ReadWriteThink: Exploring Audience and Purpose with a Single Issue

I wrote Exploring Audience and Purpose with a Single Issue as a spin-off of the Communicating on Local Issues lesson published yesterday. We needed a lesson that worked through some of the ideas that yesterday’s lesson was based on. Basically this lesson does some of the audience analysis that would be necessary for students to understand before writing letters.

In the lesson, students explore the rhetorical concept of audience and purpose by focusing on the evolution-creationism debate raised by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which will tie to a July calendar entry). Students analyze the audience and purpose of at least one resource on the debate and then consider how audience and purpose might shape other communication on the issue.

For Web: Easy DIY online database

Easy DIY online database – Lifehacker—one day I’ll join the present and get a database set up, but there’s no sign when or where. This might help.

10 rules to manage your boss

10 rules to manage your boss—Not quite sure why Lifehacker didn’t share this piece from the August Money till March, but here it is nonetheless. Given the shakeup at work this week, we can all use some tips :)

Daily Work: Being Coached

And today we begin hell. A “life coach” is coming in to help our team be more, well, I don’t know what. These psychosocial analytical things make me sick, and by that, I mean physically sick. I do not want analyzed. I do not want my psychological tendencies probed. I would rather go to the dentist. Because I am insane, the result of the related stress and anxiety of this nonsense makes me physically sick with varying gastrointestinal nonsense. Now, of course, I am procrastinating. The longer I can put off going to work, the longer I may be able to ignore the hell.

ReadWriteThink: Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing

Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing asks students to identify and research a local issue that concerns them, using Internet and print sources. They then argue a position on the issue in letters to two different audiences, addressing their own purpose and considering the needs of the audience in each letter.

In the News: Bound by Words And Much More

Bound by Words And Much More—an example of how an authentic audience grows writers. This article describes a memoir-writing activity, completed by students and family members. With these real readers, both from their families and others in the classroom community, these students seem to blossom as writers.

For Windows: Identify unknown files and processes – Lifehacker

Identify unknown files and processes – Lifehacker—for those days when twizzlefoo.dll is clogging up the firewall and I can’t figure out what it is.

In the News: Teen craze over networking sites

BBC NEWS | Technology | Teen craze over networking sites—darn those crazy teens. Apparently the UK version of MySpace or Facebook, Bebo faces the same challenges from schools and colleges that worry the site is potentially dangerous for students. The article explains, “Debbie Cowley, technology teacher at the college, told the BBC she was concerned about what pupils were sharing via the site. Some were posting personal details, pictures and even making disparaging comments about the school and its staff.” As is the case in the states, it’s so much easier to ban things than to teach, at least as far as administrations are concerned.

For Mac: Mac OS X application folders – Lifehacker

Download of the Day: Mac OS X application folders – Lifehacker—cool folders for that new Mac I am going to buy one day.

CCCC 2006: It’s all over

I managed to get the rest of my stuff packed up and wrangle it out of my room by about 10:30 this morning, a full 30 minutes before I had to :) Unlike my messy navigation to Chicago on Tuesday, I returned to Champaign without ever looking at a map. I got home around 1:30, unloaded the car, unpacked some stuff, and wisely took an afternoon/evening nap from 3 to 7. Finished up some writing this evening, so now I can officially call my conference time over.

There were so many people whom I didn’t get to spend much time with. That’s probably mostly my fault for being cheap, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and minute rice in my room rather than going out for meals. That and my own stupid lonely behavior, sitting alone tends to make you alone. Such an idiot. I keep asking myself if I wouldn’t have been better off spending that $1200+ on a new mac rather than on a hotel bill. It’s not that I didn’t love seeing the people whom I did see, but I’m thinking that maybe I’m no longer a fit for CCCC. Maybe I should have saved that money for Lubbock or Columbus or something. My brain is such that I rehash and rethink and mope and weep; so I’ll probably still be questioning this weeks from now.
I do know that it would take an act of Congress for me to go to CCCC NY. There’s something about NYC that just scares and overwhelms me. The world is better off without me there. I guess I have to get back to my regular life and figure out what to take to work tomorrow.