Example Podcast Script

https://docs.google.com/document/d/125yiArwhNXUKzrpxt8vw4O9QeHrRGIAgW4g3dq_Tt90/edit

Discussion: Model Podcast

Listen to the following podcast:

http://uncquartet.blogspot.com/2010/11/charlottes-feeder-22.html

As you listen, think about your answers to the following questions:

What signals the listener that the author is beginning a new section or introducing a new idea? 

How does the author deal with the problem of representing charts, graphs, etc. in the audio format? Do you think she is successful?

Evaluate the author’s introduction and hypothesis statement. Are they effective? Why or why not?

How has the author used music and sound effects to make the podcast clearer? Are there any sections that might have used these tools more effectively?

Does the author achieve an appropriate level of scientific credibility? Why or why not? 

Draft Workshop: Unit 2 Data Sheets

What data you choose to collect and how you collect it is the backbone of your experiment; you won't be able to prove your hypothesis unless you collect your data in a way that is clear and consistent. Examine your partner’s outline closely and answer the following questions in the same Google Doc with the sheet:

1. Your hypothesis should have identified a relationship between an independent and a dependent variable. Are these variables identified specifically (i.e. “if I nap for 90 minutes per day...” rather than “if I nap…”)? How does the author measure changes in the independent variable? What about the dependent variable? Is the scale sensitive enough to measure subtle changes? Is it flexible enough to track unexpected changes?

2. We noted in class that the biggest danger to experiments of this nature is the confounding variable. What confounding variables do you anticipate might get in the way of proving the author's hypothesis? Are these variables accounted for in the data sheet? How might the author use the data sheet to keep track of these confounding variables and prove definitively that they have not shaped the relationship between the independent and dependent variables?

3. What other kinds of data might it be useful for the author to collect? Suggest at least two piece of data that the author might consider adding to his or her data sheet.

4. Is the data collected on the sheet adequately quantified? While there might be some space devoted to more open-ended, narrative responses, is the data predominantly in the form of numbers that can be quickly and easily analyzed? If not, how might the author collect the data in a way that is more quantitative and less qualitative?

When you have completed the draft workshop, turn in your work here.

Turn in Feeders 2.1-2.4

Feeder 2.1:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rnOr9-P-G9WpzYTMjiSZ4Uyp5uQrOlBda9D6KZONIdE/viewform


Feeder 2.2:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1aKEIU0OJx6WqOYg6e7GpiLc6FqZRE2bYpQk5qintf18/viewform


Feeder 2.3:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1EVpQajShK6kM11JSQIDxThMpR3qedy5Z1zZGOsr2op8/viewform

Feeder 2.4:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gJ1JfNgd8GXtR6rGxifmO2-R4BeF1YhMW_tq2GjF7_E/viewform

Introduction to Audacity

Go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and download the latest version of Audacity (note: you’re welcome to use another program like GarageBand or Adobe Premiere with the caveat that I can only provide limited technical support for these programs).

Audacity comes equipped with tools to record your voice, but you will also need to add music and sound effects to your podcast. The best site to find free and legal sound clips for your podcast is http://www.freesound.org/ (note: registration is required, but they will not spam you).

Spend some time playing with the technology and getting comfortable with it. Before we finish this activity, I would like each of you to practice:

• recording your voice
• importing a sound file from FreeSound or some other source
• moving an audio clip to a different spot on the timeline
• editing audio (i.e. cutting, copying, or pasting something from one part of the timeline to another)
• applying filters or effects to an audio clip (i.e. fade in/out, reverb, etc.)

Example Data Sheets

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wtFqAdeVDpFB6-Un6a3uZA6yGEOmhqPnOLuLf0RUnZw/edit?hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LhEdfvSMNl76jckOUPyheqcLnjF1sfSzI29MyRA0AgU/edit?hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z2i3A0CRM_6t74NvN9xX8PiR4150BArsjJFpl6BwfSo/edit?hl=en_US

PowerPoint: Writing a Research Report Part I

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11JiXOw1yx0R0w5Umx2bjNqbEU/edit?usp=sharing

PowerPoint: Designing Your Research Study

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11JiXOw1yx0M01fT3AyTTdUT28/edit?usp=sharing

Unit 2 Brainstorming / Pre-Writing Activity

Hopefully all of you have had time to think about what behavior you will modify for your Unit 2 Project. Begin by sharing your behavior with your group members; let them know why you're choosing to change this behavior and why you think it will be appropriate for the assignment. (Note: you may want to look over the Unit 2 assignment sequence to make sure you've chosen a behavior that will work for this study.) Once everyone has talked about his or her behavior, create chart in a new Google Doc titled "[your name]'s Unit 2 Pre-Writing." After you create the Google Doc, click on "Table" and then "Create Table" and make a table containing 3 columns and 1 row. Please make sure to share the document with me.

In column 1, spend at least two minutes listing everything you think you know about your behavior. These things don't have to be verifiable scientific fact; for instance, if you're trying to drink more water, you might write down that being properly hydrated gives you more energy, even though you'd probably want to do research to verify this fact. In listing everything you know about your behavior, you want to consider what kinds of things trigger your behavior, what happens after you do your behavior, how it makes the people around you feel, etc. There are no boundaries here… just get as much down on the page as you can.

In column 2, spend at least five minutes listing everything you are wondering about your behavior. This is the place for unanswered questions: you might question some of the things you assumed in the first column, you might wonder about previous research into your behavior, you might think about the consequences of changing your behavior… you chose to modify this particular behavior for a reason, so hopefully you are curious about many different aspects of it.

In column 3, spend at lest five minutes write down (as specifically as possible) how you will find out the answers to the questions you are curious about in column 2. Do you expect that some of your questions will be answered in previous research? How will you find this research? Will you be able to answer some of the questions with your own study? If so, how will you design your experiment so that it gives you a definitive answer to your question?

When you are finished brainstorming, please turn in the document here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dyvfQNyS-Vunor5Ap1oYgqmfuBlJkdTsgp7Pj-ymMRU/viewform

If you finish before the end of class you can begin researching for your Feeder 2.2 assignment. If any new items for your 3 columns occur to you during your research, please return to this assignment.

Quicksand podcast discussion

Begin by answering the following questions in your groups. You don't need to write anything down, just discuss these questions aloud. Play back the podcast if you need to.

1.What kind of “hook” do they use to draw in the listener? (Note: ignore the plea for money that precedes the podcast.)

2.Estimate what proportion of the program is based on extempore speech and what seems to be read from a script. How can you tell?

3.Note any background music or sound effects that seem to have been added in post-production. Why were these things added? How do they make the podcast clearer or more interesting?

4.Note any terms or concepts that you learned about from listening to the podcast. How were these explained? How did the authors make these complex ideas and terms easy to understand?

Homework: Quicksand Podcast Assignment

We'll be working with the RadioLab podcast titled “Quicksaaaand!". You can listen to it here:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/quicksand/

As you are listening, compose a retrospective outline of the podcast. Post this outline in a new Google Doc titled "[your name]'s RadioLab assignment." Share this Google Doc with me and when you are finished, turn it in here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1G8BjfLNhJNWQtBOSJkzO2ZItD2-Nujur642pOjA0y4s/viewform

The assignment is due by class time on Wednesday.

Unit 1 Wrap-Up

Read the following article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/10/shinya_yamanaka_s_nobel_prize_he_saved_embryos_not_just_stem_cell_research_.html

For each of the following items, work together in your groups to rate the author’s performance as weak, proficient, or strong. For each item, explain your answer by noting, for instance, how the thesis statement provides a roadmap and makes the topic meaningful, which style of introduction the author chooses, or how the author cites sources. Each group should create one Google Doc.

• Post has a strong thesis statement that makes a substantial claim about the topic, lays out a roadmap for the essay, and makes the topic meaningful for the blog’s audience
• Post is logically organized with a strong paragraph structure
• Post has a strong introduction that grabs the reader’s attention, introduces the topic, and transitions quickly to the main argument.
• Post successfully employs outside research to support the main claim
• Post successfully achieves a middle style tone appropriate for the blog’s audience
• Post achieves a strong, active voice by avoiding the over-use of “to be” verbs and prepositions
• Post cites sources appropriately
• Post is well-formatted and free of obvious errors in grammar, punctuation, etc.

Unit 1 Self-Assessment

Take a moment to look back at the earliest drafts of your Unit 1 Project. Think about how you have grown as a writer over the past 8 weeks. Next, answer each of the following questions with a short paragraph of 3-4 sentences.

1. Which class lessons have had the most impact on your writing? Which ones have had the least? Why?

2. Have you found the draft workshops helpful? Why or why not? Do you have any suggestions about how the peer review process can be more efficient or productive?

3. Do you feel like the in-class assignments and draft workshops helped to move your writing through the conceptual, organizational, and surface-level stages? Did you get stuck at any one of these stages during any of the assignments? If so, explain why.

4. Do you think any of the concepts or lessons covered in the course so far need additional clarification? How will this clarification help?

When you're done please email your responses to me at dlupton@email.unc.edu. Please place your responses in the body of the message rather than as an attachment.

Posting Your Unit 1 Project

It’s finally time to post your unit project to your blog! Before you post, exchange your draft with someone in your group and have them proofread it (i.e. checking for mistakes in spelling, grammar, etc.). Feel free to ask me if you have any grammar questions. Once your post is proofed and ready to go, log in to blogger.com and post it! Don’t forget to:

• begin by pasting in your text, selecting all of it, then clicking the remove formatting button (the T with the X over it). If you don’t complete this step you will almost certainly run into trouble formatting your post.
• give your post a substantive title (i.e. not “Unit 1 Project” or something similar)
• include your works cited list (formatted according to the style sheet your group created earlier this semester)
• credit any pictures or other multimedia content if their creative commons license requires attribution

After your post is live, have another member of your group look it over, making one more check for spelling and grammatical mistakes and also checking for formatting problems and inconsistencies. Remember, these formatting issues are as big a part of your grade as your spelling and grammar! Your post will be considered submitted at the end of the class period.

Lesson: Editing

1. Circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, onto, into)
2. Draw a box around the "is" verb forms
3. Ask, "Where's the action?"
4. Change the "action" into a simple verb
5. Move the doer into the subject (Who's kicking whom?)
6. Eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups
7. Eliminate any redundancies.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BhDJ-E-atm0D7c1CIVOSytQneYSJA533EOgphD8cMhc/edit

When you have finished editing a paragraph of your partner's paper, turn it in here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YIDsvAvY0z7T2O2lTIRM-Xftz6N0wv32WFNk67UhHT0/viewform

PowerPoint: Intellectual Property

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11JiXOw1yx0Q3NVbTcwMlVqVE0/edit?usp=sharing

PowerPoint: Style

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11JiXOw1yx0bEtwNFdOVU5LTjQ/edit?usp=sharing

Draft Workshop: Style

1. All of your drafts are probably aiming for a middle style. Go through your partner's draft and highlight any words, sentences, or passages in which you think the essay deviates from a middle style (either by being too formal or too informal). If you have time, suggest ways in which the author might revise these sections in order to achieve a more appropriate tone for the assignment.

2. Since writing in the middle style is targeted at a fairly wide audience, unfamiliar terms and concepts need to be defined. Examine the essay and point out any terms that aren't defined that probably should be. For the terms that are defined, are these definitions clear and concise? Does the reader understand everything s/he needs to in order to understand the author's point?

3. Another aspect of the middle style is that it employs concrete nouns (rather than abstract nouns) and action verbs (rather than "to be" verbs). In general, does this essay feel concrete (that is, grounded in things you can see and touch) or abstract (that is, in the world of ideas) to you? Do you think the essay's level of abstraction is appropriate given the audience and the topic? Point out any specific passages in which you think the paper gets too abstract. If you have trouble locating these passages, try searching for "to be" verbs; they often cluster around these types of passages.

4. Did you notice any examples of contentious terms or insensitive language in the draft? If so, point them out and suggest how the writer might replace this with more sensitive language.
When you have completed the workshop, turn it in at the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GN_pmCLZa2dwoXjcsczFkOYiTMIIp-uT5vWWaQW21nU/viewform

Draft Workshop: Organizational Concerns

1. In what order does the author present his or her supporting evidence (e.g. chronological, process order, cause-and-effect, etc.)? Is this the most appropriate order given the audience's level of understanding? Suggest at least one alternative way in which the essay might be organized.

2. Is there a sense of balance to my essay? Do I spend too long on any single point, or do I seem to rush through important parts? Does any section feel either redundant or underdeveloped?

3. Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each topic sentence relate clearly back to the thesis? Does each paragraph deal with one idea and one idea only? Point out any points in the essay at which the paragraphing seems weak or confusing.

4. Does the essay have transitions that move the reader clearly from idea to the next? Does the writer make the relationship between the ideas clear with words that emphasize the essay's organization scheme (e.g. time-related words of the essay is organized chronologically, etc.)?

5. Does each paragraph fully explain its main idea? Do any paragraphs feel thin or under-developed? Point them out.

When you have completed the workshop, turn it in at the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MyMtm7DRoQbeU8ZL8T8VvKQqHdJPtt7NFOz9haGy_yY/viewform

PowerPoint: Paragraph Development

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B11JiXOw1yx0c1RIbTY4ZjlKZVk/edit?usp=sharing