Sample Syllabi, Assignment Prompts, Schedule & Course Reader

• The  assignment sequence, sample prompts, and a model syllabus and schedule
• Pietera's syllabus & schedule; Essay 1 prompt & outline guide 
• Cam's RWS 100 Syllabus.docx  Cam's Essay 1 prompt and Student Schedule.docx
• Sample schedule and detailed day-by-day notes for semester from Jenny (this is just one way to organize your schedule/teach your class)
• The RWS 100 Reader. Contains commonly used handouts, teaching materials and the main texts for the semester. 
• Short readings and notes on syllabus design: 
• Summary notes
• Slattery, Jeanne M. and Janet F. Carlson. "Preparing an Effective Syllabus." College Teaching 53.4 (2004): 159-164.
• Sinor, Jennifer and Matt Kaplan “Creating Your Syllabus” University of Michigan GSI Handbook. 

• Matejka, Ken and Lance B. Kurke. “Designing a Great Syllabus.” College Teaching 42.3 (1994): 115-122.

Overviews and Detailed Descriptions of Teaching Activities

• Overview of teaching schedules and teaching activities for entire semester, plus more detailed accounts of possible activities for first 2 weeks and for entire units.
• The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies
• 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half
  

First Weeks: Introducing the Course & Applying Concepts to Short texts

• Advice on ways of managing the first 2 weeks of class, using short texts to introduce key concepts,and organizing the first unit (Chris)
• See the large collection of material on the wiki discussing things to do in class in the first 2-3 weeks.

Critical Digital Literacies

• A guide to using your class wiki
• A guide for your students explaining how to set up a Wordpress blog
• A guide to using Hypothes.is, in your class. Hypothes.is is a collaborative annotation, feedback and bookmarking tool.  
• 5 Ways to Read Websites (infographic)
• Visual version of RWS 200 syllabus
• Larger collection of digital literacy resources (search, bookmarking, curation, annotation, etc.)  
• Small activities on multimodal rhetorics/literacies
• Short reading on multmodality and writing

Unit 1: Thompson's "Public Thinking"

The Text

• Excerpts from Clive Thompson's "Public Thinking," chapter 1 of Smarter Than You Think (Penguin Press, 2013.) The excerpts are 
  pages 5 - 61, 66-68, and 81-2. You may wish to use the complete chapter for assignment 1 (you can also use this for 
  unit 4 as a text that responds to Boyd and Carr).

Background & Links

• Clive Thompson's bio (from the site for his book, Smarter Than You Think.)
• Thompson's wikipedia page, twitter feed and blog 
• Video of Thompson discussing some of the claims in his book with Andrew Keen of TechCrunch TV (10 minutes).  Video interview about the book on Huffington Post (12 minutes).  
• Video of Thompson from CBS This Morning show. Short (3.45) 
• Review of the book by Walter Isaacson of the New York Times. A collection of reviews from other sources (selected by the publisher of Thompson's book). 

Collected Teaching Materials for Unit 1

• Collection of Teaching Materials for unit 1 and Thompson's "Public Thinking" 

Examples of Public Thinking

Thompson talks about the importance of “public thinking” and “networked” reading and writing of texts. At the end of his chapter he asks, “What tools will create new forms of public thinking in the years to come?” His answer is that “as more forms of media become digital, they'll become sites for public thinking… Marginalia may become a new type of public thinking, with the smartest remarks from other readers becoming part of how we make sense of a book.” Thompson also discusses how reading and writing are becoming “blended,” and quotes literacy theorist Debbie Brandt: “People read in order to generate writing; we read from the posture of the writer.”

We can examine some contemporary examples of tools and publishing experiments that embody Thompson's ideas. These may help us understand what Thompson is on about, but also determine the extent to which his claims are plausible.

• Hypothesis is an example of a wave of new tools and experiments with social reading and writing. It enables people to publicly comment on and annotate online texts, and also lets you form groups, and follow people whose annotations you like. Example: if you look at Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” you’ll see a scholar has recorded his response in the margins. (You will need to have added the extension to see this). Political speeches are starting to be publicly annotated by academics. For example, the sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom annotated Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic national Convention using Hypothesis.

• The annotation tools “News Genius” and “Rap Genius” let users comment on, explicate, analyze and annotate news stories and music lyrics. Rap genius is used a lot and may be of interest to students.  Consider the following: T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock has been nicely annotated. The line “Do I dare disturb the universe” is discussed, along with the fact that the line was remixed and used by rapper Chuck D. http://genius.com/Ts-eliot-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-annotated If you click on the line the link to Chuck D will appear.   
  
  The Genius annotation system is used for fan fiction, creative writers, and many genres of "high" and pop culture.  The literature page is here: http://lit.genius.com/ Consider this annotation of Shelley's "Ozymandias". Note also that users vote on which annotations should be listed at the top, and there is a scoreboard of most popular writers and annotators.  Note also that while fans annotate pop songs, some artists annotate their own songs. Consider the recent hit "Broccoli," by D.R.A.M., which is annotated by the songwriters. Other writers and artists who have annotated texts are here  (you can follow them).

• Writers comment and annotate their own (and others) texts. Lena Dunham has used Genius to annotate a chapter from her book Not That Kind Of Girl, a collection of essays. 

• The Washington Post has posted annotated versions of major speeches by politicians using the annotation tool “News Genius.” They published an annotated version of Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention and Hilary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

• The magazine platform Medium enables readers to comment on and annotate articles, follow writers and annotators, and reply to comments/annotations. Dana Boyd, one of the authors we will read, has a page on Medium. You can see all the articles she has written and also the notes she has made, and you can follow both.

• There are many scholarly tools for annotating texts. Some have been developed by writing faculty. For example there is MIT's Annotation Studio, and CMU's Classroom Salon. There is also CommentPress, an open-source plug-in for WordPress developed by folks at the Future of the Book initiative. This tool "aims to turn a document into a conversation (view examples here). Readers can comment on, say, an academic paper before it has gone to press and add insights and questions in the margins of the text." 

Unit 2: Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

• Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
• Carr's blog page and his wikipedia page

• Videos of Carr explaining his arguments:

  6 minute PBS interview with Carr explaining his main arguments 
  16 minute video interview with Canadian host Steve Paikin ("Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?")

  The Harvard Book Store presents Nicholas Carr: The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (49 mins)

• IQ Squared debate featuring Carr (IQ Squared site, and from YouTube - starts at about 10 minutes). This could be used to model a Thompson-Carr debate, with Weinberger adopting Thompson's stance.

• Presentation at  the Commonwealth Club of California, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (60 minutes - you can select "chapters" from the talk)

•  Nicholas Carr & Stephen Fry on The Effects of Web Culture (9 minutes)

Collected Teaching Materials for Unit 2

• Collection of Teaching Materials for unit 2 and Carr's's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
• Sample Sequence of Teaching Activities for Unit 2 
• See collection of online materials for introducing, analyzing and teaching rhetorical strategies 
• Parfitt (Writing in Response) pages 122 – 126 discusses types of evidence and presents an “argument matrix” that models how to start building a critique of Carr 
• Parfitt (Writing in Response, pp. 4-9) discusses how Carr illustrates elements of academic discourse. Parfitt also presents a helpful close reading of some sections in Carr. This could be used to help students understand some of the moves Carr makes. 

Responses, Extensions & Challenges to Carr

• Encyclopedia Britannica hosted a forum on Carr's text. Many prominent writers responded with some short, lively posts. Here, for example,  
  is Clay Shirky's "Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr."   Carr replied (Nick Carr: Why Skepticism is Good: My Reply to Clay Shirky) and Shirky replied back, Clay Shirky: Why Abundance Should Breed Optimism: A Second Reply to Nick Carr Andrew Keen defended Carr, with Andrew Keen: The New Techno-Historical Determinism 
• Shirky, "Does The Internet Make You Smarter?" 
• Pinker, "Mind Over Mass Media" (html) and also as a pdf.

Unit 3: Boyd's "Literacy: Are Today's Youth Digital Natives?'"

• Danah Boyd's "Literacy: Are Today's Youth Digital Natives?" (here are the footnotes for the chapter)  
• An annotated/charted version of Boyd's text 

Collected Teaching Materials for Unit 3

• Collection of Teaching Materials for unit 3 and Boyd's' Literacy: Are Today's Youth Digital Natives?"
• A set of research "angles" and topics students should use for assignment 3, and a collection of texts that can help with this. 
• Pietera's "Describing Relationships Between Texts" (adapted from Julie Harris' worksheet) and "Putting Texts in Conversation" exercises. 

Background on Boyd & her book

• Some background on Boyd: her homepage, blog, twitter feed, social bookmarks (on delicious), wikipedia page, MEDIUM page (can see what she has written, annotated,and who she follows)

• The text we are reading is a chapter from Boyd's book, It's Complicated: the Social lives of Networked Teens." 
  Boyd has made the text freely available online as a .pdf (what does that tell us about the author and her attitude to her work?) 

Videos of Boyd and other Writers discussing Digital Natives

• Susan Bennett, “The Dangerous Idea of the Digital Native”  
• Boyd talk to Leo Laporte about how the idea of 'Digital Natives' is a misnomer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0k-Rx4sht8 (4 minutes)
• Boyd talks to UW Comm undergraduate Austin Williams about her book, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTvR2EFXRYU (12 minutes)
• Marc Prensky (often credited with coining the term “digital natives”) explains digital natives to PBS interviewer on Frontline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQLTHyRG_g
• Two talks that show how widespread the terms “digital natives” and digital immigrants” are. 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_9gI0B4nS4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRQdAOrqvGg (shows existence and popularity of the term ‘digital native’)
• Do "Digital Natives" Exist? Idea Channel, PBS Digital Studios. Fun entertaining video that echoes many of Boyd’s claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WVKBAqjHiE
• Boyd cites Pariser on google, search and "filter bubbles." Here is a TED talk Pariser gave that outlines this argument. 
• Boyd cites the influential work of Tarleton Gillespie on the politics of algorithms.
• This 5 minute interview of Gillespie by an undergraduate spells out some main ideas of his work in an accessible way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cT1i1_Nydw

Election Texts and Links that Students Could Use to Explore Critical Digital Literacy

Exercise: In groups, examine one of the links below. Answer the following questions A) What does the story or post say?  B) Does it seem credible? Why or why not? C) How can you tell? What criteria or tools did you use to determine credibility?

1. Pope Endorsement
2. Benton Strategy Group Leaked Report, "Salvage" Plan
3. Private Email Server and Police Raid
4. Amnesty Plans 
5. Clinton Adviser Scandal (skim report, but look at the first 10 comments - what are they like? 
6. Twitter post about Scandal 
7. Election results 
8. Now: are protests against Trump staged and full of paid protesters? Trump retweeted that this is true, then later tweeted something more conciliatory. His son earlier tweeted something similar, then deleted it after the site he linked to was revealed to be a hoax.
9. Many users of Facebook and many political sites shared "news" that BLM and Trump protests are Soros-funded hate groups designed to overthrow the US. These seem to be having an impact on groups like the Oath keepers. Do we (students, citizens, academics) need tools to track the flow, reach and distribution of such stories?

Election Rhetoric & Social Media

• Election Rhetoric - some powerpoints that explore A) why Trump's rhetoric was effective, and B) the role social media may have played in the recent election 

Videos and Articles on Election and Social Media News Sites

• Scott Adams on Trump's rhetoric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55NxKENplG4
• CNN Money story on rise of fake news sites 
• Denver Post story on the Denver Guardian: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/05/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-denver-guardian/
• John Oliver on local news and democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq2_wSsDwkQ
• Alex Jones Twitter & the Russian Connection 
• Jones & Trump - We'll be speaking a lot: http://www.infowars.com/trump-tells-alex-jones-well-be-speaking-a-lot/ 
• Jones suggests Obama is Beelzebub http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-flies-landing-on-obama-prove-hes-satanic/ 

Do there Need to be Dramatic Changes to the Way Facebook & Social Media Operate?

• Zuckerberg vows to weed out fake news
• O’Reilly’s solution for Facebook and algorithms https://medium.com/@timoreilly/media-in-the-age-of-algorithms-63e80b9b0a73#.e02s477du