Help me understand something
 

I have to take another writing class for my IT degree (awesome, more theory less practical stuff)

but it's called

Digital Rhetoric and the Modern Dialectic

What the heck is this class about? The professor is,I don't know how to put this, but... extremely eccentric and quirky??

he sent us a website to read over, a wikibook actually.

http://digitalrhetoric.org/

the wiki book

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Digital_Rhetoric

I'm going through it a second time and it's not making sense.

I have to do a 5 minute presentation at some point this week or next on Smart Phones in Education as well and I don't know how to attack it...

I really wish we didn't have to take a writing class. I'd suffer through computer organization over this crap.

It's all the rage in English at the moment. Have a couple of friends about to publish a textbook on the subject. It's the response of English to the incredible transformation in writing that has taken place as a result of the internet. Think of the class as a class on how the printing press is changing writing taken in 1460. Should be quite interesting actually. In fact, OD may turn out to be a central feature of the class. We're all writing here and we're probably writing a heck of a lot more on a wider range of topics than any of use did 15 yrs ago. I suggest you focus your work on internet forums and their open discussions as the rhetorical space replacing the pub and the pamphlet. We're at the center of the modern dialectic.

I kind of gave up using google scholar and the didn't even bother with UCF's database system.

So, Digital rhetoric and the modern dialectic is more or less the new form of expressing persuasion through the new medias such as web, youtube, blogs, wiki's, and anything else not seen as "classic" or "analog"?

I feel as if I am stuck in a "just tell me what I have to do to get an A in this class by listing the hoops I have to jump through" and this class is not one of those by any means and it has me scared.

Like my presentation topic on "Smart phones in Education".... I have a few online articles so far but I don't know what I'm doing with this class...

Yes, minus the more or less part.

Add to that memes.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes

Ok, I'll give you the title of your research paper, "Opposing Pistons--Alter-modernism in the Automotive Forum Open Discussion."

Interesting.

I'd follow kerry's lead on this.

It's up his alley, he knows the buzz-words, etc.

Looks like it I just have to figure out how to write in this style.

How to get an A:

Research your teacher and see if you can assess his biases (google, published bio, any other books or articles he's written). Shape your presentation and papers to skew toward those biases while not blatantly pandering. Make sure you incorporate whatever stylistic comments or input he gives into the next paper.

Then move on to the next class. Expect to be exasperated during this one.

For the 5 minute presentation, adopt a pro- or con- stance on a specific facet of the phone based on several articles: Are they a help by providing research, information or access anywhere? Or a hindrance that distracts from traditional lecture methods and interaction between teacher/pupil? Do they support a shallow research pool via filtered results, or open up worldwide access?

Whatever topic you can concisely state and then support or defend should be appropriate as long as it's about the phones and education. Watch your time, stay on topic.

If it were me. I'd pander. I'd use a paper the website creator wrote about the potential of technology, emphasize smart phone as an enabling technology: http://e3.uci.edu/faculty/losh/pubs/DRHUK.doc



Good luck.

I've got a lot of reading to do for all of my classes this semester.. fml

reading this

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/AreYouReadyforMobileLearning/157455