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Oops, science is POWERFUL!
ENGL 390, 390H, and (sometimes) 398V Class Journal
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Good morning 4/27
April ending and May beginning. Here is the Monday's AMA+OHitS document where you can ask questions. Try to drop by and ask something. Last three documents pretty much empty, though, perhaps this means you are using your time wisely and appreciate a lighter version of science writing, given your tasks and many obligations.
UPDATE:
- Wednesday's AMA+OHitS document
- NEW UPDATE FOR FRIDAY, MAY 1: AMA+OHitS document
- New Task on ELI, for a revise and submit of your one-article review, based on your revision plan. (Due Friday evening,) You will have one more peer review opportunity before submitting for a grade on May 8.
- AUDIO FILE (a bit long at 7-minutes but includes my musing on some of this and wishes for all of you to be muddling through in reasonable ways.)
This poster is from circa 1945. More health communication posters at the National Library of Medicine search engines. Here is a good overview of the history of handwashing in a NLM staff blog piece, rich with links.
Repost from last week about DUE DATES/COURSE COMPLETION
I am looking at you revising your document by Friday, MAY 1, to ELI for one more quick peer review (groups of three). Then, submit to me by May 8, also a Friday, for a grade.
Then, by May 15, a brief reflection piece.
4/20 information and guidance
UPDATED! as per ELI Review, your revision plan is due WEDNESDAY. Sorry for the panic that may have ensued. Here is a cookie, with coffee.
Good morning. Here is a link to Monday's AMA OHitS document. UPDATED: Link to Wednesday's AMA OHitK I expect that people WILL show up, at least a bit because your revision plan in due, Tuesday WEDNESDAY just before MIDNIGHT. I plan to post a short audio (less than five minutes of some of the highlights of that AMA/OHitS document) just to give you another way to absorb the information. Here is a gorgeous 30-second preview clip of a professionally rendered 4K video. This depiction shows shows what a corona virus looks like under a microscope, where the camera pans around the structure (by Matthew Butler). Science visualization is amazing; this virus is beautiful yet deadly.
UPDATED: Friday's link, where we chat about your revision plan questions. I am looking at you revising your document by Friday, MAY 1, to ELI for one more quick peer review (groups of three). Then, submit to me by May 8, also a Friday, for a grade.
Then, by May 15, a brief reflection piece.
4K Closeup of the Coronavirus or Covid-19 Outbreak in 3D from Matthew Butler on Vimeo.
Short MP3 audio file here. This message is a greeting and a question: I am not sure these google doc sessions are helpful. Can you offer some feedback on this? Should I open them the night before? Then, you can post questions? I think you might be working at night on these tasks and we are ships passing in the night.
4/12 Week and links
Good morning. I will post a fuller update to this post on Tuesday or Wednesday, after I look at your review work in ELI. As for today, here is the AMA/OHitS google doc. I will be there between 9-1. For a bit of joy, look at this short animation by SF, former student. She used Biorender and Flipaclip. Read more about Biorender by heading over to the AMA/OHitS document linked above.
See you soon.
Here is today's AMA/OHitS. I think I will post an ELI task for REVISION PLAN. How will you revise your document based on what you have learned from:
- your review of the work of others AND
- what others note about your document.
Thinking I will post tonight and have due on April 21, Tuesday evening, 11.45. Will listen to feedback from you in the linked document above.
Audio note, if you like. I would like to put a little background music in this but have not figured that out yet. If you know how and would like to help, let me know. My brain is not working as well as I would like. Hope your brains -- and hearts -- are holding up.
Happy Friday, dear Science Writing Enthusiasts.
Here is our AMA+OHitS google doc for the day. I expect more questions than on Monday and Friday, as you will see a REVISION TASK in ELI Review. I shifted the due date to
2020-04-22 at 11:59 PM
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Giving you a bit more time to think about revising your document. Your Revision Plan should respond to what your colleagues suggested AND my five-page Checklist (linked in your ELI Review Revison Plan Task),
After today's AMA+OHitS, I will record a short audio file to capture this content, for those of you who prefer a "sound" experience rather than the visual experience of typing.
OPTIONAL side discussion on the ETHOS of our voices: Why do our voices sound so strange to our ears? Explainer here. This BBC platform features a 3-minute YouTube video from the "Head Squeeze" series. Greg Foot sports that British accent, which is for many of us, a sort of upper. class ethos.
Related: What is vocal fry? Wikipedia is a good place to start. Then, read this Johns Hopkins Medicine take. Wonder if I can learn to minimize this tendency BEFORE I record today's audio clip? Here is an 8-minute video reflection on vocal fry plus upspeak by an actor/voice coach. I am getting ahead of myself. You may want to listen to the social analysis news clip below first. I linked to Amy Walker's video because I asked my friends MK and JM, professional actors, about my voice in these recordings. Both referred me to Walker.
And, here is the interesting and serious social analysis of when vocal fry harms women (a CBC 2-minute clip form 2015).
4/6 through 4/13 Review Task in ELI
supporting each other in writing really fine one-article review documents. I will open the ELI task just before 9AM today. You will have a week to read and review four THREE pieces of colleague's work. This means that you will have feedback from four THREE people. Then, during week of 4/13, you will write a revision plan, by an ELI taks I will create. This is your documentation of how you plan to revise your document to turn in for a grade on or about April 24.
OOPS! About the review groups: some of you are in groups of five, meaning that you review four documents. Others are in groups of four, meaning that you review three documents. I was unaware about some default settings in ELI Review. Pardon me for the confusion.
This week, I will host two AMA sessions on Monday and Wednesday UPDATED!. I will divide the documents into
- more general questions about what is going on about the class/campus/grades/ etc. AND
- questions you have about reviewing each other's work in ELI and questions you have about your review in process.
Friday's document AMA/OHS here.
Later today, I will upload an audio file with some commentary on where we are, that repeats what I have types, with some highlights. I mean for the audio to be another venue in which we interact. Our primary engagement is by typing. I hope that is a relief for some of you. I am overloaded on Zoom/GoogleMeet sessions.
Preview: our final project will be an ungraded reflection paper on using ELI. This will help me plan for the fall. Here is an audio file of an old typewriter. I happen to own a similar one.
Here is the audio file promised yesterday, at 5.49 minutes. Information repeats what I have been typing about. However, this medium gives you another way to "hear" what I have to say. Content? Concerns grades/assignments/wrapping up the course.
Also, check out the strike-outs in the entry here that guides our week of 4/6. I use strike-out to be honest with you about making changes. This is an ethical duty I have to you. Bottom line? I messed up my response on the 1/6 Monday AMA/Office Hours in the Sky google doc. I address this in today's (4/8) AMA/Office Hours in the Sky google doc. And, I update this Class Journal entry too.
Back to SPRING 2020
FOR MARCH 30-APRIL 3
Greetings, dear science writing students. This post tells you want to do for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My goals are the following for us as a class:
- Learn to Write to a prompt in ELI Review and Review -- in groups I select -- each other's writing.
- Prepare to develop a Revision plan in ELI Review, based on the feedback you receive.
- Focus on a set of short slide presentations about audience analysis as a life-long skill for thinking about writing for the many occasions of life that require such responses. Spend about a half hour looking at these:
- Touch base a bit about how the class is being revised and talk about fewer assignments, a final project, and grades. We will do this by some Google Docs that I host. I will be in these documents between 9-12 on Monday and UPDATED Wednesday (to be linked later). You can ask questions beforehand or during the time I will be there or read the documents later. In this way, the process is like the Office-Hours-in-the-Sky approach we use. But, I am calling these documents Monday ASK ME ANYTHING and Wednesday ASK ME ANYTHING. I think we have lots of questions about how this semester will resume and continue, as well as end.
Technology and platforms
- We continue with this class journal and I suggest that you start here each day and week to be clear about what we are doing. I will try to link here to the two other platforms, namely, Google Docs/Slides that you are already familiar with and the new platform: ELI Review.
Time and place
- I am moving to asynchronous vs. synchronous. Here are my reasons: we are all under wildly new circumstances regarding family, living conditions, work responsibilities, and our other courses. Moving to a largely asynchronous setting is more fitting for this occasion that we find ourselves in. I am sad to not be together with you all (9Am, 10AM, 11AM crews). Yet, as I revise the course into what is do-able, realistic, just, kind, fair, and appropriate, this is the way forward that I choose.
- ELI Review, where we will conduct our writing, reviewing, and revising together makes this possible.
For Monday: Please access ELI Review by a code. The code should be circulating on groupMe. Ask for this code from your colleagues. Email if you still need the code, at either address. The code allows you access to ELI Review. Once you are in ELI Review, I suggest you poke around and learn how the site works.
As of 6:07 today, 27 people are listed on the roster. I need to see all of you on the roster no later than 8AM on Monday March 30. There, you need to complete the assignment that is named "SOFT OPENING for WEEKEND: MEDIA Curation of two slide sets." This link will take you to ELI REVIEW, IF YOU ARE ON THE ROSTER AND LOGGED IN. Read the directions and complete the short assignment by 1PM on Monday (please ignore the due date on that task for now). Once you complete the short assignments, I will see that you have completed the task. Then, I will assign a review task for you and your classmates based on that short assignment. That review task will be due on -->
Wednesday, by 1PM. UPDATED: Thursday, 2020-04-02 11:45 pm. Then, we will have some experience using ELI REVIEW.
Friday: I will host a session on Friday, in a Google Doc UPDATED!. This will take the form of Office Hours in the Sky, with me being there between 9-1. I WILL CHECK THE DOCUMENT again by 5PM. Here, I am supporting you as we did earlier in the semester: Helping you before you turn in a major assignment. You are familiar with how that sessions works. The topic will be about your article review assignment underway before campus closure/spring break. For Friday, by midnight, you will need to post that document into an ELI Review Writing Task prompt that I will release on Friday morning. UPDATE: I posted on Tuesday AM, so you can have more time to think about this, ask me questions, and prepare your document for Friday,
Process comment: This week, we practice ELI Review, prepare to share our article review documents in ELI, and generally get back into the swing of things.
What we are NOT DOING: We are not using ELMS, nor ZOOM, now.
Advice: Take a deep breathe. Join ELI Review. I will have more to say how we proceed after this week. And, I want to hear from you. I have some ideas about how to learn together, but we are a writing community. Let's spend the week together and see what we develop together.
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TASKS for the week:
- Join ELI Review and spend fifteen minutes learning basics.
- Complete the ELI Writing Task linked above by Monday at noon.
- Look at the audience analysis slides linked above.
- Complete the ELI Review Task, where you comment to a colleague on their slide.
- Prepare to post your article review to ELI by Friday at midnight.
- AND: Rest, eat good food, spend time outside in spring sun, exercise, be connected to people you love.
NB and others: here is a MP3 test file for audio, that I could include with the task list each week. Email me if this works.
From anon student in ENGL 390. Thank you. You are fabulous.