Week 1

TUESDAY, AUGUST 22 | THURSDAY, AUGUST 24

How can you think and hit at the same time?
                      —Yogi Berra

LECTURE
• What’s in store this semester

• Résumés

• Google and Deep Web: Research2006.ppt

If you miss the first class, please come see me during my office hours or by appointment as soon as possible to make sure you understand my expectations for you in this course.

LAB
• Mac 101

• Internet treasure hunt

• Take the quiz in the first module (Test your web knowledge): http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/lue/webwizard/

SITES WE LOOKED AT IN CLASS
• The River Wild: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/selway/home/firsthome.html

• Cronkite Zine: http://cronkitezine.asu.edu

• NGM quiz on global climate: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/feature1/quiz/index.html

• Shooting suspect to be arraigned today in Blacksburg, Va. http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/breaking/wb/79269

• The Jill Carroll story has generated millions of page views—record visitor traffic levels on the Christian Science Monitor Web site http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/carroll/index.html?s=u

• Columbia Crash (how different sites covered the disaster in ways that couldn’t have been done in print or on TV): http://www.cyberjournalist.net/features/shuttlestorytelling020403.html

• A free trial version of Dreamweaver or Photoshop for 30 days.

• For $25 a month you can subscribe to lynda.com and do practice tutorials of Photoshop, Dreamweaver and more.

Important!
Assignments are listed on the day they are DUE. You must always look ahead to the next week to know what you should be reading and doing NOW for this course.

DUE THIS THURSDAY
1. Bring in a hard copy of your résumé. If you’d like to look at an example of a résumé, download this Word document. You can tailor this template to suit your needs.

2. Your first blog post is due in two weeks, so start thinking about what your blog will be about. Slate’s excellent Today’s Papers feature offers a daily look at what's on the front pages of the largest U.S. newspapers. The Web page and the daily e-mail are good ways to stay on top of how the biggest stories are being covered. Other Slate features that will help you get quick overviews of what the media are covering include the site's International Papers, In Other Magazines and Today's Blogs features.

3. Read “Understanding Blogs” from J-Learning. IMPORTANT! If the page won’t open in Internet Explorer, try another browser, such as Safari.

4. Read the entries listed under SYLLABUS in the lavender column at the right: Assignments | Attendance | Books | Cheating | Extra credit | Grades | Lab times | Syllabus | Schedule | Success!

It could be worth your while!

Please bring any questions you have about the syllabus to class on Thursday.

Cecil R. SchwalbeLonesome George the javelina visits our backyard every day.

DUE NEXT TUESDAY
1. Review the guidelines on résumés, then revise your résumé accordingly. Run spell-check. Proofread carefully. You’ll lose points for misspelled words and grammatical errors as well as for not following the guidelines. If you want feedback before you do your résumé in HTML, please e-mail me a copy by midnight Sunday.

If you’d like to look at an example of a résumé, download this Word document. This is a model that you can tailor to suit your needs.

2. HAND IN the quiz on Web searches. This will be graded; it’s worth 25 points. You can print out the page, or you can download the quiz as a Word document. You may write the answers in by hand. It’s easier, however, to download the Word document and copy/paste the URLs.

3. Read "Writing and Editing a Blog" from J-Learning. IMPORTANT! If the page won’t open in Internet Explorer, try another browser, such as Safari. By the time you come to class Tuesday, you should have a good idea of what a blog is and what kind of diversity exists among blogs today. You’ll set up and write your own blog. Further details are on the Blog posts page of this syllabus.

4. Come to class with a topic you want to blog about. Look for blogs that fit your interests. Look at other student blogs. Try browsing for blogs by topic at Kinja. Here are a few frequently updated blogs:
BuzzMachine | Cinecultist | Cowboyz 'n' Poodles | Engadget | GarageSpin | Lost Remote | MediaBlog | A Girl and a Gun | InstaPundit | PressThink | Romenesko

5. Print out and turn in the results of the “Cleaning Your Copy” quiz at News University. You’ll review how to avoid the most common style, grammar and punctuation goofs. This exercise should take an hour or so, depending on how rusty you are. You may start and stop at anytime, then come back to it later. You can work on this from any computer.

EXTRA CREDIT: Hand in the answers (even if they’re wrong) to the Internet treasure hunt without looking at the answers first.

OPTIONAL: If you’re not familiar with search strategies, syntax and Boolean logic, you might want to do the Web Searching Tutorial.

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