Looking at Kickstarter - Daybooks Due

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”  Mark Twain

Thinkwrite: Consider what Twain is saying. Can you think of a time that your choice of a word got you into trouble? Or perhaps you can think of examples of a situation when the word you might choose to write or say could have big consequences.

Open The Everyday Writer  to Section 23. Read and become familiar with what this section offers you. Skim over the exercises; I'll assign some of them later. For today, read and understand the main points.

Then you are going to spend the rest of class today and time over the weekend using Kickstarter and The Everyday Writer to fill out an assignment in Moodle called "Language Use in Kickstarter." 

At the end of class, turn in your daybook. Shall we check typos? Is your name on it?

NOTE: Here are links to two crowdfunded scams. They were identified by neuroscience writers (in my Twitter feed)-- the things these products claim to do are bogus. On Kickstarter, NeuroOn: World's first sleep mask for polyphasic sleep.  On Indiegogo, No More Woof. Can you spot problems with them?

Homework:

1. Complete the "Language Use in Kickstarter" assignment in Moodle. As you work on it, be choosing two Kickstarter projects you want to write about. See you Tuesday.

2. No word.

3. No typo.

Lego Directions Due and into the Next Genre

Hand in your Legos.

Context is key to communication. What does that mean? How about assumptions? We watch Derek Sievers on assumptions.

Thinkwrite I: How did the Lego project go for you? Did you make any assumptions you were not aware of? How did you handle the nomenclature problem? Was it hard to give feedback AS you were building?

I show you the set of directions that taught me the key elements in this genre of writing (assembly directions with no pictures). I did not require these; I was hoping you would discover them by trial and error. Key elements: ______.

Thinkwrite II: Assess your own directions. Which of the key elements did you come up with on your own? Explain.

To keep you thinking about the relationship between the key elements of a genre and effective writing (rhetoric in action), our next two writing projects involve another genre that none of us has written before.

Here's the information sheet (blue). Read it. Now you pair up.

Look at Kickstarter.com. Some projects I've found....#1 and #2 and #3.

Homework:

1. Go to Kickstarter.com and start reading.

2. TWFTD: crowdsourcing

3. There is a phrase of three words that would be considered a cliché in today's blog. Can you find it? No typo.

Legos Build #2 -- Your Revision

 

Ways of Thinking: How many ways can you think at once?  Look at Bedford page 26 and Bloom's Taxonomy. We copy into the daybook.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a way of classifying or naming the ways we think.

Again,  I pass out a green scoring sheet, and you build, give feedback,  and score/comment. 

After you have built two, your project and all papers should come back to you.

Homework:

1.  Read the input from your builders.  If there we're still problems, make further revisions, and discuss further revisions on the green "Revision Brainstorming" sheet given out yesterday.

2.  Print out a single final version of your directions to hand in tomorrow.  Bring ALL former versions to hand in, with ALL green score sheets, and the legos. [1:00 class because of the late start you will hand Lego papers in on Friday.]

3.  TWFTD: taxonomy

4. One typo today. Not visible to spellcheck.