Please label everything

Folks,

When you are sending email or sharing documents with me and your classmates, PLEASE LABEL everything. I need you to include Section# and Assignment NAME. I've had a lot of "Untitled" documents or docs with just your name. Or emailsthat do NOT include Section #s. I get about 200 emails a day from 200+ students.  

Tags: logistics

turnitin.com formatting

When you submit your papers to turnitin.com the formatting will be stripped from your essays. This is NORMAL. Not a problem. The service only requires the text of the essays. Do not worry when it doesn't look the same. I don't assess this version; I assess the version on Google Docs.

Grading checklist

Folks, As I grade these I am concerned. There are two major things I need to remind you.

1. For each Deadline #, I need a post on your blog. If it asks you to reply to a peer's blog comment and then post about it, then please do it. If it asks for a Reading Reflection & Deadline Reflection, please do both. The way I grade the homework is looking for each and every step. Believe me, if you begin skipping things, the zeroes add up.

2. Everything that is suppose to be submitted to turnitin.com should be submitted. If final papers are Not submitted, I will NOT grade them.

Peer reviews

Folks, The directions say I would group people together for the reviews. I'm not planning on doing that this semester, but I've done it before. Make sure you are SHARING your files through Google Docs with all of us, then make sure you are reading & peer reviewing your classmates works.

Update: I am updating all English 102 grades now. Finished catching up on Eng 101 a few days ago.

Computer File Names

Have you ever notices that computer files have three or four letter suffixes after their titles? Many audio files generally have mp3, wav, or wma. Digital image files usually have jpeg, gif, or tiff. Most documents have doc, pdf, or rtf. To better negotiate and share documents in electronic formats, you should know a little about docs, pdfs, and rtfs.

doc—“doc” stands for “document” and represents a Microsoft Word file. If you do not have MS Word, you will either need another word processing program that can read MS Word files, like the open source program Open Office (http://www.filehippo.com/download_openoffice/), or an MS Word viewer (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en). FYI, older versions of MS Word will not read newer versions of MS word doc files.

pdf—“pdf” stands for “portable document format.” Most computers come with Adobe Reader (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) that allow you to read pdf files. You can not make pdf files without Adobe Acrobat (or one of it’s open source equivalents). You will not be required to make pdf files for this course; however, most of the resources in library databases are in pdf format. You will want to be sure to download Adobe Reader.

rtf—“rtf” stands for “rich text file.” Basically, it is the same thing as a “doc” but is readable by a variety of different word processing programs. When electronically sharing documents, you should try to default to rtf files. If you save and share as an rtf file, you usually do not have to worry about what program, or version, that the other person is using. You can easily save your documents as rtf files when you either initially save them, or click on the “save as” option (under the “file” tab). At the bottom of the save window is a “save as type” option. You can search through the options for the “rich text file” option. If you are using an online word processing program like Google Documents (http://docs.google.com/) or Zoho Writer (http://writer.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp) you can usually export your files in a variety of formats including doc, pdf, and rtf).

To make sure that all of your classmates can read your documents, I highly suggest that you submit all documents in the rtf format. And if you don’t have MS Word, I highly suggest you either download Open Office or the MS Word viewer so that you can read other’s docs.

Tags: tech_tips

Grading Update

Some of you may have looked at your grade sheets recently and wondered where I am. It's like playing "Where's Waldo?". Well, I've been here. This is actually my first time teaching English 101 online and I found out I was doing it the day it started, so I've been very much focusing on that. As for the English 102 classes, the curriculum is very good, focused, and organized. I have complete faith that you're all doing well. :) Actually, if you follow along and do each and every step and post each and every step, you all have A pluses. But seriously, now I am totally caught on up them (they have had 4 deadlines to finish so far!) so now I am focused on you this week. You will see updates, and also look for tech tips to start, too.

Tags: update, grades