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Week 12: Is technology altering our relationships with other humans? With technology itself?

I hope our workshop time last night helped you make some progress on your portfolio site, and I hope you’ll take some time during the coming week to experiment with a few of “Quinn’s Favorite WordPress Tools” at the bottom of the Resources page. As you encounter WordPress problems, just remember: Google is your friend. The WordPress user base is so big that no matter what problem you’re trying to solve, chances are someone else has encountered it before and posted a solution in the WordPress Forums or on their own site. And if you search for an answer and come up empty, I am always happy to help with technology issues during my office hours.

Your annotated bibliography for the Research Design assignment is due no later than Friday, April 12, so please make sure that your ten entries for our shared bibliography are in the appropriate folder in Google Drive. (Oh, and when you’re done, be sure to search the bibliography folder to find additional sources that might be useful for your project.)

Our list of discussion superheroes ran out, so next Wednesday, everyone will be a superhero. (Don’t forget your capes and masks!) We will dive into our last book of the semester, and Josette will demonstrate how she uses Elements and Dropbox. Our workshop time will be devoted to drafting introductions to research articles, following the model that Swales outlines in one of our assigned readings.

To read before class:

  • Alone Together, pages ix–147
  • “Introductions,” from Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, by John M. Swales (PDF copy located in our class’s shared Google Drive folder)

To do before class:

  • Finish adding pages to your portfolio site and focus on customizing the appearance and organization of your site. At this point, you should be installing plugins, adjusting your theme, and thinking about the first impression that your site makes. A full draft of your portfolio is due on Friday, April 19, and I will hold a “portfolio hackathon” on Friday morning (8-12 in 340 Shanks Hall) for those of you who want to congregate and work through any remaining issues with some help from your classmates and me.

Bonus reading (as time and interest permit):

In class, several of you seemed excited about using a tool like Zotero, so this week’s bonus articles focus on evaluating reference management software and getting the most out of the program you choose:

Any questions about these plans, or about your individual projects? If so, just let me know!