Hey everybody. Good job so far this week. I’m really impressed by what I’m seeing on the blog pages. You guys are doing some excellent work and I just wanted to take a minute right now to say first of all welcome to the class. I’m glad that you’re in the class and keep up the good work. Something else I wanted to talk about are some common themes coming up in blog posts. You guys are already generating some really great ideas about community.
[0:30]
One of the key things I see coming up is talking about community as family and the idea that we base a lot of what we think of—as community off the family unit. And so as we continue this week and as we continue our reading this week with Vonnegut, I want you to think about how family is related to online interfaces. Does having an online interface—does Skype does Google+ --do these types of things—does facebook—allow us to communicate with families better? And also I want you to consider, in relation to families, does that somehow map onto how we shape communities? Are our communities family-oriented? And so I kind of want you think of that in relation to your own communities.
[1:16]
Another think I want to talk about a little bit is common endeavors. A lot of you talk about sports, or some type of goal-oriented association that has a common endeavor. And so when you are looking at how community is formed, and you’re looking at a common endeavor, what is it about that that actually forms community? Does having the same goal actually form a community? Or do you have to have the same outlook on the world? What else plays into having a common goal?
[1:47]
Okay, one other thing that I wanted to address is the idea of values. And this kind of goes back to the family-oriented communities. But having the same set of values, what does that say about our community? Is that important to community? Are communities based around values or do values spring from the community? All these are really good questions. I just took these from things that are coming up in your own posts.
[2:20]
So let me switch gears here real quick. And I want to talk a little bit about inquiry one, which is coming up here very quickly. It is due at midnight on Friday—that means just before Saturday, so like 11:59 pm on Friday turned in. I want you to share that with me as a Google Doc. I’ll put up some directions on how to do that tomorrow. The assignment sheet is online. I expect that you’ve already read it. Jonathan brought up a really good question, which is, do we need to like explicitly state that this is, you know, this is an example of ethos. Or this is an example of pathos. And the answer is that no, you don’t have to. In fact, the stronger papers that I read won’t explicitly state that “Obama’s speech was an example of logos because of this, this, and this.” But it—they make good use of paraphrasing. So they say, you know, “President Obama draws logical steps” or “ he makes sense of the argument by saying the following things.” And so you kind of paraphrase around using those technical terms. It’s good to know the technical terms, but it’s not necessarily something that you would write down every time. And especially a big thing to be aware of—it’s, it’s, it’s not the best way to go about constructing an essay, but the five-paragraph essay where in the introduction you end up saying here’s an example speech in this I will look for an example of ethos, logos and pathos. And you take those three points and you go through and make those your next three paragraphs and then the fifth paragraph you say, ‘Here’s the three examples.’ That tends to be a really weak essay. The stronger essays will maybe focus in, just hone in on one aspect. So you might say, you know, here’s a speech and while it does contain all these different types of appeals, what I really want to look at is how ethos is working here. Or how, you know, the pathetic appeal is working. And so if you can outline that in detail, drill down and get some really good examples and be specific, those are going to be the stronger papers.
[4:34]
Okay, so a couple of things to watch out for in the rest of the week: We have group discussion using Google Hangouts. I will create a sign-up sheet and be sending that out tomorrow—probably around lunch time. And so you’ll need to get online and I’ll make a wiki or something for all of us to sign up and I’ll find out some good class times. I could even do a Friday morning if enough people say, “Yeah, Friday morning will work.” We can do a Friday morning Google Hangout if you like.
[5:07]
I will scan in chapters two through four of Everything’s an Argument. I understand a couple people are still waiting for books to show up. But after that I cannot scan in any more chapters, so ask a classmate to help you out if you’re still waiting on the book to arrive. I also needyou to begin thinking about Inquiry 2. I know it’s very rushed; It’s a six-week class. So start thinking about Inquiry 2. And then on Monday—so over the weekend, I will be sending out another form to sign up for Google hangout conferences—those are one-on-one, so what time works for you will be fine with me. I’ll make sure I make time to hang out with you guys Monday, July 2nd.
[5:52]
So again, it’s great having you all in the class. I’m really geared up for this. I hope that you’re equally excited. Already you’re doing some really great work. So I’ll talk to you later.