This week we are focused on transitioning to remote learning. As such, here are some things to focus on:
Revising your Truthometer
This week you’re mostly working on revising your Truthometer projects as either videos or blog posts. Last weekend you should have gotten an email from me, asking you to look in your WRT folders for an mp3 labeled something like “Lastname_FC2-3.mp3.”
This was a ~2-5 min audio clip of me giving you feedback on your fact-checks, with hopes that my suggestions will help you approach the Truthometer assignment (which is due at the end of this week). I decided to provide feedback via audio for a few reasons, but primarily it was to try to maintain as much human contact with you as possible.
While I lost some level of specificity in using this mode of feedback, my hope was that it would help you prioritize the most important issues when writing. I was able to pause the audio at points and I most certainly did not listen back to them through before adding them to your folders, so if you noticed any glitches, had difficulty accessing the files, or were confused by my feedback, I hope you’ll still get in touch.
Beginning Unit 2: Social Distancing
I also emailed you last week to introduce you to a unit I developed exclusively for this moment. I also added a video introduction on my new YouTube channel:
If you haven’t explored the requirements for this unit, please make this a priority. Once you do you’ll hopefully notice the schedule link and hone in on your tasks for this week:
Or if you look at the points rubric for this unit you can see these tasks laid out as such:
Task: Organize or cleanup your WordPress site.
Mostly this consists of playing around with themes, customizations, and post settings. See my YouTube on this for more and remember if your site is already pretty cleaned up, you do not have to do this task. Points are set up to be flexible on the rubric.
Task: Post writing prompts on Blackboard
Because your blog is the central writing focus in this unit, you might be asking “Luther, what should I blog about?” Indeed this is a good question. Take a look at the Writing Prompts page (also linked under the Unit 2 menu above) for more details. The too long; didn’t read (TL;DR) version of this is that we will co-construct prompts on Blackboard, creating an inventory for good places to start.
Task: Meet up in a Zoom group chat
You can earn some easy participation points by meeting up with the class on video char. As mentioned on the Unit 2 assignment page, I’m offering synchronous Zoom meetings twice per week during the first half hour of our regular class time. To be clear, while these meetings are NOT required, they are encouraged/rewarded, especially if you are finding yourself feeling kinda lost right now. Jump in any time you can! Follow the invite link I email to you in advance of the meeting, being sure to paste in the password when prompted. Mics are muted by default to start.
What’s coming up next week?
- Begin blogging!
- Raise your WordPress profile with a custom domain and a strong About Me page.
- Contribute more writing prompts to BlackBoard and participate in a group chat on Zoom.