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Oops, science is POWERFUL!
ENGL 390, 390H, and (sometimes) 398V Class Journal
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Week five: rain garden final work
Here is your Eli Review task for tonight: plan your revision of the rain garden memo, due for a grade this Friday, 11:56.
Here is today's OHitS/AMA document, where I will
- take your questions about tonight's and Friday's due dates,
- encourage you to think more about citation elements, including signal phrases and a new concept called "bookending" the signal phrase with citation practices.
- look at the power of the counting out technique in paragraphs (and documents). I will grab two paragraphs from this handout (posted last week) Paragraphs with a Purpose, which is an MS word document that will likely download to your OS, through your browser.
Other items upcoming:
- How is your article reading going? Do you have three or four take-a-ways you could focus on? This work will form our April work.
- For March? We will think about what disposable coffee cup is better for the environment: paper or plastic (Styrofoam is plastic).
Marybeth Shea
We will stay in the same OHitS/AMA as Monday. I am building a checklist for your final version, due on Friday at 11:45 PM for a grade. I am pretty liberal with the deadlines for me and stricter with the process deadlines within Eli Review, where you need to post on time, so you can give and receive feedback to each other. Having said this, five people have not submitted a revision plan in Eli Review. Please do that before you turn in your final version for a grade.
Come to the Google doc, linked above, and ask your questions so you turn in a find memo on Friday. I would like to see evidence that you are taking to hear the idea of counting out.
Next week? New memo, with a policy recommendation. Jane wants to know which disposal coffee cup is better for the environment: Styrofoam? Paper? We will need authoritative, low-bias technical and scientific evidence for the claim. Poke around on the internet to gain a sense of the problem and proposed solutions. Also, keep in mind what Jane is asking: she wants a recommendation. That means that all your critical analysis will occupy th five stases. Keep a running list on key terms that need definition"
- environmental persistence
- energy efficiency
- Styrofoam
- paper cup (including the plastic coating)
- limits of recycling
- is Styrofoam recyclable? Is this widely available?
- what happens to paper that is not recyclable (plastic coating?)
- what is land filled, even if we think the material is recycled
- HINT: think a bit about climate change and energy efficiency
- HINT: what do we know about the fate of ocean plastic (patches, gyres, etc.)
On Friday, I will direct you to some authoritative sources you can rely on. In the meantime, read this fine analysis of the three-part strategy about our waste streams (and energy is in this, because everthing we make, transport, market, select, use, and dispose of). The source is from NRDC -- the Natural Resources Defense Council; this environmental policy group uses science for policy decision.
Marybeth Shea
FRIDAY!
Good morning! Do not forget your 11:45 final draft of your rain garden submission. Try to be on time, but you can submit through the weekend. I try to my deadlines a bit fluid (covid, politial worry, stress, etc.) as I do ask you to meet the deadlines you have for each other, so that peer editing is possible.
TODAY in OHitS/AMA, we chat about your last questions on rain garden submission and we talk about the knowledge we need to write the next assignment.
This next memo is a short recommendation report. We will answer our boss's questions AS SHE POSES IT, concerning which cup is best for the environment. We will use stasis theory and afew cognitive wedges to move throught this recommendation genre quickly and efficiently. I suggest diving into some background guidance on using the web well to find trustworthy and authoratative information. You can select your own path through, however, I suggest that you start with the Wikipedia and Google guides. Bonus: this work will help you in your other classes as you approach papers. And, critical media literacy is important as a life skill for now and in the future.
- How to Use Wikipedia Wisely (Stanford History Education Group): Wikipedia can be a useful research tool, if used effectively. Learn how in this video.
- Google Search Tricks for Research (by Common Sense Education): This hands-on tutorial shows a few key "search operators" you can use to get better, more refined results on Google.
Choose a few that strike you as useful, after your browth the sets:
- How to Pop Our Filter Bubbles (by TED): A collection of TED-produced videos focuses on diversifying sources and stepping outside algorithmically and culturally enforced echo chambers.
- Navigating Digital Information (by Crash Course): This 11-video playlist -- developed with experts and researchers -- is an awesome primer on how to find and evaluate sources on the web and social media.
My favorite place for technical information that is open access, well sourced, and well written is Science Daily. Here are a few short reads from this science journalism new source that will help you with the coffee cup recommendation report:
- Read this 2020 research (Nanking University) summary for a good working definition of the cradle-to-grave concept, one definition you will use in your memo as an analytical frame. Note: the paper v. plastic example here is bags. We often read adjacent information in our research and apply some of these ideas to our particular case.
- 2020 Princeton research analysis of how plastic pollution circulates; helpful for understanding the fate of ocean plastic problem.
- Part of the emerging analysis about the fate of aquatic plastic concerns microplastics. For you, how will you learn about microplastics and specifically Styrofoam plastic? This 2016 analysis from a Norwegian research consortium looks a microplastics in soil-to-watershed context we looked at in our rain garden memo.
About all this reading: you DO earn grades for thinking, reading, responding to the work of others. I hope this helps you knowing that I acknowledge what activities go into learning. And, that I trust you as you work, even if the work is somewhat invisible to me.
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Week 4: rain garden refinements
Here is Monday's OHitS/AMA document. Recall that tonight you have a prewriting draft due in Eli Review. I will open a next task for that work Tuesday morning. Please be on time. You do not have to be "perfect." Ask for the feedback you need. Ask a question or two. In the next task, we review each other's work.
This week, our writing craft lessons concern documentation, citation, and ethical practices about using the work, words, and documents of others. Here are some examples of citation practices you are familiar with:
Common knowledge: information shared by members of a specific discourse community
Discourse communities: classifications range from
- institutions, municipalities, regions, countries, civilization,
- a particular race, language-speakers, ethnic group, faith community, political unit,
- academic discipline, trade or artisan guild, professional association.
Note how citation information helps the audience evaluate information, trust the statements and the writer/speaker who makes these claims.
Green tea is good for you.
Drink green tea for the health benefits, says Dr. Andrew Weil, author of Spontaneous Healing. Emerging evidence suggests that the polyphenols in this beverage may offer protection from free radicals.
According to a recent FDA analysis of peer reviewed medical journals, green tea does not offer appreciable protections against breast cancer or prostate cancer (FDA Press Release, 2005)
Here are some helpful, short readings about citation practices:
- Our fact-checking practices are part of our research and invention for documents as well as how we read and trust. Grammar Girl's 3 minute read/audio file is a good overview.
- Spend ten minutes on the web reminding yourself about what common knowledge is. Consider, based on the Grammar Girl link above if you trust these sources. And, ask yourself if the definitions lead you to concrete steps on when information is common knowledge and when it is not. Hint: depends on the rhetorical triangle of audience, context, purpose, as well as level of detail and relative newness of information. Now, read this short web presentation "What is Common Knowledge" at the OWL at Purdue U. Check out the additional links within OWL.
See you MWF in our OHitS/AMA locations to learn more about this important thinking and writing skill. We will discuss this contextually about the rain garden memo. This is our work this week.
Marybeth Shea
REDID LINK! SEEMS TO WORK NOW (mea culpa; technology is great except when it is not).
See you here (OHitS/AMA) for elaborated discussion on citation as a way to help Jane trust your information and face the meeting with confidence.
Reread Monday's information. Let's talk about bioretention knowledge as common knowledge.
TIME: Because rain gardens as an environmental tool date from the early 90s, the time that this working concept is within culture, this is the primary basis for the knowledge being common. One test of common knowledge is the age+diffusion into culture.
Another check is GENERAL DISCUSSION quality; rain garden are based on existing gardening and agricultural knowledge (fits the time test above, also). Within general discussion though, you can use specific information where a source is helpful. For example, consider these two examples:
Rain gardens are cost effective.
Rain gardens, according to a 2029 report by the Low Impact Development Center, cost between $2.5 and 7.5 per square foot, compared to $27 per square foot, when using conventional pipling systems.
I think you would trust sentence two more, right? Now, do we need a citation for sentence two? Depend. Here the CONTEXT and LEVEL of FORMALITY helps us decide. In a science research article, we would need a parenthetical cite PLUS a bibliographic entry later in the document. For a newspaper? The sentence includes details that you could use to search on: who, what, where.
HOWEVER, audiences in digital environments are supported by referral links, so that they can click into a good source. This is the part of context -- our powerful hypertext tools -- that supports use of curated, referral links.
Bottom line:
- I want you to practice citation in this memo.
- Para 1 does NOT need a cite.
- Paras 2-3 can use a few referral inks
- Only para 4, the evaluation para needs a formal citation.
OK: reread Monday's guidance. Think about how this discussion can help you with other document in school and in work. Visit today in the document linked about to ask questions.
For Friday, you have a review task in Eli Review due on Friday. Open NOW.
Marybeth Shea
See you today, for your questions in Friday's OHitS/AMA.
Recall that you have a Eli Review task tonight. BE ON TIME for each other. Recall that you can negotiate with me about extensions for the final version that I grade. But, we need to be on time for each other, so that the giving and receiving process can benefit YOU and others.
Let's review technical aspects of paragraphs. Read these two MSWord handouts and consider this isual metaphor of the OVERALL job of paragraphs within a technical document. Note, that the muffin tray visual does not account for the cognitive wedge strategy of shorter to longer paragraphs, at the beginning of the document, especially.
Paragraph Definitiosn: think Architectures (one page)
Paragraphs with a Purpose (longish, with sample paragraphs I will start to discuss in Office Hours in the Sky)
Note: these guidance documents are somewhat general and do not bear directly on the rain garden memo. However, we are always learning. And, your rain garden memo uses paragraphs.
One of Aristotle's canons for writing is ARRANGEMENT. The order and "chunking" of information matters very much for reader cognition and receptivity to what you write. Chunking IS related to cognitive wedge framing of a document.
Week three: sentences and paragraphs
in the context of your rain garden memo. Some of this is review for you but consider this strategic review. You can use sentences not only to carry content BUT as designed structures to help your reader enter the material, take up information easily, and leave the document better for having read what you wrote.
Let's look at examples of topic sentences useful in the rain garden memo:
Rain gardens, or bioretention ponds, are a kind of low impact development. Low impact development....
Rain gardens have two components: layers of percolation material and carefully chosen plants.
Rain gardens protect the local environment by absorbing water run-off from impervious surfaces and by sequestering pollutants.
Dr. Allen Davis studies rain garden effectiveness. Davis, a civil engineering professor, has been studying bioretention for more than twenty years.
Let's also think about sentences generally. General advice to you? Write shorter sentences than those you are familiar with in literature and many of your textbooks.
Now, let's think about sentences (MS Word docs (1 pagers) that will likely download to your machine, depending on how your browser is arranged):
MONDAY's OHitS/AMA link here. As ever, I host from 9-12. Show up and ask a question. Lurk to see what others ask. If you are busy, you can look at that document later. If you have a question off hours, you can ask me the next class day in the new OHitS/AM document. You can also email me. In this way, we are trying to be together apart. In Testudo, this class is identified as synchronous, as in we would be f2f in real life. I am trying to honor that structure and give all of you more control over your days.
Hint: are you unclear about the level of the detail you need about rain gardens? Visiting today's document will help you. In the sentence types we try out, you can see detail. And, you can ask about the level of detail and I can answer in sample sentence structures. Learning contextually is more powerful than having you do ten pages of sentence worksheets.
Other tasks for you (labor grades in effect): how is your reading going of your chosen article? Recall Raul Pacheco-Vega's guidance on reading? Here is a Google doc I made for you to copy to your drive to keep track of reading this article. The frame is a bit simpler than the one he advises and previews the content I need for you to prepare for your March/April assignment of reviewing the article.
By the way, read his entry on cognitive overload in online higher ed courses. I feel similarly. Consequently, I am trying to design for this. Read your article in bits and parts all this month. This means that you will have a head-start on meaning before you write that third assignment.
Marybeth Shea
Good morning. We will stay in the same OHitS/AMA google doc and work on sentences, especially topic sentences and transitions. Here is a good reading by Raul Pachego Vega on the combined technique of thinking about topic sentences and paragraphs. You can skim and parse that blog post, dwelling on the images.
I am preparing a short table of practical take-aways from this reading. Note the citation style of Pachego Vega in that blog post: he notes the work of Patrick Dunleavy in this link. One additional writing/reading frame we use all year is that of the power of hypertext. That readers can choose their own adventure in many digital occasions of reaction.
Another person that he recommends and acknowledges is Eve Ewing, who uses the five-paragraph essay as a familiar structure to many writers. You may know this genre as the (famous) Extended Constructed Response.
Note: I like that RPV -- Raul Pachego Vega -- gives you the ethos clue that Dunleavy and Ewing both hold PhD degrees. THat is a kind of credibility move but I wish he would preview the platform too.
For example, how about this way to introduce linked material:
Dr. Eve Ewing is a Chicago-based sociologist who speciazes in learning and cognition, as well as cultural critique of education. One of her projects concerns writing from k-12 but extending that frame into college and career. She also writes comic books for Marvel. Here is Outlawed.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday. Here is the inaugural post in Eli Review for your first assignment, due Monday at 11;45 PM. Between 9-12, I host in this OHitSAMA.
The link to Eli Review is in your ELMS calendar, too. I am checking/rechecking the rest of the semester and will post links soon. Subscribe to that feed in ELMS so you can have pingy reminders.
Happy Lunar New Year. Wish we could celebrate in class with moon cakes or some other treat. Cooking gear goal, link in picture to Amazon.
Like a cookie press but for moon cake darlings
WEEK 2: learning our
tech platforms
- You need to make a Google folder of my documents that I will use in the semester: Office Hours in the Sky/Ask Me Anything (OHitS) documents that will be hosted by me on all MWF between 9-11. You can type anonymously and I will answer in real time. The docs will be locked midday but available for you to read. In this way, my class is synchronous but not required AND asynchronous of shared knowledge for you to read as you will.
- Learning a bit of writing composition pedagogy helpers
- Cognitive wedge (one-page Google doc) praxis (TBD Monday and all week)
- Stasis theory overview (2 Google slides)
- Follow-up on audience analysis slides, two of which were discussed in WEEK 1 below.
- Checking out these resources here on Squarespace: set of language helper links, to see the range of digital sources on language choices
Looking ahead? Wednesday and Friday we will prep for the invention phase of memo 1: understanding what rain gardens are and preparing to define and describe. If you want, read ahead for ten minutes a day or so. You can look at the Wikipedia entries or do a google search (think critically about what you find).
TL:DNR? Try this:
- squarespace for weekly, MWF guidance and links to learning content (WEEK with updates)
- OHitS/AMA docs on MWF for you to ask me questions openly (from the discussion I will calibrate what we do next.
- ELMS calendar to be linked to specific tasks later this week
- ELI Review (will will register for this in Week 3).
What we do in these spaceds:
- Squarespace, where I present short, targeted lessons on writing and link to our discussion spot on
- Google Docs, where you interact with me MWF 9-12 and can "see" what is there
- Eli Review, where you interact with each other to write, review, revise --> toward excellent writing (and learning) for three major assignments: Memo 1, Memo 2, Article Review.
Promise to you: I will work hard to curate links to what you need for the day, the week, and the month.
Recall the labor grading approach: I will grade you on three papers, each accompanied by four labor grades for your reading, drafting, commenting, revising, and generally being part of our learning community.
Arrive alive, together.
Marybeth Shea
First assignment: short, definition memo. Here are a few remarks that give you context. Then, move over to the OHitS Google doc (me, hosting between 9-12).
There, I preview the size of the document and the arrangment and size of paragraphs. This will help guide you in your recursive step on what sources you need. Recall this context: Boss says, "I need backgrounder by 11. Driving to Baltimore to meet with Hogan on rain gardens and bioretention."
We will write for Jane Austen Powers at Leaf it to Us. Wh is she?
Answer: SHE IS THE BOSS and your primary audience for the memo.
Source: Dover Pictoral Archive -- Office Clip Art collection
LESSON 1 to review: Topic Sentences, to open each paragraph: A list of qualities for you to strive for
Usually a short direct sentence (think announcement)
- Signals the topic in the paragraph (think preview)
- Hooks the reader by 1) raising a question or 2) provoking thought
- Can be placed anywhere, but early on in the paragraph is the best default strategy for most professional documents; in other words, at the beginning of the paragraph
- Contains an element of transition from the previous paragraph
The memo assignment connects to stasis theory. We will write an in-class set of four short paragraphs that expand the definition stasis, using the cognitive wedge strategy.
- Para 1 opens the 2nd Stasis: Definition (what is a rain garden, briefly, by two functions)
- Para 2, adds detail and places in context: Classifying (what type of technology is this? Hint: green infrastructure, sustainability, low impact development and storm water management)
- Para 3, elaborates further by painting a picture: Describing (Illustrative; give some functional detail on the layers of soil and also look at the plants and mulch at the surface)
- Now enters the evaluation or quality stasis, that you can write as an evalution paragraph (is this technology good or bad? Note, we are making a claim. Claims must be supported with evidence. Use these two sources to support this claim: Low Impact Development Center (founded by Larry Coffman who invented rain gardens) and some of the slides in this presentation by the "grand wizard' of bioretention, Allen Davis, PhD.
Marybeth Shea
Friday, we will work in a new Office Hours in the Sky/AMA doc. There, we will connect stasis theory to your readings about rain gardens/bioremediation/low impact development (a view-only Google doc). See those three words? They are your search engine words to sift through some Google results to get clear on these terms. Note: we need to learn how to use Google well and ethically.
I will place the link for Eli Review in an ELMS email to you. Go to EliReview.com and register. No tasks there yet. However, you can view some short videos to see how this works. I promise, this system is better than using any of the options, including long discussion threads to work with each other reviewing/revising your documents.
Still building the ELMS calendar, which will always link to your tasks in Eli Review.
For the next two weeks, you are reading critically:
- your review article to prep for our late March/early April assignment #3
- Google based reading and my suggested links about rain gardens/bioremediation/low impact development
- and, I assume, tons of reading for your other classes.
Therefore, here are a few links to that will support you in your heavy reading loads
- Policy expert and professor Raul Pachego-Vega's wonderful website about academic reading, writing, presenting (all linked by critical thinking): This link, which includes a template for note taking, is really good
- My reading guide, based on ecologist K.E.'s approach (1-page Google doc/outline)
Meta-analysis terms (concepts that will help you now)
- last mile problem, described here briefly in Business Insider
- rain gardens are a last mile solution
- our mask distribution project to each other also has last-mile qualities
Meta-technique option in modern digital communication:
- do you see in this post and my other teaching materials that I try to help readers move through hypertext with efficiency and support?
- links are curated (type of information, sense of platform, and length of document/hypertext space
- where possible, I help you see ethos (business journal, ecologist, etc.)
- also, I try desperately NOT to send you to pay walled information
- how about you adopt this meta-technique in YOUR writing?
Welcome to Spring 2021: WEEK 1 RECAP
Good morning. This Class Journal place is the primary way to keep track of how this class works. This portion of my teaching website is a blog scroll, meaning that each new entry appears higher in the feed than those previously.
I will POST WEEKLY, with follow-ups as needed for Wednesday and Friday. I would check in MWF and use the links to resources and lessons.
Tasks for Wednesday and Friday of WEEK 1: (most of you have done these tasks already)
- Read the syllabus and syllabus rationale so you are aware of my teaching strategies
- Add a slide to this introduction set, so I we can "visualize" each other
- Visit Eli Review and spend ten minutes on the site. Note: you are not logging in yet. Just scoping out.
- Look at this padlet on diversity and inclusion/peer editing/classroom climate. We will look at these links on Friday during our Google Meet (9AM, 10AM) so have this interactive resource in a browser tab when we meet.
- Quick tech test for Monday in GoogleMeet (complete by Wednesday AM so we can look at this Google Jamboard together. This jamboard has three pages. You only need to do one of the three prompts. Try to help each other fill up the three pages on COVID visualization, masking directions, and humor to del with COVID stress and cognitive overload.
Links to save:
For now, this Google Meet link will be used repeatedly for our class meetings. Here is our GroupMe also. These links are also in the Welcome to Class announcement in ELMS. Here is a template for a notes capture sheet.