Abouts

Some sample "About" statements:

The Online Photographer

The Paris Review

The Selby

A Restless Transplant

Launching The Ambivalent Nemesis

Well, it's here.  Have a look around.  I hope the images show up, but if they don't, it's no big deal.  I would like you to make some suggestions for how to improve either the articles you see here or the next issue we put out.

So, today, two tasks:

(1) Read any number of the articles you see in this issue of The Ambivalent Nemesis and compose a brief post that responds to it.  What article is your favorite and why? What article could be revised in some way, and how?  More detail--what kinds?  Less detail--which ones? What suggestions do you have for the next issue?  Should we try "themed" issues, like "The Music Issue" and "The Film Issue," or should we continue with the kind of variety you see here?

(2) If TAN is not unblocked yet, I would like us to spend time with our peer's recent work in their individual blogs.  Browse them, in this class or others, and leave at least three friendly, responsive comments.  Secondly, I would like you to suggest some content from these blogs that might work for our next edition of What We're Loving.  To do this, make a post that copies and links to the post that you want to nominate for consideration.  No need to respond to or discuss your selection; just identify it so that our next editors can find worthy material more easily.

What You're Loving: Podcast Edition

In class today, I am asking you to listen and respond informally to an episode from either of the two podcasts listed below, both of which are increasingly famous for the entertaining, thought provoking, and rather original ways they go about looking at life and the world we live it in.

This American Life is a true-life storytelling program,with each episode focused on a general theme like "summer camp," "middle school," or last week's fascinating episode, "What Doesn't Kill You," which focuses on brushes with death.

TED is a series of, well, lectures.  But they are pretty brilliant and they will not bore you, I promise.  Browse their archives by selecting categories like "funny" or "informative" or "jaw-dropping."  Note: the embedded video players do not seem to run on your laptops; to watch these lectures, you simply have to click on the "download" button and download them to iTunes.

What I would like for you to do:

1.  After browsing the archives and sampling a few, try to focus on a single episode.  You won't have time to listen to a full 1 hr. This American Life episode, but you should be able to hear a few segments. 

2. Compose a brief, informal "What I'm Loving" post on your blog that describes it what makes it worth listening to.  Like the posts at The Paris Review, this response should be friendly, personal, and raise interest in the text you are talking about.  Ideally, your post will be compelling enough to be selected by our editors and published online in the magazine.

 If you somehow finish this project before class is complete, feel free to read your independent reading novel or work on your submission for PBL2, which is due Monday. 

Reading log Tuesday: 10.9.12

If you are not an editor and your work has not been selected for publication, you have other, just as significant jobs.  First, I would like you to invest yourself some in the community of bloggers we are building here.  Read their entries, follow their links if they have any and read what you see there, go back and let the them know what you think.  Let these writers know that there is an audience out there for their work.

Today, let's visit some of the blogs from our class. Go to the blog above yours on the blog roll, invest some time there, leave a comment, and then visit the two blogs above it, doing the same.  After reading those three, visit three blogs with interesting titles from either of the other classes, leaving thoughtful comments if you feel like it.  Listen to music as you go if it helps make this a pleasant experience.

If you are curious to see some of our better-made reading logs, here is a list of the blogs receiving an A+ for this quarter:

ETY2: Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, Homeschool Valedictorian, Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice, *Mariposa10

ETY5: My Life as a Reader, Sam Stone's Blog, A Fragile Thought, iCasey, This is My Blog, Canadian Poetry, The Outspoken Sloucher, we live on porches and swing life away.

ETY7: Casual Corner, So Deep it's Shallow, Tipper Gore's Official Rap Metal Appreciation Blog, Hysteria's Lament, Hoosier Nation, Dry Cleaned Wet Suit, Literary Liaison, Windowledge Marius, Justin's Blog, Three Islands Condensed

Second, nominate, on the blackboard, blogs + entry dates for any two of our three possible blog features.  Nominate them in this format:

Consumed: More Cowbell, Please ETY2 (9.22.12)
WWL: Bookworm Days, entry on Palo Alto ETY2 (9.14.12)
Briefly: Happy Go Lucky, link to Cloud Atlas trailer ETY7 (8.25.12)

Our first content: What We're Loving, Consumed, and On the Shelf

Today, I'm introducing three weekly features I plan to feature on the magazine.  Each of them will be pulled directly from your weekly blogging by your peers, with perhaps a little editing here and there.  Each of these features are modeled on columns found at The Paris Review and The New York Times.  I will probably refer to these three as our "blog features."

"Consumed"

If you'll recall,  I suggested you follow the format of the NYT column called "Download," viewable here.  Here is a sample I did on my own blog.Blog feature #1, then, which we'll call "Consumed," will simply re-post to our magazine the single best "on the shelf" post created by someone in our classroom each week.

Ideally, your blogging this quarter has been regular and varied, including brief descriptions and/or evaluations of anything from novels you are reading to online "long form" journalism to games you are into and music you have on repeat.  And "Consumed" will recognize and profile our class's readers who do this in the most interesting, original, or thoughtful way, as determined by you each week. 

"What We're Loving"

This feature is based upon The Paris Review column of the same name.  In essence, it is comprised of individual entries--quick discussion of a book, an old movie, a link--from several students' weekly "On the Shelf" posts, again, selected by you each week.

"Briefly"

Our last blog feature will be modeled on The Paris Review column confusingly titled (sorry) "On the Shelf." Where "Consumed" focuses on the reflections of an individual student and "What We're Loving" has more of a collective voice, "Briefly" is simply a list of links with a word or two of introduction--no description, simply (school-appropriate) links to articles of interest, entertainment, or other news and notes.

TODAY:  You will be nominating blog content for each of these three categories.  In the margins of No White Stone, you will see links to the blogs of all the students in my Etymology courses.  Today, let's limit ourselves to looking at the blogs of your classmates.  Browse, read deeply, skim, follow their links, if they work, just keep clicking.  Listen to music while you go, if you like.

And do these two things:
(1) leave at least three friendly comments on blogs other than those of your besties.  Ideally, these will be comments that relate to the content in some way of a post and do more than simply say "that's cool" or "me too."

(2) leave a comment here, on this blog, that nominates someone for each of the above three categories: a blog name/post date for "Consumed" and blog names/more specific post dates and directions for "What We're Loving" and "Briefly."  For example, your nominations comment might look like this:

Consumed: More Cowbell, Please (9.22.12)
WWL: Bookworm Days, entry on Palo Alto (9.14.12)
Briefly: Happy Go Lucky, link to Cloud Atlas trailer (8.25.12)

The World of Online Publishing: Our Entry Event

This semester, our class will be driven by the following question:

How can we create an online magazine that documents and reviews the culture of your generation?

As I have said, this driving question cannot be answered without raising and pondering a lot of smaller questions.  Today, we should start asking those little questions, and answering a few of them.

Visit the web magazines that I have sampled here for you.  Some of of them are not designed for your generation, or interests, but that doesn't matter--we can still go to them for ideas. 

Go deep into these sites, skimming more than reading, and make a blog post that links to at least three articles, features, pieces of content of any kind, really, that you think might, if the subject matter were changed to something you care about, would fit in an online magazine that we produced. 

While you do all this browsing, questions about this project will occur to you.  On your own or with others, compile a list of as many questions, any kind of questions, that you think we might have to answer.  Put at least ten in your blog post, too. 

Here are links to some sites of interest:


NY Times Style Magazine
Page Turner
The Morning News
Kill Screen
Joystiq
All Songs Considered
A Public Space
The Paris Review
Kotaku

Catching Up With On The Shelf

The New York Times has a column called "Catching Up With"that serves as a kind of inspiration for our own weekly "On the Shelf" assignment.  Try reading a few examples here to get a feel for how they are put together and try modeling your own on them. 

What I really like about the column is the diversity of subject matter you see in them, as well as the brief descriptions of what each person responds to in each item he or she lists.

For our OTS posts, I'd love it if we could follow a similar format.  I do think that ours should be weighted a little more heavily toward the reading we do--either online or off--and a little less on the other forms of media, though.  See what you can come up with.  And visit the links on the right for some ideas of places to find some good online reading.

"Catching Up With" samples:

R.A. Dickey, a pitcher for the Mets.

Joshua Bell, a famous violinist who attended Indiana University.

Richard Branson, eccentric, ego-centric founder of Virgin Group (Virgin airlines, records, etc.)

Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia fame.

And my recent OTS post that follows this format.