read about orality, writing as a technology, the evolution of writing, and more. As you continue to read about differing literacy practices and the questions that surround them, you are going to start your own questioning, musing, and essentially theorizing. Part of this class includes you developing your “theory of writing” and given the readings you’ve done for homework thus far, this is a good moment to pause and consider what your theory is right now.

In a class about literacy practices, it is very fitting for you to develop a “theory” about writing. One that’s unique to you as a writer and one that helps to inform future writing contexts. A theory of writing gives you, the writer, the opportunity to think about your relationship with writing: it enables you consider what writing is to you. This can include, but is not limited to, what is your writing process(es), what is your practices, what types of key terms provide the foundation for your theory, how do you actually enact those key terms in your writing, and so on. It is within this theory that you can articulate – in your own words using your own language – how you understand writing, what you’ve learned about writing, and where writing can take you.

King’s short excerpt (that we read early in the week), one might argue, is his theory of writing done in his very King-like way. So, for this first iteration of your theory of writing, I want you to try a King-like style for your theory of writing. His includes a deep awareness of the writing situation, an understanding that *someone* is reading his writing (”meeting of minds”), and a dedication to the craft of fiction. Thus, we might say that his key terms include audience, style, identity, and purpose (or rhetorical situation). He tells us this without stating them.

A theory of writing is not easy to write, so please don’t panic or believe that it’s not possible to write one. The first iteration of your theory is an attempt to “free your mind” or break outside your comfort zone and try and get on the page, er, screen what writing is to you. =) Writing in a King-like way gives a bit of creative freedom, please just remember that the goal of the theory should be able to (eventually) be applied to all writing situations. A theory evolves and grows, and yours will as we continue in this course.

Responses to peers: pick one peer (different than who you’ve been responding to) and respond: what do you believe are his or her key terms? How do you know? Are these key terms IYHO helpful for all writing situations? Why? 

DUE by class time on Tuesday, January 17, 2017. 

Good luck!

[ktaczak]

From pencils to pixels … the evolution of writing technology as explained by Baron. The evolution of writing is something that helps us understand what writing is – to us, to others, to vast audiences, and so on. Within the first few weeks of the course, we continue to explore literacy practices within your own life. For your second Tumblr post, you will continue your thinking from the first one, but you’ll be using some of Baron’s thinking. 

Please create a writing literacy journey -- only writing -- using a series of images. The images must follow these guidelines: (1) connect back to your first Tumblr post; (2) revolve around only writing; (3) include at least 2 photos you took yourself (i.e. not just pulled from the web); and (4) tell your writing literacy journey. Conclude this post with a short, written explanation of the images -- but please do not “tell” us, show us why you picked these images, how they represent your writing journey, and what they mean to you as a writer. In other words, show don’t tell (e.g. you wouldn’t say, “it’s a beautiful day” you would say, “as the sun peeked over the cloud, a light breeze brought the scent of lilacs a reminder that spring was here.”). 

Response to peers: please continue your conversation with the same peer as last week, what connections do you see between the two posts?

DUE by class time on Thursday, January 12, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

The central question that this course explores is “what is literacy (or what are literacy practices),” and as we go throughout the quarter, we’ll see that the way to define literacy and the way to understand literacy is multi-dimensional -- one goal is try and decide how, what, and where we’ll go in the future with our literacies practices. 

Thus, our opening post sets the foundation for your thinking. In the post, you want to explore what literacy means to you, right now in this moment, by pulling back on your own history. Ong sets up our society’s oral history for us, and now you’re going to set up your own history -- it will most likely be both oral and written (and perhaps digital) given the nature of where our society has progressed. The above image is example of what’s called stages of early literacy -- it would be the beginning reading and writing stage. You want to think back to your early stages -- how did they help shape you as a literate human being? 

The purpose of this post is for you to (a) tell a story by (b) exploring what literacy means to you. How you go about completing this is up to you so long as you fulfill both (a) and (b). 

Responses to Peers: please pick one peer to respond to his/her post. Read their story and note any similarity or difference in your own story. Between the two of you, what’s one conclusion you can draw about literacy practices? 

BOTH your post and your response to your peer is DUE by class time on Tuesday, January 10, 2017. 

[ktaczak]

Disqus

To see if your Disqus is working, you can click on the title (or sometimes depending on the theme, you have to click on the date). You can see that the class Tumblr’s Disqus is working by clicking on the title of this post, it will pop up at the bottom. 

[ktaczak]

One of the first things you’ll do in this course is compose your literacy journey -- how it started, what it looks like to you, what it means for your own literate self, and how it helps you understand who you are as a reader, writer, and thinker. We might argue that this video -- from Dangerous Minds (1995) -- discusses some of the parts of Coolio’s own literacy journey. 

[ktaczak]