Quick Hello (2-3 min)

My name is Dan Libertz and I’ve been teaching/tutoring reading and writing since 2007. I’m excited to get to know all of you both virtually over Zoom and also in your writing.

Quickly, let me show you how the website works and how we will go through lessons for synchronous meetings like this one and asynchronous meetings like we will eventually have on Tuesdays.

Since we are all on Zoom, let’s just get right into that in case it is unfamiliar for anyone!

 

Zoom, let’s just do that now (5-10 min)

So, here we are, all on Zoom. If you can, look at this lesson plan and the Zoom screen simultaneously by playing with minimization to fit both on your screen.

A question, some initial ground rules, and a quick tutorial before we start.

To start, who has used Zoom yet? Let’s do a quick poll.

We might use polls every once in a while.

The other things we will use is the chat, the “raise hand,” breakout rooms, mute, video on/off, sharing screen, “pinning” a speaker. Let’s go over how each works and how you can use it (along with any other important information):

• Chat. At the bottom of the screen, click the “chat” icon. To the right, you can begin typing in a chat box. You can type into the chat to ask me a question, communicate with others, or to do some writing. I have turned private chat off, just because I think there are privacy concerns there (it is too easy to feel like you are texting someone that no one else will ever see, but, technically, Zoom saves all the chat information for a certain time).
• Raise Hand. At the bottom of the screen, click on participants, and go to the bottom of that panel. You should then have option to “raise hand” at the bottom.
• Mute/Unmute. At the bottom of the screen, the left-most icon. You will be automatically muted when you first get on, and it is best practice to stay muted until you are ready to speak. As you might know if you’ve been in the online game for a while, lots of people forget to unmute themselves (we all do) so just don’t forget to make sure you are unmuted when you want to say something.
• Start/Stop Video. At the bottom of the screen, the icon to the right of the mute/unmute button. You will have your video stopped automatically as you enter our Zoom meetings. You can choose to start your video, but you are not required to do so. It is totally up to you. I don’t feel comfortable requiring you to share video of yourself if you do not feel comfortable doing so. That said, if you initially don’t want to share but eventually feel okay to do so–go ahead! The converse is also true–if you decide you don’t want to share video of yourself any longer, you can stop, as well. Don’t feel like you have to stick with any initial decision you make.
• Sharing Screen. At the bottom of the screen, to the right of the chat icon, you can share your screen if called upon to do so or during breakout sessions. You will only be able to share your application (e.g., Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, PowerPoint, Google Chrome) so you don’t accidentally share personal stuff that you did not want others to see (e.g., on your desktop). I’ll be sharing my screen through much of the term.
• Pinning someone. In Zoom, the video will stay on the host (I’m pretty sure) and you will also have a rotating view of other participants (if there are more than a few, which will always be the case with us). If another student is speaking, to ensure you don’t lose them, you can click on their video and select “Pin Video” so that this person won’t rotate out.
• Breakout Rooms. We will be using breakout rooms quite a bit. This is a way to do small group work. I might break you up so you can respond to a question, do some group writing, give each other feedback on writing in-progress, etc.  When you are in a breakout room, things mostly work how they would in the main room (can share screen, can mute/unmute, etc.) but all that happens only in the breakout room. I’ll end the breakout rooms when time is up and I might pop in (I’ll let you know if I plan on doing that ahead of time). NOTE: it appears that Chromebook might have some issues in doing the breakout rooms. Let me know if you have a Chromebook.

Setting up Zoom application and account (adapted from Seth Graves)

Aside from using Zoom as we are today, I want to help make it work a bit easier in future sessions. First, by downloading the application. Second, you should also know how to log in to your Baruch Zoom account if you want to create meetings (e.g., with your Writing Group). Set up your Zoom account by next class:

1. First, go to https://zoom.us/download to download the Zoom application to your device (this will make life easier because if you rely on the browser only, it tends to crash more. Having application on your device helps Zoom work more reliably).
2. Then, go to baruch.zoom.us.
3. Then, log in with the same username and password you use to get into your email and Blogs@Baruch.
4. If prompted, set up your Zoom account.
5. If you want, you can add a photo of yourself to your profile picture (you do not have to do so).

Go to “Meetings” to “Schedule a Meeting.” More information on working to set up Zoom meetings can be found here.

 

Attendance and Quick Intros (10 min)

Next class, we will take some time to get to know each other a bit more (more on that later). For now, let me just go around and get your names. When I call out your name, I’ll follow up with the following:

• What do you preferred to be called? (e.g., I prefer Dan, Professor Libertz, or Dr. Libertz)
• What are your pronouns? (e.g., my pronouns are he/him)

 

How do you make rice? (15-20 min)

There’s a lot of ways to start a writing course, we are going to start with rice.

Take a few minutes, and on a piece of paper, on a word processing document on your computer, on your phone, wherever you are most comfortable writing–tell me all the information you can about how you, your family, or the wider cultural background you identify with prepare rice.

Take 2-3 minutes to do this (I’ll check in to let you know when we are close to that time limit).

Let’s take some time to share in small groups. I have breakout rooms assigned. In your breakout rooms, introduce yourself (again… gonna be a while before everyone knows who everyone is!)

This is a variation of an activity by Dr. Amber Spry, assistant professor of Politics & African + African American Studies at Brandeis University. The idea is that nearly the whole world eats rice (caveat, of course: some people don’t like it, some people might have an allergy or intolerance…still, pretty much all cultures do something with rice even if individuals might not like it or can’t eat it).

Seems simple enough. But we prepare A LOT of different ways. Dr. Spry is relating this to how our backgrounds and identities shape how we see the world. Cooking rice is not as simple as cooking rice. When we encounter rice, we encounter it in a very specific way and context – our backgrounds shape this seemingly “universal” food.

I want to relate this to reading and writing. What do you think? Is there any relation there? I don’t have an answer here, but it struck me as a similar kind of thing that I want to try to work out. Some questions I have:

• How does the person we are, the cultures and places we come from…how does that influence what our expectations are when reading? When writing? When encountering a word, a paragraph, an idea…and so on?
• How does our relationship to language influence how we encounter writing and reading in school, work, and for entertainment/enjoyment? What are some early memories you have of how language was enjoyable to you? (e.g., stories told in your family, jokes and wordplay with cousins). Does that impact how you approach reading and writing? In what ways?
• If we all don’t make rice the same way, you better believe we all don’t use language the same way. How can this be a strength? How can this be something important to be aware of as you read and write? Can you think of any examples of when the way you use language had a notably positive or negative impact in a situation?

Take some time to do some writing in response to some, but not all, of these questions. Maybe about 5 minutes. Then we will reconvene and talk.

 

Intro to Course and Syllabus (10-15 min)

This course is about language, rhetoric, and writing. We will learn about all three of these things primarily through writing a bunch of stuff, but we will all use a variety of methods to do so (we will “prepare” our writing in different ways). You are already an expert in each one of these topics. You have been using rhetoric the longest, followed by language, followed by writing–but you have been using all of them for the vast majority of your life.

• Rhetoric is a way we use symbols to make knowledge, coordinate activity, express ourselves, and influence others. You have been doing that since you’ve been a baby–you used crying, smiles, gestures, among other symbols before you started to master language. Being intentional with symbols is being rhetorical.
• Language is something you acquired after and with rhetoric, and can be used to serve rhetoric. We use words in various combinations to think, communicate, and make art (i.e., make knowledge, coordinate, influence). Being intentional with language is being rhetorical.
• Writing is a symbolic mode. Speech, image, audio, video, and other modes use rhetoric, but writing has had huge staying power for the last 1,000 years. Arguably, we write more now than we ever have (think about texting, social media, and the wide availability of sending documents via digital tools). Writing, though, can also include other modes–you might write before you give a speech, you might incorporate design and images into a document you write, and so on.

Like I said: you are experts in this. But writing is a lifelong thing to learn, and we are going to further develop that expertise in a college setting where making knowledge and self-expression is at a premium. As I note on the home page, part of this development of expertise is being at home with the chaos of choice–there’s lots of legos out there! Being a writer is coping with those infinite possibilities.

Okay, the syllabus.

You can access our syllabus on our website (see menu at the top) and on Blackboard as a pdf (more on this later).

Let’s try a Zoom poll for one of three options for how we might go over the syllabus today.

If we decided to do the Syllabus Quiz, you can access it here.

If we choose to do the group presentations, go to our syllabus page and your group will sum up your assigned section.

If you wanted me to hit the highlights: sit back, relax, and enjoy the traces of the sound of my Souf Jersey accent.

To follow along with the syllabus (and any document in the future while on Zoom), I would recommend either pulling up the webpage or the pdf and minimizing it some so you can see the Zoom screen and the syllabus simultaneously (something you may have been doing already by looking at this lesson plan).

 

Learning and Needs Survey (5-10 min)

I want to learn more about how you learn best and any other needs you might have.

Based on this information you provide, I can make adjustments in my class preparation and teaching, there are a lot of resources Baruch College can provide that I can direct you to, and there are a lot of resources others can provide (e.g., New York City government programs, non-profits, local businesses) that I can also direct you to if you are interested.

Click on Learning Needs Survey and take 5 minutes or so to fill it out.

 

Reading and Writing (5 min)

I see reading and writing as tightly integrated to one another. The more attention you make toward reading, the better your writing gets. The more attention you pay to writing, the better your reading gets. It is hard to write without reading other material or your or by reading and rereading your own writing. It is hard to fully unleash your abilities as a reader without using writing as a tool to think with.

This is why we are going to spend time developing a habit of integrating our writing into our reading process. Just like with writing, how we read and our own histories (and the histories of who we are reading and what that text is part of) influence the meanings we make of texts. So, never forget as you read (and as you write) how your history, the history of the writer you read, and various aspects of the context surrounding the text you are reading/writing all help construct meanings you and others make of the text.

Many studies in educational research has shown the value of reading actively in terms of recall but also in terms of learning complex ideas. This is why, for each reading in this class, you will complete a Reading Annotation assignment. We are going to talk more about that, but before we do, we have to get to know the interface of our course textbook.

 

Course Textbook and Making Digital Annotations (10 min)

Before we go over how do do the reading annotations, I want to go over the textbook interface since you’ll be doing most of your reading annotations on that. As stated on the syllabus, you can purchase our course textbook one of two ways:

• for $26 at https://www.vitalsource.com/custom/9781319409296
• for $28 through Baruch’s book store at https://baruch.bncollege.com/shop/baruch/page/find-textbooks

I want to quickly go over the how to use the textbook before getting into more detail about how to annotate in the textbook.

First, you’ll need to set up your username and password. When you purchase the textbook, VitalSource should walk you through that.

After you log in to VitalSource, the textbook should appear on “My Bookshelf” in the top of the menu. Click there.

Once you have already started reading, you will be in the habit of clicking the “Continue Reading” button to access the textbook.

The side menu on the left will be what helps you navigate the textbook. It looks like this:

The “home” icon in the first position takes you back to your library. This isn’t that helpful unless you have other textbooks through VitalSource.

Below the home icon is an icon with three dots on left and three lines on right is the table of contents for our textbook. This is useful, as it helps you navigate to different sections and chapters.

Just below the table of contents icon is a “magnifying glass” which is a search tool. You can type in words there to find something you might be looking for in the textbook.

Below the search icon is the “Notebook” function. We will talk more about this later when we get to annotating, but this function retains all of the notes and highlights you make in the book.

The image of the “beaker” is Labs…this is a bunch of features VitalSource is still testing out. Right now, I see abilities to use emojis (I know you can try this out in your annotations), definitions, scratch pad to take quite notes, and night display (to help your eyes). You can turn on these features or just use the outright, depending on what it is. Something to play around with if you want to.

The next icon we can’t access because we don’t have any figures in the textbook.

Finally, the last icon is Flashcards. You can make a “deck” of words with definitions or notes on the back to read through and review. This could potentially be helpful to get more comfortable with some key terms in our course that you might have trouble remembering. This was probably designed with test taking in mind, which we won’t be doing, but I could still see it as being useful if you want to try it out.

Then there is the bottom menu:

 

 

To the far left is Settings. Aside from aspects regarding sharing and annotating, I’m not sure there is much here to work with, but there could be as we use the textbook more.

After that, there’s a spot to show what page you are on, an option to “bookmark” the page, and a long bar to show progress you are making in terms of location in the textbook.

The five icons on the right are as follows:

• a printer to print
• a capital and lower case a (Aa) that helps you zoom in or out
• a “volume” icon that is actually to read the text aloud to you
• a highlighter to do a quick highlight
• a quote mark to cite what you are reading (it only seems to cite the textbook and not the chapter you are reading, so I wouldn’t use this unless you just want to get most of the citation automated…we are gonna go over other resources for automatic citation later on)
• a page with a paperclip looking thing which creates a quick URL link for you to copy for the page you are on in the textbook.

Making Digital Annotations

The following document gives instructions on how to complete two different kinds of reading annotations: Double Entry Journal and Direct Fire Highlighting. Let’s take a look.

 

Digital Tools, Part 1: Backing Up Work, MS Word, Adobe, and Blackboard (5-10 min)

In this class, we are going to submit assignments as documents to Blackboard. Just to make grading easier, I only take .doc files (i.e., Microsoft Word) or .pdf files.

 

***********Make sure you SAVE your work REGULARLY and BACK IT UP.*************

Ways to back up projects:

• You can claim your free Dropbox account through your status as a CUNY student. You get up to 15GB of storage, which should be plenty of storage for this class and other classes (if you work with a lot of video files or other files that take up a lot of space, this might be a little dicey).
• You can get a free Google Account and use Google Drive. This also gives you 15GB in the free version.
• You can purchase an external hard drive or a flash drive. These will give you anywhere from 1GB to much larger. The less space, the cheaper, typically.

I cannot tell you how important it is to back up files. It might not be this semester, but at some point in your college career, something will go wrong. Your computer will crash, you accidentally delete the wrong file permanently, etc. Back up stuff regularly to help avoid losing some or all of your work.

A good practice, too, is to save different versions of files. For instance, using file naming logic like: “Rhetorical Analysis Draft 1” or “Rhetorical Analysis Draft 1 – 10 OCT 2020.” This helps you differentiate between different versions and gives you another chance to recover lost work if you have multiple versions of a file.

Microsoft Word

We will primarily use Microsoft Word to complete our writing. If you prefer using other word processing software, you are welcome to do so under one condition: either convert the file into a .doc file or .pdf file when you submit it.

If you do not have Microsoft Word on your device or if you have a really old version, you should get your free access to the latest version through Baruch. To do so, go to the Baruch Computing and Technology Center’s (BCTC) page for free downloads for students.

Microsoft has several great resources for tutorials on how to learn how to use Word if you are unfamiliar. This tutorial is the first one on creating a document, but you can find several others on all sorts of ways to use Word (e.g., changing fonts, adding page numbers, formatting spacing). I am ALWAYS available to help you with any questions about Word (or any software or platform we use in the course.

NOTE: You may be using a device that has trouble running Microsoft Office (I know Chromebook, for instance might have issues since it runs from the browser). If this is the case, you can use https://onlinelabs.baruch.cuny.edu/#/ to run Office among other programs that you would be able to use at the physical computer lab. If this is too complicated, let me know, and we can just work through Google Docs for you during the semester.

Adobe Reader

I don’t think you have free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud, which would include a more advanced version of Adobe Reader. But, for this course, you don’t really need all the bells and whistles of the more advanced version.

Adobe Reader is free, and you can download it through this link. You DO NOT need Adobe Reader for this course, as whatever device you have should have some ability to work with pdfs (e.g., Microsoft Edge for PCs). That said, as noted in the annotation discussion we recently had, I was working from Adobe Reader’s functionality for making annotations and highlighting. Other pdf readers should have some way to annotate and highlight, and if you prefer to use them and you are having trouble figuring that out, I am more than happy to help you out, so let me know.

 

Blackboard

We will not do much on Blackboard, so this should be quick. Here are the things you need to know about Blackboard:

• You can access our Blackboard site at this link: https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/bctc/blackboard/. Click on “Log in to Blackboard” on the right. You will use your same username and password for CUNYFirst to get into Blackboard.
• In Course Documents, you can find all prompts (i.e., instructions) for assignments and you can find all texts we will read that are NOT in the textbook.
• In Submit Assignments, you will be submitting all assignments that are not QSRs, Learning Module activities, and various informal work related to participation. Other important information about submitting:
  • To submit, DO NOT click “Write Submission.” Instead, go to “Browse My Computer” and upload the file where you completed the assignment.
  • I will only accept .doc or .pdf files.
  • There is no relevant point system on Blackboard. I just give “1” point because Blackboard forces me to put a point value. See the syllabus and communication with me about how grades work and what grade you get.
• “Syllabus” is the home page and is simply another place to access our syllabus. It has my Google Voice phone number, unlike the syllabus on our course website.

During our next session, we will go over the remaining platforms we will use together: Blogs@Baruch, Email, and Slack.

 

Next Time (2-5 min)

-Make sure you have everything downloaded/accessible that we talked about this class: our course textbook, Microsoft Office through Baruch, Adobe Reader (or make sure you have some way to save files as .pdf files and annotate/highlight .pdf files).

-Set up Zoom account

–Complete Learning Needs Survey as soon as you can

-If doing Direct Fire Highlights for 9/1, share the link to public highlights with me (email me at [email protected])

-Read the Baldwin piece, do Reading Annotation by start of class on 9/1 (Submit to Blackboard)

-Read the Murray piece, do Reading Annotation by start of class on 9/1 (Submit to Blackboard)

-Introduction Presentation. Be prepared to share:

• your name
• your major or what you might be interested in majoring in
• one rule about writing that you remember hearing a lot (or one that just stood out to you) from your years in school or just as a writer in general
• one goal you have for working on your writing this term