Recommended Movie Sites

Rick, aka Pukman @ WinK, writes on a blog that I've listed among Course Links in the sidebar of this blog called "the community that time didn't forget." In a recent post on that blog he recommends sites to visit if you are interested in finding out about movies, new and older, watching and listening to movie trailers, or reading movie reviews (Pukman..., Movie sites, 2005.05.16).

His recommendations include one site that I listed (IMDb), and another that I had perused (Rotten Tomatoes), when I quick-posted a few days ago a list of movies that I had watched recently: A Few Favorite Movies of Late (The Writing Studio Blog, 2008.05.12). As Pukman, or Rick points out at the end of his recommendations, you can find those and many more internet sites related to movies in the WinK in Magnolia community bookmark collection, marked with the tag (or label) movies (WinK in Magnolia Tags: View All).

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Third Essay: University Life - A Reminder

Dear Writing Studio participants (Writing III, §§ 1a and 1c):

There were quite a few students absent today, so I have decided to post this reminder. Your third essays are due by Sunday, May 18, 2008 (Course Calendar).

You should:

• Focus on a singular aspect of university life (Writing Studio Wiki, Major assignments, click through § 1.5) with which you are already quite familiar.

• Organize your own ideas into five or more ¶¶ (paragraphs), each five or more sentences in length, including:

• an introduction,
• body paragraphs (3+), and
• a conclusion; and

• Extend it to 350+ words in length overall.

Brainstorming and collecting your ideas in a mind map or an outline is a good way to start, or to refresh or reinforce your thinking if you've already tried free-writing. For organizational ideas, please review the Five Paragraph Essay presentations that you viewed among other writing resources (Writing Studio Wiki, click through § 6.4) a couple of weeks ago.

Please remember that you must label this essay on university life, like all of your essays for Writing III and IV, with the label "essays" (plural, without quotations marks). Then, if you wish, you also may label it with other labels that you are likely to use again. Campus, lifestyles, students, and university are some other possible labels that spring to mind.

Finally, photos would be nice, too. However, you should post nothing too personal or private for anyone in the world to see (administrators, parents, teachers...), and should ask permission from anyone recognizable in the photos before posting them on your blog.

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Spotlights on Copying: Warning about Plagiarism

Perusing book reviews and other blog posts this past week, other writing instuctors and I have identified at least eight instances of writing copied from other sources. That is more than one case per day on average.

This is entirely unacceptable, as I have spelled out in Guidelines for book reviews, section 2.3, in particular: By all means avoid copying! Mr. T. is more emphatic in his post about book reviews. He virtually shouts: "No quoting!!" and "Don't copy!!!" (Tomeiter's Garden, Book review examples, items one and three; April 17, 2007).

Copying someone else's work without marking quotations and citing references may seem like an easy way out of, or around, a writing assignment. In fact, it is plagiarism (WinK Wiki, FAQ), an easy way out of a course with an invitation to come back and take the course again next year.

In a nutshell, here is what may happen if you do copy someone else's writing and try to pass it off as your own in Writing III or IV. You will get one warning. This is a warning to everyone in the Writing Studio!

If you keep copied passages in a previous post on your blog for this semester after this warning, or copy in a future post, you will fail the course. To get credit for the course, you will have to come back next year. So keep your writing your own!

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A Few Favorite Movies of Late

The Milagro Bean Field War, by Robert Redford (1988)
IMDb listing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095638/
Review
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=105988

Elephant, by Gus Van Sant (2003)
IMDb listing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/
Official site
http://www.elephantmovie.com/

Farenheit 911, by Michael Moore (2004)
Film
http://www.fahrenheit911.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361596/
Controversy
http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_9/11_controversy
http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/f911notes/

Sicko, by Michael Moore (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386032/
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/index.html

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Blogged with the Flock Browser

WSB 1-02: Points to Remember While Blogging

The purpose of this post is to highlight a number of suggestions that I've made in the course of recent visits to students' blogs. I would like you all to pay attention to each of these points as you write on your own blogs, and as you comment on those of classmates and peers.

The list below covers seven plus items. These are examples, explanations, and illustrations that you ought to take on board as lessons for yourselves.

0. Language Setting

To learn English yourself, and to accommodate blog visitors who want to learn and to use English, too; I urge you to switch your blog settings to English. If you are in the A class, you should consider this a requirement for an A.

The remaining points are organized very loosely from fundamental to fine-tuning, or general to specific if you prefer.

1. Pointers regarding blog designs,
2. Suggestions for creating more posts,
   
3. Notes about word counts put on every post,
4. Suggestions, nay requirements for titles and labels,
5. Ways to respond to multiple comments on posts,
   
6. Inquiries leading to citation of sources, and
   
7. Strategies for correcting comments.

• Blog designs and readability issues

As I dropped by to see how you're coming on your book reviews, I noticed that the text color you chose for your review of Another World is almost impossible to make out against the dark background from the blog template that you've chosen. If you are keen on using dark colors for text, you should choose a template with a light background to make what you write easier to see and read.

While most ready-made blog templates respect these general design principles with automatic text colors, some of you obviously like to play with the colors yourselves. If you do, please remember that the opposite is also true. That is, if you have chosen a blog design with a light or white background, you should choose black or dark text colors if you are going to change them.

• Creating more posts

If you are shy of posts (Isn't everyone?), or you desire to push your skills, extend your writing, catch the interest and satify the curiosity of blog visitors, below is an example of a few steps you can take to do so. In this case, I'm talking about spring-boarding from a list of ideas in one quick post or typing speed trial post, to get a handful (or more) separate posts started.

... Which places did you enjoy visiting the most?

Why don't you write separate blog post[s] about at least one place in each prefecture. That would get you started towards the 60+ posts you need for Writing III this semester.

While you're at it, why don't you add a few pictures to give all of your readers a sense of what they're missing when they sit in front of a computer instead of heading out on the road again?

• Word counts on every post for Writing III and IV!

This point, in particular, gets the good news, bad news treatment - first the good news scenario:

Thanks for excluding the lyrics from your word count.

If you include in any post more than a few words of which you are not the author, please exclude them from your blog post word counts. Do remember that we require word counts (in square brackets, at the lower corner next to the sidebar) on every post for Writing III and IV.

Now for a not-so-good news scenario:

I hope you enjoy the holidays, too, and even get some blogging done during them. One thing you really need to do is add word counts to all of your posts for Writing III. Please don't wait any longer to start counting! [emphases added]

• Requirements for titles and labels on all book reviews
• (and sharing the wealth!)

Hi ...,

I'd like to ask you to do me three favors:

1) Would you please use the key string + number prefix that I've explained in class, and spelled out in WSB 1-01 in the title of all of your book reviews: past, present, and future? That will make them easy to find in your archive.

2) Would you please label all of your book reviews with at least these two labels: "books" and "reviews"? Then they will show up in various searches.

3) Last, but not least important, would you please ask [cajole/remind/tell] all of your classmates and peers in courses that I teach to do the same?

Cheers.

• Ways to respond to similar comments on different posts

Here I suggest creating a new post to respond to comments on two different posts, by three different people.

I've been wondering the same thing, as has Rick, who commented on your April 16, 2008, reading habits post.

Why don't you make a new blog post that explains to everyone how to do it, and then point out the new post in responses to comments here and there?

I'll be waiting to read your follow-ups.

Easy follow-up comments such as, "Please see my new post (Short Title..., date [+ link])," will inform return visitors, as well as those who have chosen to get mail notification, where to look for answers to questions or responses to ideas that they've posted in comments on your blogs.

• Queries about sources leading to citations

Where did you get the definitions of the words [that] you listed at the end of BR 1-07: Snow Games?

If you are using any content at all from other sources, you must mark it clearly, and spell out where you got it. For example, I've formatted all of the comment clippings in this post as block quotations, and italicized them so they stand out from the original text of this post. Now I'll spell out, in general, where they're from.

All of the comment citations in this post are from the same type of source, namely comments that I've posted on individual students' blogs recently. I wrote them myself, and I grant myself permission to collect and reuse them here for teaching purposes (:-).


Correcting comments after you've posted them

If you notice glaring errors after you hit the orange publish button, either on purpose or by mistake, it is possible to correct them. However, in Blogger, the only way you can do it yourselves makes a mess of the blog spaces in which you have left comments, at least until blog owners tidy up behind you.

So it is always better to preview your comments, editing them repeatedly if necessary, before you publish them. Here, unfortunately, are two examples of what I did after I failed to follow my own advice.

Example One

Oops, I made a mistake in my previous comment, but there was no way to edit it. So I've copied, pasted, and corrected it here:...

Do you know how to make word counts align with the... [right] margin, to make them easy to spot at a glance? If not, please ask in class, and I'll show you.

Please note that the two italicized and indented passages in Example One show that I'm making a quotation of a previous quotation. The series of periods (...) show where I've trimmed away unnecessary or incorrect wordings, and the square brackets ([...]) show where I've added or corrected wording. I suggest that you try to avoid this at home, folks, unless you really have to, to make a point.

I'm a paid professional, but I still make mistakes! Below is another example, with more of my self-corrections.


Example Two

I guess I am too anxious to get out; I typed two mistakes [three, actually (I've just found one more)] in the first paragraph of my previous comment, and then hit the publish button instead of the preview button....

Anyway, here is what I posted earlier, cut, pasted, and corrected in this new comment (I hope I get it right this time):

Hey ...,

It sound[-s] like you had a nice road-trip this spring. How many friend[-s] went with you[?]...

Although I went back to my original comments on each of those posts and trashed them, only the blog owners can trash them completely. So what I've left in my tracks on a couple of students' blogs looks like this:

Comment deleted

This post has been removed by the author.

May 3, 2008 2:00 PM

and this:

コメントが削除されました

この投稿は投稿者によって削除されました。

2008/05/03 15:28

Sadly, those left-overs break the flow, and take up space on lists of comments attached to blog posts. If the blog owners themselves wish, they can remove those left-overs completely and finally from their blogs. If you find comments removed by their authors on your own blog, please do all future visitors a favor and trash the comments completely. Cheers.

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