HW 27 - Visiting an unwell person

Please visit a person that is unwell - sick and/or dying in a hospital, senior home, or elsewhere. You could choose to visit a family member, friend, neighbor, acquaintance, or stranger.

What do you notice about the situation, about the person's approach to being unwell, about your own reactions and thoughts? What social conditions helped to construct this situation? What aspects of this situation simply result from human vulnerability and mortality?

What insights from the book, movies, and/or guest speaker apply to the situation of the person you're visiting?

Please write a 3-5 paragraph narrative account and analysis of your visit. Please maintain the privacy of the person you visit (unless they say otherwise) by leaving them anonymous and with no easily identifiable descriptions. Your goal should be to write an engaging and well-crafted TRUE STORY of the visit with lucid and sharp insights about dominant practices of illness & dying embedded in the story.

Due Saturday, January 1, at 9pm.

HW 28 - A separate post will include the comments about "Best part" from mentor/younger commenters on your HW 27, and your comments from & to your peer commenters. HW 28 will be due Tuesday, January 4 at 8:30pm.

HW 26 - Looking back & forward in unit

Please list 4-5 important ideas, insights, or items of information that you have learned in this unit so far (and the source).

What source(s) have been most helpful for you in coming to a deeper understanding of our culture's dominant social practices around illness and dying? How & why?

What questions and areas do you think its most important to explore in the final two weeks of the unit (on our return)? How should we best explore those topics/questions?

Please write two or more paragraphs addressing the three questions above. Due Friday, Dec. 31, 9pm.

HW 25 - Response to Sicko

For your response to Michael Moore's 2007 polemical examination of the problems, history, and alternatives to the US health care system please include the following components;
1. A one paragraph precis of 125 words or less - Michael Moore's 125 word version of the film, proportional to the film.

2. Evidence -
a. Two specific points of evidence that Michael Moore used to bolster his argument.
b. Why those pieces of evidence were important for supporting his thesis.
c. There was a controversy following Sicko's release instigated by people who questioned some of the evidence and arguments conveyed in the film. Please examine this source & one of Moore's responses. Also, this one, about halfway through includes a direct confrontation.
d. Additionally, please independently fact check one of those pieces of evidence by conducting your own research. Please evaluate whether the evidence used was legitimate and accurate and cite your sources.

3. Response -
Please write a 1-2 paragraph reaction to the movie. You can use the questions below to get yourself started.
What was most important in the excerpts of the movie that you watched? What ideas and feelings struck you as most crucial? How did the movie affect your perspective on the dominant social practices around illness & dying in our culture?

Due Tuesday, 8:30am December 21.

HW 24 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 3

Read your assigned book.

Think about what insights it offers regarding dominant social practices of illness & dying in our culture and also alternatives to those dominant practices.

Identify the book you're reading with full bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, year published).

Please write a précis, in 1-2 paragraphs, of the whole book. What would the author say if asked in an elevator to sum up his/her book in 1 minute?

Please quote 3-5 particularly insightful, arresting, or thought-provoking passages in the final chunk of the book (provide page numbers). For each quote provide either a paraphrase or response.

Finally please write a paragraph discussing your thoughts and experiences in relation to this book's portrayal (in the last 1/3rd) of how people go about being sick and dying. Aim for bright, insightful, slicing prose.

Due Monday, Dec. 20 at 8:30am.

HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Read your assigned book.

Think about what insights it offers regarding dominant social practices of illness & dying in our culture and also alternatives to those dominant practices.

Identify the book you're reading with full bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, year published).

Please write a précis of a section you identify in the second 1/3rd of the book (a particular chapter, a range of pages, a couple chapters).

Please quote 3-5 particularly insightful, arresting, or thought-provoking passages in the middle chunk of the book (provide page numbers). For each quote provide either a paraphrase or response.

Finally please write a paragraph discussing your thoughts and experiences in relation to this book's portrayal (in the middle 1/3rd) of how people go about being sick and dying. Aim for bright, insightful, slicing prose.

Due Friday, Dec. 17 at 8:30am.

HW 21b - Comments

To reiterate, please create a separate post - HW 21b - to post your comments for other people, copied from the "Comments" section of their blog. It should look like this:

For Alan, Your most beautiful line was, "Your last paragraph in its entirety spoke many truths to me, sometimes in ways I never even thought about myself (how pain represents the courage to feel). " I think this is so beautifully written, and so true. There can be a certain bliss in pain - but only when embraced and accepted, not fought. If we don't feel these losses we can never value having."

----------------------------------------------

Underneath the comments you copied that you wrote, please do a dashed line and copy the comments that your T/W team wrote for you. This will save me approximately 30 minutes of time, over the 90 blogs. If the people didn't label their relationship to you, please do that for them.

HW 22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

Read your assigned book.

Think about what insights it offers regarding dominant social practices of illness & dying in our culture and also alternatives to those dominant practices.

Identify the book you're reading with full bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, year published).

Please write a précis of a section you identify in the first 1/3rd of the book (a particular chapter, a range of pages, a couple chapters).

Please quote 3-5 particularly insightful, arresting, or thought-provoking passages in the book (provide page numbers). For each quote provide either a paraphrase or response.

Finally please write a paragraph discussing your thoughts and experiences in relation to this book's portrayal (in the first 1/3rd) of how people go about being sick and dying. Aim for bright, insightful, slicing prose.

Due Saturday, Dec. 11 at noon.

HW 21 - Expert #1

Please list 3-10 of the most important insights & experiences shared by the guest speaker. Write them clearly and with some eye to beauty.

Then please write 1 paragraph each about 2 items on the list connecting her insights/experience to your insights/experience.

What ideas or questions did Beth's presentation spark? Please articulate these "further thoughts" in the 3rd and final paragraph of your post.

Due Wednesday, Dec. 8, 9pm. Comments by T/W Team due Friday 9pm. To reiterate, the comments from above and below should identify, quote, and explain what they liked about your strongest line/idea and then EITHER offer their own ideas on that OR suggest ways you could have made your strongest chunk even better. The peer T/W members should use one of the 5 comment modalities we discussed in class (especially depth/insight or beauty).

HW 20 - Thinking/Writing Groups

Please send me an email with the following:

1. Your name, email address, and blog address.

2. Fellow-student members of T/W Team, their blog addresses, and their emails.

3. More skilled person's name, relationship to you, and email address.

4. Less skilled person's name, relationship to you, and email address.

Please also clarify with the persons you recruit (mentor AND younger person) that you are asking them to;

1. Read your 2-3 blog posts per week.

2a. Post a comment to one of your recent blog posts approximately 1x per week.

2b. Their comments should (please) focus on the BEST line or idea in your blog post. They could please quote or paraphrase your best idea, say why they like it, and then offer their own response or suggestions as to how you could further develop this particularly good aspect of your post.

Please consider what we discussed in class about the right way to approach potential mentors, about the importance of reciprocity, and respect for the time of others.

Please email me this by Saturday morning 8:30am.

HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

Our families affect how we approach illness & dying - but how much? Our understanding of illness & dying, as we discussed in class, include modalities, categories, treatments, diagnoses, and ways of understanding illness & dying.

Please discuss illness & dying with the adults who raised you. You're looking for areas of overlap and contrast between how they approach it and your understanding of dominant culture perspectives. Please ask them also about the health/illness/dying practices of the people who raised them.

A strong post will be well-organized - each paragraph focusing on a single main idea, contain lively original ideas and perspectives, avoid or nuance clichés, and demonstrate your ability to creatively and critically conceptualize dominant social practices around illness & dying in terms of your own experience.

Please post your 3-6 paragraph mini-essay by Wednesday 9pm.

HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

Please write a 3-5 paragraph analysis of physicality over the break.

If you're involved in family feasting please make that your focus for most of the analysis.

How did your experience of this holiday fit into the "anti-body" vs "body-centered" practices of our culture? How did food-pleasure supplement, dominate, or focus the event? Were other pleasures also practiced (watching football afterwards?)? What "background" elements related to illness & dying (empty chairs, sick family members, the nutritiousness of the food, lack of movement, etc)?

Due Monday, Nov. 29 at 8:30am.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

Please write 3-5 paragraphs on your first thoughts about our exploration of illness & dying.

Some prompts you could use to get yourself started:

1. Your experience with the topics.

2. The way you've been taught to see illness & dying.

3. Social norms around illness & dying in our culture.

4. Your family's approach to these aspects of life.

5. Possibly unusual perspectives you have about being sick and/or dying.

Aim for exploration. List questions. Open your eyes up. You shouldn't be writing an argumentative paper (probably), instead try to get your own thoughts and insights and perceptions flowing. If you find yourself writing vague cliches (happens to all of us) finish the sentence and then write about why you think your thoughts circle around vague cliches on these topics.

Due Wednesday, 24 November, 8:30am.

Further Resources for Food

Anonymous Survey for Feedback on the Unit (please do by Wednesday AM):

Click here to take survey

Don't stop thinking and reading about food just because we're shifting focus.

Further Resources (I'll add more from some of the best sources cited as evidence from you HW 12 outlines):

Video:
Mark Bittman TED talk about "What's wrong with what we eat?" (pro plants)
7 More TED Talks related to food reform
Dean Ornish - World's Killer Diet (3 minutes)
The Meatrix - short and sweet

Text:
Math Lessons for Locavores (debunking some food reform claims)
Omnivore's Delusion (anti-Pollan)
Food Movement, Rising by Pollan (growing the movement for food reform)
Big Food/Big Insurance by Pollan (if huge insurance companies lose profit because of diabetes, maybe they'll join the fight for healthier food)
Common Kitchens for Local Farmers

• Food, Inc Activism Website
• Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Reforming School Food in NYC
• Labels on Front of Food Packages Coming - NYT
• NYT - Chefs in NYC Schools
• NYT - New Method of Killing Chickens

HW 12 - Final Food Project 2 - Outline

Picking a Thesis Video

Over the semester you're going to write, piece by piece, an exhibition style paper outline based on the major focus of the course. Naturally, an exhibition style paper needs a thesis, supporting arguments, and lots of evidence.

So you will first select a tentative thesis for the overarching paper, and then write a supporting argument (including lots of evidence) from the food unit. Next unit you will write a supporting argument for the overarching thesis from the "Illness & Dying" unit.

1. So right now you need to select a tentative overarching thesis. Some options are below - but feel free to write your own, from any political perspective or angle. But make sure it includes the phrases ("normal routines" or "dominant social practices" AND the phrase some version of the phrase "nightmarish industrial atrocities").

Many of the dominant social practices in our society - practices that define a "normal" life - on further investigation turn out to involve nightmares and industrial atrocities.

Sustainable and humane alternatives to nightmarish dominant social practices in our culture fail the tests of scalability, achievability, and/or desirability.

Dominant social practices in our culture - nightmarish industrial atrocities they may be - evolved to fit this culture's demands and will not be replaced by voluntaristic feel-good tree-hugging utopian fantasies.

An individual living in our culture must recognize and respond to the nightmarish industrial atrocities at the root of dominant social practices in order to live a morally satisfactory life.

2. Using the food unit as a basis, outline a persuasive argument that supports the thesis you've selected. You can think of this as "Argument 1" proving your thesis. "Argument 1" will include its own major claim, several supporting claims, and several pieces of evidence for each claim.

Supporting Your Thesis Video

For instance, if I selected the thesis;
Dominant social practices in our culture - nightmarish industrial atrocities they may be - evolved to fit this culture's demands and will not be replaced by voluntaristic feel-good tree-hugging utopian fantasies.

Then my food argument would attempt to show that food practices in our culture haven't been and likely won't be changed by feel good "eat right" campaigns. So my outline would look like this;
Major Claim: The failure of the ongoing food movement to significantly alter U.S. food ways shows that voluntaristic fantasies can't resist the juggernaut logic of our culture.

Supporting claim 1: There has been a food movement, it's gotten a lot of press.
Evidence: Sales of Pollan, Schlosser, and viewers of "Food, Inc."
Evidence: Michelle Obama's campaign
Evidence: Sampling of titles from the last 6 months in the NYT.

Supporting claim 2: The food practices in our society keep getting worse despite the food movement's efforts.
Evidence: Still rising obesity rates.
Evidence: Still rising diabetes rates.
Evidence: Continued expansion of fast food restaurants.
Evidence: Continued increases or maintenance of per capita meat and corn syrup.
Evidence: Continued expansion of corn-based practices - such as fish farming.

3. Now please find the proof of all the related evidence that you've named so that you have at least one hyperlink or text citation for each piece of evidence. Put those in a works cited at the end of the outline and hyperlink the evidence that you have good sources for.

4. You don't have to write the paper! (at least not yet).

Due Monday, Nov. 1 at 8:30am.

HW 11 - Final Food Project 1

For your last experience in the food unit, please select one of the following modalities;

A. Experiential (change diet, change shopping, change how you prepare food, how you eat). Note, if you select a change in how you do food that includes your family or would be weird to your family, please get parental/guardian consent and support!

B. Academic (research a particular aspect of what we've learned, double check key claims from Pollan & Schlosser, research related material)

C. Activist (do something to build a movement for better food - consider the Food, Inc website, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Slow Food Movement, and the School Food issue)

Then write about what you did and learned in 4-5 paragraphs. Explore especially what you did, how it is connected to what we've been working on, what you learned from doing it (including what would help you do it more effectively next time), and why it matters (to you and/or others).

Due Sunday, Oct. 31 at noon.

HW 10 - Food, Inc. Response

Tuesday and Wednesday you watched Food, Inc - the 2008 movie that combines the perspective of Fast Food Nation and Omnivore's Dilemma into an analysis of industrial agriculture.

1. Please summarize the main ideas of the film in a single paragraph succinct precis.
2. What does the movie offer that the book didn't? What does the book offer that the movie didn't?
3. What insights or questions or thoughts remain with you after watching this movie? What feelings dominate your response? What thoughts?

Please post your answers to these questions by Friday, Oct. 22 at 8:30am.

HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

Today we took a field trip to see Freakonomics. If you missed it you should go on your own.

Please write, edit, revise, proofread, and then publish a post which addresses 2 out of 3 of the following questions and replies to the statement below.

1. What intellectual moves serve as the basis of "Freakonomics"? Just as Allen Iverson relied on his crossover dribble to beat bigger and stronger defenders, intellectuals such as the protagonists in "Freakonomics" have a "tool box" of particular ways of looking at the world: figuring out topics, asking questions, finding evidence, and evaluating truth. Please describe the 3-5 "tools" that the film repeatedly shows in use, with an example of a moment from the film for each one.

2. How do the Freakonomics authors address the "correlation versus causation" issue? Do they pretend correlation IS causation? Do they prove that some correlation is causation, and if so, how? Or do they explicitly acknowledge the lack of proof of causation?

3. What sources of evidence do the Freakonomics authors most rely on? Why is this innovative?

Statement (please reply to this after answering 2/3 of the above questions):

Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices.

a. Agree or disagree.

b. Explain why.

c. Use an example or idea from Freakonomics and relate it to our investigation of US foodways.

Due 8:30am Saturday Oct. 16.

HW 8 - Growing Our Own Food

Please post a photo of your sprouts and a one paragraph mini-essay about the experience. How did it feel to grow some of your own food? What realizations did it lead to? Did the process seem magic or sacred or forced or unpleasant to you?

Due Wednesday October 13 at 8:30am.

HW 7b - Reading Schedule

Below are the required schedules of reading and writing responses to the assigned food books. Please avoid falling behind because that will likely lead to lame discussions and lower motivation and less success and worse grades. If you want to read (and write) ahead - do it. That might give you time to read more and different material.

I recommend that you make a special time at home for reading, plus use available time on the subway or in-between-moments. When you write your responses (precis, gems, thoughts) it will be helpful to have the book in front of you. Please label each chapter and also put "Precis", "Gems", and "Thoughts & Questions" as a bold subheading over the corresponding section of your work.

Omnivore's Dilemma & ODYR:

If you are reading Omnivore's Dilemma or Omnivore's Dilemma: Young Readers' Edition please follow or exceed the following schedule for chapters and written responses (precis, gems, and thoughts per chapter). Add the written responses to HW 7 (edit post).

Due Wednesday 8:30am - Chapter 3

Thursday 8:30am - Ch. 4

Friday 8:30 am - Ch. 5

Add the following written responses as a new post HW 7b.

Tuesday Oct 12 by 8:30am - Ch. 6, 7, 8, 9

Wednesday Oct 13 8:30am - Ch. 10

Add the following written responses as a new post HW 7c.

Thursday 14th at 8:30am - Ch. 11

Friday 15th at 8:30am - Ch. 12

Monday October 18th at 8:30am - Ch. 13, 14, 15, 16

Add the following written responses as a new post HW 7d.

Tuesday 19th of October at 8:30am - Ch. 17

Wednesday Ch. 18

Thursday Ch. 19

Friday Ch. 20

ODYR readers - same as above but for 7d also add

Monday October 25th at 8:30am- Chapter 21 & 22

Fast Food Nation:

Add the written responses to HW 7 (edit post).

Due Thursday 8:30am - Chapter 3

Add the following written responses as a new post HW 7b.

Due Tuesday Oct 12 at 8:30am Chapter 4 & 5

Wednesday Oct 13 at 8:30am - Chapter 6

Publish the following written responses as a new post HW 7c.

Friday Oct 15 at 8:30am - Ch. 7

Monday Oct 18 at 8:30am - Ch. 8

Add the following written responses as a new post HW 7d.

Tuesday 19th of October at 8:30am - Ch. 9

Wednesday at 8:30am - Ch. 10

Friday Oct 21 at 8:30am - Epilogue

HW 7 - Reading Response Monday

Please read the introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 2 of your assigned book.

Please write a very short post which includes the following for each chapter (edited and sharpened):

• Author and title of book, which chapter it is:
• A summary of 3-4 sentences in "precis" form - which means you write it as a super-condensed version of the chapter, as though you were the author (so no, "It is basically about" or "The author is sort of arguing").
• Gems you found in that chapter (brilliant insights, great lines of writing). Just quote these or paraphrase them.
• Your thoughts - a list of 2-5 interesting responses or questions or arguments you're thinking about in response to this chapter. First just get these down. Then go back and revise them so that they're powerful and punchy like a person wearing brass knuckles.

HW 6 - Food Diary

Please make a food diary for yourself that includes everything you eat for 48 hours. I'd suggest taking a cellphone camera shot of everything before you eat and writing up the major meals right after you're done.

Please count calories for a day and consider where you're at compared to the "official" recommendations. You could use this site, or this one, or another - but pay extra attention to serving size - if its 300 calories per serving it really makes a difference whether you ate a half serving or 2 servings.

Please also focus for a day on the actual sensual experience of the food - tastes, textures, smells, colors, tanginess, wetness, etc.

Post a few excerpts (descriptions of the food, and the circumstances of your eating) along with photos for 2 or more meals. Please also include several paragraphs of analysis - you could focus on:

a. examining the nutrition angle

b. your physical experience of the food (not just what you enjoyed the most or the least or barely noticed - which is description - but analysis - why, connections, theories, questions)

c. your thinking and feeling about the food you ate over the 48 hours - why did you pick that food? Do you feel good about the food you ate over the 48 hours?

As in all posts, please edit, proofread, and revise for clarity, readability, beauty, and insight.

Due Friday, October 1, at 8:30pm.

HW 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S.

You've learned what a "dominant discourse" might be and you've thought about contemporary dominant discourses regarding foodways in the U.S. (BTW - I find online definitions of this key concept at the following places - a, b, c, d - I would argue with all of them, but I like the definition on page 4 of c best, and I like the site d the best. For your blog post please reword the explanation I gave in class in your own way perhaps enriched by looking at the above definitions). I argued that we can simplify much of the current dominant food-related discourses as focusing on either "food as medicine" or "food as poison."

Investigate this terrain more carefully.

1. Read some of the following links from the NY Times

Told To Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries

Doctor's Orders: Eat Well, To Be Well

Fresh Vegetables Where Fast Food Reigns

Salmonella At Egg Farm Traced to 2008

Fixing A World That Fosters Fat

Senate Bill on Food Safety Stalls

2. Search food related topics in other dominant mass-media - you can either navigate to their site and type "food" or "eating" in the search box - or you can type in the name of the source and "food" or "eating" or something else in Google's search box.

newspapers Wall Street Journal USA Today

magazines People, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Time, Sports Illustrated

TV stations like CNN, ABC, etc.

3. Does it seem to you that the people writing (and quoted) think we are living in a time in which significant reform of U.S. foodways might occur or has occurred?

4. What do you imagine might be the food practices of a reasonably well-informed member of our society whose worldview gets sculpted by mass-media-propagated dominant discourse? What does she eat, where, when, with whom, why? How does she think food?

In 3-6 paragraphs please describe contemporary dominant discourses in the U.S. regarding foodways. What topics seem most frequently discussed? Who gets included and quoted in the conversation? What problems require what solutions? What preoccupations or frameworks seem to contextualize debate? Please use quotes and paraphrases (accurately cited or at least hyperlinked) from your web-research to evidence your description.

Since we're in the "Citizen" phase of our Food unit, I'm not asking you to evaluate the dominant discourse - just to map major themes, positions, ways of conceptualizing, problems/solutions, participants, and stakes in the current mainstream discussion. But don't feel anxious - we'll get to critiquing before we finish the unit.

Due 8:30am Wednesday, September 29.

HW 4 - Your Families' Foodways

Our families affect how we approach food - but how much? Foodways, as we discussed in class, include not just what gets eaten, but how it is eaten, how food is understood, how it is prepared, produced, and contextualized within daily practices. Foodways relate to ethnic cultures, gender norms, and economic class.

Please discuss food with the adults who raised you. You're looking for areas of overlap and contrast between how they approach food and how you approach food. Please ask them also about the foodways of the people who raised them. What do you (and they) imagine are some of the factors leading to generational differences in foodways?

While you're at it, take an inventory and a picture of the inside of your fridge - or a picture and a menu of a meal that your family ate together (or both). How does this evidence connect to your theories about the foodways of yourself and your family?

A strong post will be well-organized - each paragraph focusing on a single main idea, contain lively original ideas and perspectives, avoid or nuance clichés, and demonstrate a solid ability to integrate the concept of foodways with your own experience and with change over time/place.

Please post your 3-6 paragraph mini-essay by 8:30am Tuesday, Sept. 28.

HW 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market Realizations

Please publish 2-4 paragraphs of insights, interesting questions, and perceptive observations from our visits to the Union Square Greenmarket and a fast food restaurant.

You could focus on one or two of the following topics or identify a related topic of your own:
1. Differences and similarities between the two locations.
2. Some reasons fast food is so successful.
3. How is fast food responding to the sort of health-consciousness that the Greenmarket represents, and what do you think about it?
4. How did various people you met today approach food - what's their orientation to food? Is food a commodity or sacred or both?
5. Which of the two locations do you normally visit and why? What do you think about that?

Again, I recommend that you write multiple drafts to figure out deeper levels of insight and to clarify and beautify your writing.

Due Friday, Sept 24 @ 8:30am.

HW 2 - Food - Initial Thoughts

Please write 2-5 paragraphs about food. Use questions and thoughts from your notebook and class discussion to get you started. Feel free to choose an area of focus - better to write 3 meaningful paragraphs about 3 aspects of food, than to make a list of questions and answers.

Particularly interesting to me - What are your priorities in food and what do you think of those priorities? In what ways does your typical meal fail to meet the desires of an ideal meal, and what do you think of that? Is food sacred (and what does that mean)?

Please collect your best thoughts from the notebook, write a draft (perhaps on Word), print and edit, then revise and publish. Even though this is "initial thoughts" and can't be wrong it could be more (or less) excellent, profound, beautifully-written, or insightful.

To achieve insight try this process:

1. Write down what you think.

2. Think about what you think. Could you take it a step further? Figure out why you see the world that way? See something most people don't realize?

3. Repeat.

To achieve beauty try this process:

1. Get your ideas out.

2. Re-write each sentence so it says what you want, better, shorter, sharper.

3. Make up new metaphors or find short funny anecdotes to illustrate key ideas.

4. Use sensual language - color, motion, shape, feel, sound.

5. Read the piece out loud and change it where it feels confusing, slow, or boring.

Due Wednesday, 22 September, 8:30am.

How to make a blog for this course

How To Make A Blog for This Course

First, take a deep breath. This is not going to be that hard for most of you. Only about 10% of the people who do this meet massive frustration and at least half of them will be suffering the forgetting of their log-in info.

1. Keep this page up as one tab and open another tab for the following steps. You may find it hard to follow sequential directions. You may want to ask the teacher. You may want to ask a neighbor. But try to follow the written directions, which is a useful skill.

2. Create a google identity. Here. This will help you in life. If you don't already have one I suggest that you pick one that wouldn't be embarassing to a professor. So - BBallerFlyBoyYoMama might not be the best choice - even if it weren't already taken. Something like ASnyder is better. But don't use that one either. You can do something that isn't a gmail account using your existing email if you choose.

3. Create a blogger account. Please make sure that you use ONLY your first name and first initial of your last name. Please do not post any photos of yourself likely to fascinate stalkers. Please also include what section you're in. Feel free to make the title "Normal is Weird by (your first name and first initial of your surname)". For the address pick something "respectable." Do not link to anything that reveals personal information about yourself. Please select a color scheme with black letters and simple light pastel background (no pictures or shapes), that will be highly readable for the poor schmo who will be reading 96 of these at a time.

4. Click "view blog" and copy the URL (the webaddress at the top of the page).

5. Go to the UTFL Messageboard and IN THE CORRECT SECTION reply to the addresses thread to offer your address together with your first name and first initial of last name. If you find that your blog address has your last name in it please begin again with step 3. If you find that you have posted the link, and written your last name in the post, please repeat step 5, as the mistakenly forthright post will be deleted.

HW 1 - Intro Email

Please send me an email with the following questions copied into your email and answered. My email address was given out in class - its my first name and then the anarchy symbol and then the acronym of "undo the folded lie" dot net. Send it to me by Thursday at noon, please.

The first four questions are crucial - the rest will help me know you a bit better. Me knowing you a bit better might help me make the class better for you, but please feel free to write "Pass" to any question you don't want to answer.

1. Your first and last name.

2. Your phone number.

3. The name of the guardian/parent who most concerns herself with your education.

4. His/her email address (generally this person would only be contacted for something good - and if negative you'd have already been given a chance to take care of it yourself).

5. A favorite movie.

6. A favorite book.

7. A favorite song.

8. What you mostly did this summer or what you did this summer that was the best part.

9. Which of the following DON'T you have? Library card, computer, internet access, flash drive, notebook, pen, google account?

10. Something you do between school and sleeping that you feel good about (taking care of a sibling, working, learning guitar, etc.).

11. A goal you have for this course.

12. Something you think I should know in getting ready to teach the course this year - your particularly sharp skills (writing, video, singing, art, etc), or something you particularly struggle with (shy, hard-time maintaining motivation, hard time accomplishing work, etc) or something related to food, illness, death, birth, care of the dead, or prom (a relative who's a professional, a particular experience or interest), or someone in your section you'd absolutely not want to be paired with, etc. Write a sentence or a paragraph, up to you.