Unit 3: Strategies Assignment

Nicholas Carr, "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: 1) video interview with Canadian host Steve Paikin ("Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?" 16 minutes)
  The Harvard Book Store presents Nicholas Carr: The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (49 mins)
  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)

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." 
• Shirky, "Does The Internet Make You Smarter?" 
• Pinker, "Mind Over Mass Media" (html) and also as a pdf.
• IQ squared debate in which Carr and Andrew Keen debate opponents.  Short talks, many debaters tricks, could be used to look at strategies. The topic is whether smart technologies are hurting or harming our intelligence and literacy. 

Teaching Rhetorical Strategies 

• See material from first 3 weeks, much of which can be adapted to re-introduce strategies 
• Into to rhetorical strategies, by Amanda Fuller 
• Materials for analyzing strategies. Includes definitions of strategies, framing, demagoguery, plus material for argument evaluation. List of short texts for analysis.
• Introduction to Rhetorical Strategies and analysis: there is an interesting blog called "Silver Tongue Times" that produces short rhetorical analyses of everyday things/texts. It's run by some PhD students at Carnegie Mellon. They try to make rhetorical analysis relevant to ordinary people (or as they say, "Rhetorical criticism for the engaged citizen.")  There's a new piece that examines a key analogy Jon Stewart used at his recent D.C. speech. It's very simple, and could be used for first year students as a way of introducing rhetorical strategies and their analysis.
• Intro to Strategies/Ways of Approaching the Teaching of Strategies (Powerpoint)
• Powerpoint file on visual rhetoric and argument. Contains terms for analyzing visual texts, plus examples and lecture notes. Likely to be far more than you'll need, but may contain some useful materials. Large file (4 mgb). Also this.
• Rhetorical Strategies - big collection of teaching materials, examples, discussion ideas. Needs some editing. 
• More on introducing rhetorical strategies
• Intro to rhetorical strategies in verbal and visual texts
  Visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Photos of student election campaign signs - can be used to consider strategies and effectiveness
  Print texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Parry's "The Art of Branding a Condition." Short text written by a medical marketer revealing some of the strategies used in drug advertising and marketing. Can be used to introduce rhetorical strategies 
• Discussion ideas, exercises, homework and group work that uses the Parry text.
• More activities and exercises that use Parry, and some class activities or homework
• Excerpt - strategy in-class exercise (Skloot).doc -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011 

Sample Student Paper

• Student Rhetorical Analysis of LaPierre Speech 

Lesson Plans: 

• Possible sequence of class plans/activites for unit 3
• Handout and lesson plan for teaching ethos, pathos and logos
• PROMPT, RUBRIC, TEMPLATE PHRASES, SAMPLE PAPER
• Drafting - template sentences for asignment 3
• Using Swales CARS model to discuss strategies identifiable in academic research writing (see also this article by Sutton, "Swales’s “Moves” and the Research Paper Assignment" that introduces Swales and connects to undergrad writing).
• Rhetorical Strategies.ppt  

Past Prompts:

• Teaching Enron: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Whistle-Blowing" RICHARD HOUSE, ANNELIESE WATT, AND JULIA M. WILLIAMS, http://faculty.washington.edu/tfreel/courses/tc401/assignments/Enron.pdf
• Prompt, the draft of which I passed out in our meeting. This approaches P3 in two parts: a short analytical paper and a creative project. I may, and you are more than welcome to, continue to tinker/add to it. Share your ideas! (Alicia)
• Long essay prompt (Rose)
• RWS100 - Fall 2011 - Paper 3 Prompt (Skloot).doc A strategy-oriented paper prompt. -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011 
• Project 3 Prompt - Tyler Thompson, Fall 2011 

Mixture of print and visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:

• A collection of different kinds of print and visual texts can be useful to emphasize how authors use different kinds of strategies, even when the argument is the same. The following texts all make a similar argument about the Texas Board of Education's decisions to change their textbooks.
• "Texas Should Not Define Education." An editorial from SDSU's student newspaper, The Daily Aztec (March 22, 2010).
• "Don't Mess with Texas....Textbooks," by Chuck Norris. Human Events, March 16, 2010.
• Episode of The Daily Show. (The segment on the Texas Board of Education begins at 9:13 and ends at 14:15.)
• Segment from The Colbert Report, "I's On Edjukashun." (From March 16, 2010 episode). Features historian Eric Foner
• "Twisting History in Texas," by Eric Foner, The Nation, March 18, 2010.  Could be used to compare strategies - Foner on Colbert, Foner in the Nation.
• Cartoon: "Texas Schoolboard Bookburning." By Monte Wolverton, March 14, 2010. http://blog.cagle.com/2010/03/14/texas-schoolboard-bookburning
• Cartoon: On the Texas School Board of Education vote. March 17, 2010 cartoon published in the Atlantis Journal-Constitution by Mike Luckovich.