Magazine cover information.

The written component of your mock magazine cover should address the following:

1. What is the focus of your magazine? Is it special or general interest?
2. What kinds of visuals did you use? Why?
3. What kind of layout did you use? Why?
4. What kind(s) of article will be included inside this mock magazine, according to your cover?
5. What audience are you targeting here? How do you think you have appealed to that audience?

Make the response follow the normal format. There is no length requirement; the response needs simply to be long enough to answer the above five questions.

Seminar information.

The following is an overview of how you must approach each remaining seminar (assuming you are not leading it).

Remaining seminars

See calendar.

New format

Each seminar must be followed by a written and graded response. It needs to be formatted, but it doesn’t need to be much longer than a page. The responses will be holistically graded and depend entirely on participation in the seminar and attention to the seminar leader.
This should help with absences, inattention and grades.
If absent on the day of a seminar, a student must do a report on the subject of the seminar to replace the response paper. Again, this will be no longer than a page (or two), but this one will be graded holistically according to accuracy and presentation of information.

The responses are due together in two separate collections. The first collection of five responses is due on December 17 (or thereabouts).

The first seminar: Friday, November 16

If you were absent on Friday, November 16, the seminar led by Taryn and Monica focused on the differences between special interest and general interest magazines. Your response, if you were absent, should attempt to explain the differences between a specific special interest magazine and a specific general interest magazine that you own or borrow from the school library.

In the future, the subject and an overview of each seminar will be posted online for absent students to read.

Important links and information.

The first link here is to a calendar that outlines the rest of the semester in Media Studies. The second link is to the rubric that will be used to assess your magazine covers, which are due on November 27.

Calendar

Magazine rubric

You have one additional assignment to complete before Wednesday, 11/21: If you did not post to your blog over the weekend (between 11/16-11/18), add a new entry. Continue to follow your blog's focus. This is a simple y/n grade worth 25 points.

Newspaper article deadline.

Update: The article you began at the end of the week is due on Wednesday, November 7. You may turn it in tomorrow, but you may also take the extra two days to finalize it. Remember to adhere to the guidelines.

Newspaper writing: 11/1-11/2.

Your assigned style is in the post below this one; this post contains the article assignment itself.

Your task:

Create an article in the style of a given newspaper era. Choose as a subject a significant event related to the focus of your blog. (I will help you with this in class.) It can be historical or recent, but it must be true; you must do some research for this assignment.

The article itself?

-250 words or more (no maximum)
-an effective headline
-an effective lead
-factual information
-stylistic markers (which I will explain more in class)

You may earn a few bonus points for using a picture that is both appropriate and appropriately captioned.

You may lose a few points for not taking the time to format this article so that it looks engaging -- a bit more like a newspaper and less like something you vomited onto the screen in between not doing your work.

Try to have fun with this. It's due on Monday, November 5; however, I will be grading you on what you do during the next two days.

Newspaper writing: 11/1-11/2.

For the next two days, you are writing a newspaper article in the style you were assigned. Below is the list:

Yellow journalism: Danielle, Nikki, Anne
Objective journalism: Chris Grady, AJ, Chaim, Carlos
Interpretive journalism: Lyndsey, Chris Kopec, Jill
Advocacy journalism: Monica, Kate, Taryn
Literary journalism: Kaitlin, Lauren, Alex
Gonzo journalism: Maegan, Ethan, Clare

If you need to look at the lecture notes -- or anything else from the last week or so -- it is located at my school website, under References and under your class.

Complete me.

Today in this computer lab, you are to complete an assignment similar to the one you completed yesterday.

(If you were absent, you will need to come in after school today or before school tomorrow to complete the print portion of this work.)

Visit each of the websites in the list that follows this assignment. They correspond to the papers we examined yesterday in class. For each site, spend some time scrolling through the front page. You're going to stay here for a while, looking at how these online papers differ from their printed counterparts. When you answer the following questions, be sure to keep those printed papers in the back of your mind.

1. What is the most prominently featured story on the main page?
2. How is the main page constructed? Is it busy, simple, filled with photographs, rotating stories?
3. What kinds of photographs are visible when you first visit the site? Describe them and their effects.
4. How easy is it to navigate the site? List the sections of the paper on the menu bar.
5. Is the audience for the online site the same audience you inferred from the printed papers?
6. What are the biggest differences you see between the two versions (printed and online)?

Be prepared to discuss both the online and printed versions of the NY papers tomorrow in class.

Here's the list:

New York Post
The Daily News
The New York Times
And because it's the world's only reliable newspaper: The Weekly World News

You must also read and/or print the newspaper background that is in one of the posts below this one. I will remind you in class about this.

Remember me.

Here is a master list of your assignments as of Wednesday, October 24:

- Newspaper comparisons (print and online) due on THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25
- Reading (newspaper background) due on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26
- Susan Sontag article and questions due on MONDAY, OCTOBER 29
- Questions for guest speaker due on MONDAY, OCTOBER 29
- Op/Ed and SOAPS due on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31
- Newspaper article due on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Print me.

Well, not the post itself. Print this:

Newspapers and the Rise of Modern Journalism

Read this on your own. We'll review some of the material in class over the next few days.

Lead.

This is so I can find it later, when I go to show you examples of effective leads in newspaper articles:

Calif. wildfires burn scores of homes

Post-script to Op/Ed assignment.

In the previous post, I gave you a list of reputable newspapers from which you may draw your opinion or editorial article. Stick to that list. We looked at The Huffington Post today, and it's true that it features virtually nothing but opinion and editorial; however, it isn't associated with a newspaper of any kind, which defeats one of the purposes for which you will ultimately use your SOAPS analysis.

Opinions and editorials.

One of your assignments as we study newspapers is to analyze an Op/Ed piece from a respectable newspaper. Here is the link to the assignment:

Op/Ed Assignment

The due date will be determined in class, but you'll have enough time to pick up newspapers from the stands, if you like. You can also obviously use the WWW, although you must be sure to follow the guidelines for the source and date range.

Here is a list of links to reputable newspapers' Op/Ed sections:

The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The LA Times
USA Today (Notice the URL - blogs, huh?)
The Washington Post (Registration required but free)
The Journal News

There are certainly others, but check with me before using them.

tvlinks.co.uk

This news comes from the UK, but the site was mentioned in our class:

Major pirate website shut down

We'll use this in class as the first newspaper article read for structure and pacing (including the effectiveness of what is called "the lead"), but it's also worth discussing the subject matter. After searching for more information on the arrest, I was able to find the following:

TV-Links.co.uk Raided, Owner Arrested: UPDATED

You should notice the general difference between the two presentations of the same story, but for the purposes of today's class, we're going to discuss

1. the lead, or opening paragraph, and

2. objectivity.

More if I see another article on this topic.

Photography continued.

Class,

I'm back. Please read the post below before reading this one, and keep in mind that while quasi-inclement weather may not be ideal for a fire drill, we would probably want fog, rain, and muck in an actual fire. You know, to help to put out the actual fire.

To continue your assignment:

If you are maintaining a blog about the baseball postseason, you will want to focus in on a "big" idea in that sport: steroid use, perhaps, or even the idea that baseball is our "national pasttime." If you are posting about small town news, you may try to find the ultimate representation of what it means to live in a small town.

Use Google, use your common sense, and be sure that the picture is both iconic... and, of course, appropriate for the ol' school building.

I will check these posts on Monday morning at 7 AM, when I arrive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for another glorious day of educating the future of America.

-Mr. Eure

Photography assignments.

Class,

While you are in the computer lab today, you are still to give your attention to the seminar leaders, Anne and Lauren. They will be using the projector screen in the room to walk you through an activity.

Your first assignment today is to load a Word document, follow the seminar, and complete the assignment given to you.

Your second assignment (for this week's blog) is to post a fifth time. You must find a photography that fits the theme of your blog and the elements discussed in the seminar on Thursday and Friday -- i.e., you are to locate an iconic photograph that fits your subject -- and add it in the body of your post. Next, you are to write at least two paragraphs:

1. describing and personally reacting to the photo
2. explaining why this is an iconic photo for your blog's subject matter

If you have been keeping a blog about nutrition, you will want to settle on something "big" (read: significant, cultural, time-sensitive) that has happened in nutrition, with fast food restaurants, with the general health of America...

... and I can't believe that we have another fire drill. Back in a minute.

As you blog this weekend...

Shoot for the moon, right? Even if you miss, you'll land among the silent, cold vacuum of space.

Your blogging could bring in revenue if you attract enough attention to yourself. Eric Nakagawa, the Patient Zero of the lolcats meme (see the previous post), did just that.

Content creators and piracy.

This article discuss (and links to) another article about the threat of obscurity to content creators. Look for the following:

Who are "content creators"?

What does "obscurity" mean here?

What does "ubiquity" mean here?

What is piracy?

Why would obscurity threaten artists (e.g., musicians and film makers) more than piracy?

Memes: October 4.

There are hundreds of examples of memetic information on the Internet. Many of them are hilarious; others, disturbing; some, a little of both. We're looking at some of the more popular examples as we try to extrapolate a theory about what becomes popular and why it does.

First, let's look at the case study from earlier in the week again. We'll discuss why a site like the one created by this author only lasts a certain amount of time (memetically dies out) and why others -- the one below, for example -- seem to be gaining in strength with time.

Lolcats
- The original site
- The original picture (Patient Zero)
- A great article in The Wall Street Journal about the memetic longevity of lolcats

All Your Base Are Belong to Us
- Time article
- USA Today: Why would a line from an old game suddenly catch on? Who knows?"One of the great things about the Internet is it creates this," Schatz says. "Somebody grabs something out of the past and turns it into a phenomenon."

The Tourist Guy
- Debunked

Chuck Norris Facts
- Chuck Norris (possibly) not identifying irony when he sees it

Christopher Walken for President*

Bert Is Evil
- Life imitates art (and another article on this)

Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain

Badger Badger Badger

The Hamster Dance (original)

The Hamster Dance (nowadays)

Dancing Banana / Peanut Butter Jelly Time
- The interesting thing here is that the school server recognizese an attempt to view this animation as an attempt to view "Pornography/Adult Content" or something "Obscene/Tasteless." Remember that this is an animation of a dancing banana singing, "Peanut butter jelly time!" And remember that censorship is often clumsy.

*I bought this one. Completely bought it. I was ready to sign up to get the guy elected, and it in an only slightly ironic way.

Memetic fame, here we come!

Kids,

For your blog this week, you simply need to update with a third post. Next week, we will introduce commenting; the article hyperlinked in the post below this one is required by that time (but not now, so quitcher worrying).

For now, let's read about memes, Internet phenomena, and why it's not a good idea to leave embarassing video footage lying around -- metaphorically speaking or not.

Start here:

The Meme Epidemic: A Case Study

Trust me; even if you don't understand everything here, you will pick up enough background for our purposes.

Now to the Brits:

It's all in the memes

Read that article, too. Remember, if you don't understand the concept behind this information, it doesn't matter how funny a guy lip-synching to Romanian pop is.

Now let's look at a few repositories of information and a couple of websites devoted to tracking memetic developments on the Web.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Internet memes. It gives us a working vocabulary for types, although we'll add a few over the next few days.

Here is a site that actually lets us vote memes into existence: MemeVote.com. Take a look at what's on here.

Finally, the best site for current Internet trends in this regard (although it only tracks viral videos, those are the most prominent kind of meme in play nowadays): Viral Video Chart. This site tracks the number of views, links, and so on; notice what's popular right now, and we'll begin to discuss what it is that makes a video more viral than others.

In class, we will watch the most popular viral videos of all time, discuss their contents, and try to extrapolate a theory about this kind of popularity. We will look at trends, but we will also discuss how we -- as a class -- might create and propagate our own Internet meme.

Get to reading,

Mr. Eure

Fame and fortune.

The following article is a supplement to your semester blogs. You are to read it before the end of this week, when you will be asked to comment on a few classmates' blogs.

All-Stars of the Clever Riposte

For Monday.

Today, Friday the 28th, you should finish the censorship activity posted below this entry. You also have time to update your blog for this weekend's check.

We will be back in the classroom on Monday, when we will hold our discussion on censorship. Tuesday will see us in our first seminar. After Tuesday, we will wind down our study of the Internet before moving on to our second unit.

[expletive deleted]

The following link is to a document on my BHS website. This is your assignment for today's class and (probably) tomorrow's class; we may switch things up to accomodate our first seminar, but this entire guided tour is due.

Censorship on the World Wide Web

I will explain our schedule -- when we are in the lab and when we will be back in the classroom -- today during the period.

Blogs and blog things.

Dear Class,

Looking at your grades to this point, and anxiously awaiting your scores on tomorrow's quiz, I have reached a decision.

I can't accept late work from you, obviously, and I can't extend deadlines for you. I also can't offer extra credit. I can, however, make you the following deal:

If you are concerned about your grade (realizing that I'll be meeting with many of you while you're doing lab work on Wednesday to discuss grades), and if you get all of your work in on time and complete for the rest of the quarter, then I will drop your lowest grade.

That's not your lowest score, either. I will drop the lowest complete grade you have earned. If you missed a blog post, for example, and ended up with a 70 or lower because of it, you have the opportunity to make that grade disappear. If you forgot to turn in your data sheet, or if those early checks were late, and you ended up with a failing grade because of it, you have the opportunity to make that grade disappear.

To drop your lowest grade, you can't slip up at all for the next five weeks. Got it?

Mr. Eure

The to-do list grew thin.

To the left you will now find 17 of the blogs created by your classmates. I am proud of many of you -- you are already doing very well with this assignment.

Important reminder!

You may not post pictures of yourselves to your blogs. If you post a picture of yourself to your blog, you will not receive credit for the blog itself. This rule is designed to keep your World Wide Web presence as anonymous and protected as possible. You may, of course, put as much of your personality and perspective into your profile and posts as you wish; just remember to use your best judgment.

Note: Even if you have created a separate blog from the one you will maintain for this class, be careful that no one can reach that blog through your school one; if that is the case, you will be asked to delete the secondary blog.

Blogging into next week.

If you owe me a URL, email it before Sunday night. This applies to at least three of you, and it applies even to the individual who appears to have inexplicably spent Friday's class in the library. Sunday night, I will enter each blog into a list on this, the class' blog, and I will give you all a simple yes/no grade for having completed the following:

- the creation of your blog
- the completion of your profile (leaving out the restricted information about your location, identity, etc)
- the completion of an initial post introducing your blog and its focus

You and I will revisit this long-term assignment on Monday. I will demonstrate how to add images, links, etc to your blogs. You will also be responsible for adding all of your classmates' blogs to a list on yours by the end of next week.

At the same time, we will be moving forward in our study of the Internet. You will have a quiz on last week's lectures and notes, and we will look at search engine bias, Internet privacy, and the culture of e-speak.

We will also finalize many of the seminar presentation topics. Our first pair will present at the end of this upcoming week; I will discuss the process with all of you on Monday.

Internet Background.

The following link is to a Word document that contains a collection of information about the Internet and the World Wide Web. This comes from class discussion, my own notes, and then from the relatively few homework assignments I received. (Helpful hint: Not doing homework results in a zero, and zero's hurt your grade.)

A Little About Them Internets

You'll notice that it's a bit of background, a bit about URLs and web pages, and a smattering of statistics. You can't learn everything about this, so learn what's here.

I'll give you a heads-up before any quizzes, but expect one before too long. We are still setting up our blogs all this week, and then we are taking a look at a few other things; but the unit will only last another two weeks or so.

Harken, children!

This will help you:

NY Times: Blogs 101

It's an overview of blogging with a couple of great links to search engines. It also has blogs separated by genre, if you're looking for a second one for your assignment.

Bloggy lecture.

If blog can be both a noun and a verb, it can be an adjective -- hence the "bloggy" lecture notes below. Read it bloggily.

9.17 Lecture

This is a link from my BHS site, so you can also find the lecture through that. Remember that you are responsible for all of this information... which portends a quiz, methinks.

I will post quiz fodder related to your Internet scavenging later today, after I've culled enough useful info from your work and my notes.

As for today, listen in class -- but here's the condensed version:

1. Study the lecture notes
2. Read through last year's blogs and complete the questions provided in class about one
3. Search through my links, Google, etc to find another blog, and then complete the same questions for that

You're looking for what you want to emulate and what you want to avoid. We're in here for two days, and then we're back in the classroom to recap and review what you found. Don't rush! You'll be keeping the blog you eventually create (on Friday) for an entire semester, so take the time to prepare for it.

Finding blogs.

On Tuesday, you're going to be looking for examples of what you want your blog to emulate. You'll have to use the kids from last year's class, but you'll also have to wade into the wide, wide pool of online blogs to find another one.

The search engines on the left side of this blog are your first stop. I want to point out that the last one on the list (Weblogs, Inc.) has a list by genre on its main site. It's easy to find something there. For example, I found these two by clicking randomly with my eyes shut:

Nintendo Wii Fanboy
DIY Life

Happy hunting.

Weekly schedule.

Or, as the British say, "Schedule."

Monday, September 17
In the classroom (w/projector cart): Blog lecture w/examples of. Collecting Internet homework.
Tuesday, September 18
Room 170 Lab: Internet information posted online. Blog research.
Wednesday, September 19
Room 170 Lab: Blog research. Setting up blogs (if ready).
Thursday, September 20
In classroom (w/projector cart): Random presentations of blog research. Brainstorming ideas for blogs.
Friday, September 21
Room 170 Lab: Setting up blogs & making first entries.

You should head straight to Room 170 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

About Them Blogs.

Here's another Wikipedia link, this one to the information we need to memorize on the history and state of blogging:

Blogs

Through this site, my lectures, and your Googling, you're responsible for knowing:

- the origin of the word "blog"
- the highlights of the history of blogging
- the evolution of blogs from online diaries
- the rough # of blogs currently online
- types of blogs and their names
- how blog popularity is tracked and rated
- some of the cases where blogging has led to lawsuits, firings, and so on

Googling blogs.

I will walk you through the set-up process for your blog so that I can keep an eye on you, but the following is an overview of what we'll be doing:

1. Finding an example of the kind of blog you want to create
2. Answering a series of questions about that particular blog
3. Looking through last year's group of blogs for ideas
4. Answering a series of questions about that
5. Deciding on a focus
6. Setting up an account and a name for the blog
7. Setting up your profile
8. Posting your first entry

And here is an overview of what is required for the blog you eventually create (notice that it is slightly different from what last year was given):

- It must be focused on something other than your daily life (e.g., fashion, music, sports, photography)
- Each post must relate explicitly to that focus
- No post may contain language, links, pictures, etc that violate school rules
- You must update your blog at least once a week for the rest of the semester.

We'll discuss all of this more in class. (Sometimes you have to do more than read a computer screen; sometimes you have to listen to me.)

Using Google.

Ah, this is much better. Let's learn how to search, starting with what you almost certainly know how to do:

1. Open a separate window.
2. Type in www.google.com and hit Enter.
3. Type in your search and hit Enter again.

Easy. What you need to learn to do is to think creatively about what you type in step 3; you also need to learn to use Boolean operators to limit your search. Here's a list of a few of those:

AND
OR
+
-
""

We'll discuss what they do in class, as well as how to refine a search to find exactly what we want.

Next up: Googling blogs.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

If you look at the post below, you'll see the beginnings of what I'd bookmarked, written down, etc, for you to learn about the Internet. I spent about 30 minutes compiling those sources into that post before I realized that I'd be here all day (still at the too-crowded Barnes & Noble, still fighting that virus). What's the problem?

The problem is that the subject of the Internet's history -- even a selective one -- is huge.

So I have a new idea. (I'm going to leave the previous post, because it may help to have those links later.) We have two things to do:

1. Learn how to search for information on the Internet
2. Decide as a class (with my veto in full force) what you should learn on your own

We'll get you interacting with the World Wide Web, and then we'll set up your blogs. I have a list of information I need you to know about the Internet, but the second item in that list above lets you decide if you want to learn a particular fact. For instance, if you're interested in how many hours people spend online per day, that's good; I have that on my list, too. If you're interested in how many people meet their future spouses through online dating sites, that's good, too; it's not on my list, but it sounds interesting.

The Internets (Part II)

Your first assignment is to gather information about the Internet. I will provide you with links below, and for each, I will explain what you must learn at that particular site. Learning this information is up to you; it will be tested at the end of our unit, and there is always the possibility of a (slightly announced) pop quiz.

Please note that we are using Wikipedia entries for some of our information-gathering; however, I will always try to give you at least one other place to visit. We will come back to Wikipedia after we have set up our blogs and hurdled the background below.

First, click here. Your first task it to learn what is meant by "the Internet" and what is meant by "the World Wide Web." You can also find this information at isoc.org, which has a brief (this is brief?) history of the Internet. Use that last link, or perhaps this one, to learn the following pieces of information:

- During what decade did the idea behind a "global network" begin to circulate?
- What was the ARPANET?
- What does "IP" stand for, and why is it important?
- When did the version of the Internet and World Wide Web we know today first come into being?

You might also find some answer by using a glossary of Internet terminology (here's one). That kind of resource will help you learn the following:

- What does "HTTP" stand for, and where is it found?
- What does "HTML" stand for, and where is it found?

Skim the rest of the history of the Internet, but be careful to note what applies most to the common user; in other words, we don't need to know what "transfer packets" are, or what it means to switch to those from traditional circuits. We need to know what allows us to see websites.

We also need to know facts and figures. Google "internet facts and figures" and you're likely to find more advertisers looking for your money than anything else; however, you might check this site (or even this clandestine one) to start learning the following kinds of information:

- Approximately how many Internet users existed in the mid-1990s?
- In the early 2000s?
- How many exist now (last two years or so)?
- How many exist in the United States?

You'll get more topics to research in class.

The Internets

For our first unit, I will be running the show myself. (Remember that each of you is ultimately responsible for signing up to lead a seminar on a particular topic.) We're beginning with the Internets this year because of its ubiquity, but also because it is remarkably useful in this class for sharing information (remarkably so for a series of tubes).

In five minutes, for example, and while writing the above paragraph, I was able to provide you with links that define a 50-cent word (not to be confused with this bit of satire), explain a ridiculous analogy, and document a famous malapropism about the Internet. See? I just did it again.

We are going to look at the history of the Internet, facts about its current status and usage, and possible trends as it moves forward. We'll examine Wikipedia, viral videos, and digital copyright infringement, all while discussing the danger of using Wikipedia to look up information on things like "viral videos." And I will stop providing links to everything you might now know, because it takes too long.

In the next post: info to study and tests to forget about.

Ah! A New Begin- *uncontrollable coughing*

Media Studies,

We are running this show a little differently in 2007 and 2008, so pay attention. First, I have left last year's entries on the site. If you'd like to, you may read through them. Second, I have left links to all of last year's blogs. You'll be using these, so more on them later.

I will be posting several new entries this afternoon (which is being otherwise spent fighting a virus while sitting in a too-crowded Barnes & Noble). Much like your blogs will, mine has a particular focus: your instructions for various assignments. For the rest of the semester, I will augment our classwork with posts full of directions, rubrics, letters, words, and other things I like about my job.

Look above for the following:

1. Instructions on studying the Internet background information begun in class
2. Directions for finding a "model" blog and previous Media Studies blog, including a link to a worksheet on both
3. Directions for setting up your own blog
4. Guidelines and grading schedules for that blog

And, of course, whatever other nonsense I can muster up.

All the best,

Mr. Eure

Strange days.

We are four class periods from the end, folks, and our lives have all been strange and dislocated lately. Consider this a briefest overview.

Blogging
I will amend the assignments I have given you -- and my own plans -- to accomodate your staggered ingress and egress to and from class:

1. Complete seven entries on your blogs.
2. Complete the profile section.
3. Link correctly to the rest of our class.
4. Comment on at least five other classroom blogs.
5. Add at least two other blogs (outside of the classroom) to your link list.

Midterm projects
We will continue to work together to focus these. You are responsible by Thursday for the following:

1. A completed and approved rubric.
2. Bringing materials with which to do project work in class on Thursday.

The final due date will be a week from Friday -- the last day of midterm week. I encourage you to complete and to submit your project as quickly as possible. Realize also that these projects must necessarily be smaller than they would normally be, as we are compressed by time and circumstance; however, also realize that this will be your midterm.

Wikipedia
The last thing we have time to consider this semester is Wikipedia. I am giving us a two-tiered assignment. We will discuss it more in class, obviously, but these are the basics:

1. Create your own autobiographical Wikipedia entry in the format of a normal Wikipedia biography; log whether or not Wikipedia allows your autobiography to remain posted.
2. Edit an existing Wikipedia entry to add false information; log the amount of time it takes for Wikipedia to notice and to correct your error.

You will have to save the HTML pages once you create/edit them to prove that you have done the work. I will give you a 3.5" disk onto which you may save the files. You will have to highlight and/or otherwise to indicate what you have edited and how.
We will compile a list of potential pages to edit together; in the meantime, here are my ideas and links to those pages:

1. The Doomsday Clock
2. Tenacious D
3. Niels Bohr
4. I Love New York (TV Series)
5. Battle Angel Alita
6. Andy Warhol

Other ideas (without specific pages):

1. NFL/MLB/NBA player biographies
2. Celebrities biographies
3. Religious symbols/texts
4. Comic book characters/creators
5. South Park and South Park episodes
6. Musician/band biographies
7. Song analyses
8. World of Warcraft and its myriad subgenres
9. Fashion icons/eras

TV case studies and The Truman Show response papers
I have fallen behind in my grading. I apologize. I will not have either of these two assignments graded this week, but I am focusing on them above my other classes; they will be graded by the time you turn in your midterms on Friday.

Next semester
Those of you interested in designing a truly independent study should speak to me individually.

Blogging and midterms.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Over this three-day weekend, work on the following things:

-Post five entries to your blog.
-Complete your blog's profile section (if it has not already been completed).
-Make sure that you have links to everyone else's blog in this class.
-Make sure that you have five (5) comments on random blogs in this class.
-Link to at least... let's say two (2) other blogs, either through blogspot.com or another site.
-Complete the miscellaneous portions of your blog: the link lists, music selections, etc. This is optional.

For the midterm, work on the following things:

-Choose your group, which can be as small or as large as you like.
-Determine the subject of your final project, which can be taken from almost any medium you wish. I would prefer it to be related to the Internet, but almost no one is doing that; and I am happy with almost every idea I've heard.
-Determine the rubric for your project. This is a breakdown of the project's components: 25 points for a written analysis, 25 points for a website, etc. I will help finalize this next week.

Any other elements I have forgotten here will be posted this weekend.

(Mis)directions; or, prestidigitation.

And by "prestidigitation," I more simply mean, of course, "legerdemain."

This should help you to link to your classmates' blogs:

1. Sign in to blogger.com/blogspot.com.
2. Click "Customize" where it sits in the top menu.
3. Now that your screen asks you to add or to arrange page elements, click on "Add a Page Element" where it sits on the left of the blog layout.
4. From the options you are now given, select "Link List."
5. Open my blog in a second window. It is located at meure.blogspot.com.
6. Add your classmates' blogs one at a time to this Link List. Be sure to give them the right name; you can copy and paste the names and links from my blog.

Huzzah. You're done.

Carpal tunnel vision.

I have successfully commented on each of your blogs. This took the better part of an hour, during which I may have slept face-down on the keyboard. If your comment from me is a mixture of "asdlgkajsdf;lkj" and actual words, I apologize.

When you have linked to and commented on your classmates' blogs, we will begin work on expanding our network, much like the Blob.

Other bricks in the wall.

Media Studies Students,

To receive credit for blogging, you must follow these steps:

1) Set the time zone of your blog to the time zone in which we actually live: that is to say, to Eastern Standard Time.

2) Complete your blog's profile section.

3) Link to the other 20 blogs in your class.

4) Post a legitimate entry before each deadline listed below.

5) Post comments to a set number of your peers' blogs. (We will set a number in class.)

On each of the following dates, you must post to your blog by 3:05 PM.

Monday, January 8
Wednesday, January 10
Friday, January 12
Monday, January 15
Wednesday, January 17
Friday, January 19
Monday, January 22

You may post as often as you like. As for what a "legitimate entry" is:

-It may not contain inappropriate language or subject matter.
-It must be long enough to demonstrate that tender, loving care was taken in its creation.
-It must be at least marginally related to your blog's focus.

Update: You will also be given the chance to search through the blogs on this site, either by clicking "Next Blog" at the top of the page or by searching for specific elements; you will then link to the blogs you like, comment on them, etc.

"Why, anybody can have a brain.

"That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain.

"Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have.

"But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma."