Excellent question for Little Brother Summary

thanks for your detailed question.

Your summary will be laid out like an essay with paragraphs focused on your topics. You select two to three major events to explain; you explore what those events mean in the context of Doctorow’s intentions in the book as a whole; you respond with your opinion; and you evaluate two or three of his writing strategies.  Your goal is to look at this “chunk” as a whole meaning unit to give your summary a focus.

But, remember, this is fiction. Everything else we’ve been reading is non-fiction. We approach fiction much differently than non-fiction. There is not a skeleton in fiction, so you needn’t go looking for that. 

Homework question on summary statement

A summary statement is one to two sentences that summarizes the main point of the chunk.

Quiz on Monday!

We will have our first quiz on Monday on the reading from Real Questions. Remember, you can use notes in a quiz but NOT the actual reading.

Schedule Change

Please note that the schedule has been changed for week four (see schedule on blog. It is correct) and that weeks 5-8 have been added to the schedule posted on the blog.

8 am class NOTE TAKER NEEDED

Would you be willing to share your notes? If so, please let me know. We would really appreciate your help!

All you need to do is take notes how you usually do during class and share those same notes with a student in class. It's not added work for you.

You can email me if you are willing or respond to this post.

Extra Credit

This extra credit opportunity is good throughout the semester until Dec. 1st.
Go to boingboing.net. This is a tech blog where Cory Doctorow regularly posts. Select one of his posts and write a summary of the post. Make sure you select a post that has an argument! Send the summary to me and if possible, we will try to share it with the class. You may do two of these. Each is worth 5 points.

Real Questions pp. 23-27

I have heard from a couple of students that the bookstore is out of "Real Questions". I've photographed the assignment and posted it on the right (look about half way down the  screen, under pages).  The quality is not ideal, but it IS readable.

Student's question on homework

i received a question from a student about Wednesday's homework that might be useful to more students. I've posted our exchange below. If you have questions, please let me know,

had a few quick questions on the homework that I had forgot to ask before rushing out the door to get my books. I'm confused when it said "Make a list of the steps to writing a summary." Do you mean you want us to read pages 23-27 and make a list in our own words as to what we read about writing a summary? 

Yes

Also on the "Data overflow" in Chunk 3 #7 it says "Facebook experiment (talk about defining important concepts as well) do you mean for us to think of different ways FB could have included users to be notified about this experiment or a concept to now notify users in the future when they are going to do another research experiment? 

The reference to explain about defining important concepts is just noting that "Facebook experiment" is not a word to define but a concept that needs defining. Sorry for the confusion.

If you have further questions, let me know.

Books for class

We will be diving into our reading right away, so I encourage you to get your books as soon as possible, particularly Real Questions and English117 Course Packet, both available at the bookstore on campus.