For the last week or so we've been discussing the final project. today they had to turn in their annotated bibliographies, and they look promising. i am not sure if they look so promising because I gave thorough examples and instruction or if it is because i gave an extension...twice. I think the majority of the class enjoys the assignment. I altered Erin's assigment in that, instead of Hotel Rwanda, I have allowed them to choose a controversial television programs such as Nip/Tuck, The Boondock's, SouthPark... to illuminated the program's critiques of our culture. They must decide whether the program they choose is solely controversial (for the sake of shocking the audience with its sexual explicitness or vulgarity) or has some value.

we were in a computer class today and instead of having another boring discussion of RUG, i decided to pull together a few print ads from the web and facilitate a discussion in which student rhetorically analyzed the ads. we used chapter 9 of CDA to aid us in our discussion of how color (hue, saturation, and brightness), font, arrangement,... informs a text's/author's ethos, pathos, and logos. they were pretty quiet at first, that is until the conversation moved from a discussion of an ad which berated the "No Child Left Behind" initiative to one that perpetuated "sex sales" ideology. from my perspective, it seemed as though the visuals aided in their understanding of these rhetorical strategies.

We had a thorough discussion on the differences between revising and editing a paper. They were very excited about the various revision techniques I shared with them and strangely enough they shared many they've used and learned in the past. Instead of simply giving them a list of techniques to use at their leisure, I asked them to actually use them in class and we discussed the effectiveness of each technique. Their favorite was "Clothing the Naked this, that, and other things (such as "It" ). They had to circle each time they used words such as it, that, this... without supplying a referent. Our goal was to eliminate confusion and ensure clarity.

if anyone is interested in documenting their grades in a spreadsheet

So for class we are discussing identity. We played a word/image association game with the word identity. I was amazed at the variety of responses students gave from movies with the word identity in them to the identity theft commercials that i know everyone is familiar with. We then began to discuss how it is we define ourselves whether it is by events that have happened in our lives, people, places/region, culture... The discussion was awesome. The best so far, I believe. I am still having a hard time with discussions pertaining to the text. They loath both R.U.G. and CDA. I think it is more of my not locating a viable way to approach the texts yet.

i know it is a little early to be asking for subs, but i wanted to be the first to do so. is there anyone willing to cover two of my classes the first week in september while i take my prelims?