Some structure for your reading and out of class time

Awareness Check and Structuring
From the syllabus
Course requirements
“....A helpful FYI is that you will probably need to spend between 5-8 hours per week OUTSIDE of class time on material for this course.  While you will have tremendous flexibility within our class about what you'll do, class time alone will not be enough.”

We’ve finished 4 weeks of class--have you spend between 20-32 hours outside of class on material for this class?  If not, start building it into your planner.  Give yourself daily assignments if you have to.   What might those be?

• Making time for your reading (10 books)
• Making time for your writing portfolio projects--begin selecting topics and doing research in the next couple of weeks based on what issues strike you as important in the Kajder and Hicks texts and on the English Companion Ning.
• Posting to your blog; reading other’s blogs and posting comments
• Posting to Nicenet about the informational texts
• Experimenting with the technology we talk about in class--either for your own reading and writing in this class or others.

Technology Requirement:   Through your exploration and experimentation this semester, you will doubtless encounter a number of useful and productive sources.  You will need to document either in your reading responses or through the class annotations in our google space NICENET at least 7 new applications or new tools you've learned to use in applications you already know.

For those of you needing some help getting on the “building this in to my week” bandwagon, this might help.

According to our syllabus, we were using the time from September 5-25 to focus intensely on the Hicks and Kajder texts.  From our class conversations, I think we still need to refine that a bit.

For those of you who were looking for more structure for the reading of those works, here’s a way to think about them.  The Hicks text is about 150 pages long--broken into 7 chapers (average 20 pages each)  1/day for 7 days,  and you’re done.  The Kajder is even shorter at about 108 pages, also broken into 7 chapter of about 15 pages each.  1/day for 7 days, and you’re done.  So, if you read a chapter for each book/day (35 pages), you’re done with both in a week.   I’m guessing that you’ve already started.  Recognizing that you have other things to do, and that it will take time to respond in the forum to the reading as well, let’s say that by Wednesday, September 29, you’ll be done with both books, and we’ll take some time to summarize and wrap up our discussions of them.  That will put us just a few days behind the schedule on the syllabus and still leave you plenty of time to do your research and writing for the portfolio.