RHE 309K (43920)
Fall 2005
Jim Brown

Due Dates
•2/1: Organizational Description Due (posted to blog by Wednesday 2/1, 10:00pm)
•2/9: First Submission Due
•2/23: Second Submission Due

Paper Description
In October of 2005, the Austin City Council allocated $90,000 for the Grant for Technological Opportunities Program (GTOPs), a program designed, “to support digital technology projects that show promise of benefiting the community” (here’s the Press Release and here’s the GTOPs website).

Applications for grant money were due on January 20, and city council is currently reviewing grant proposals. However, we will use this situation as a role-playing activity and for your first paper assignment. For this paper, you will be representing a local non-profit organization. As a representative of that organization, you are charged with speaking at a City Council meeting. Your appearance in front of the City Council allows you to request grant money and describe a project that your organization would like to pursue.

Your presentation to Austin City Council will be in the form of a 4-6 page paper. You should consider your audience to be city council - more information on Austin City Council can be found at their website. You might also consider watching part of a city council meeting to get a sense for what the format is like (meetings are broadcast on cable access). You should also review the application and the selection criteria that the city council provides for the GTOP program (all of this informaiton can be found at the GTOPs website). While you won't be able to address everything required in a full grant proposal (a full grant proposal might be 20-25 pages), this information will give you a sense of what the city council is expecting of those applying to this program.

Organizational Description
Your first task will be to choose a local non-profit organization (NOTE: you cannot choose Austin Free-Net, which is the group we'll be working with at the end of the semester). You will have to research this organization to find out what they do and what kind of technology project this non-profit might propose. A list of local organizations can be found at: http://www.main.org/. This description should be one page (double-spaced) and should describe the organization you've chosen and the project you envision this organization proposing. Your proposed project can change, but you should at least be thinking about what you will propose to city council in your paper.

As I have noted above, this description must be posted to your blog by Wednesday, 2/1 at 10:00pm. It should be posted as a blog entry, not as an attached word file. This is important because other students in the class will be commenting on your description.

Submission Guidelines
You will be submitting your organizational descriptions as blog entries. You will also submit your papers via your blog; however, your paper will NOT be in the form of a blog entry. You will submit your paper as an attachment to a blog entry using the "attach new file" function. As noted at the top of this sheet, your first submission is due on 2/9 and your second submission is due on 2/23.

Please note that first submission does not mean "rough draft." Your first submission should be a good-faith attempt at completing the assignment. I will comment on first submissions using Microsoft Word Commenting. These comments will help you to approach a thoughtfully revised second submission.

Format Guidelines

Your final draft should be 4-6 pages long, typed, double-spaced, and carefully proofread. Any references to articles or other research must be in MLA format. REFER TO THE SF EXPRESS HANDBOOK. THE PAPER VERSION OF YOUR DRAFT SHOULD LOOK LIKE THE MODEL PAPER ON PAGES 87-98 of SF Express. If you don't have the SF Express handbook, you must use some other MLA manual.

RHE 309K (43920)
Fall 2005
Jim Brown

Due Dates
•3/28: First Submission Due
•4/11: Second Submission Due

Paper Description
Benjamin Compaine's Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth is an anthology of work about the digital divide. It brings together a number of different arguments about the topic and attempts to show the issue from different angles. As editor of this collection, Compaine chose what would be included, how it would be sorted, and how each argument would be framed in terms of his own overarching argument.

For your second paper, you will create your own short anthology about the digital divide. After selecting which pieces you'd like to include, you will write an introduction to your anthology. This introduction should put the different arguments that you've chosen into dialogue with one another. How do they speak to one another? Do the authors participate in a useful "conversation" or do they talk past one another? You should say how they fit together, show where different arguments clash with one another, and explain the different goals each of the pieces have. You can talk about these different arguments in terms of the audience they hope to reach, the different kinds of arguments they make, whether they fairly address their opposition, or any other elements you choose to focus on.

Submission Guidelines
You'll be submitting your papers via your blogs. However, your paper will NOT be in the form of a blog entry. You will submit your paper as an attachment to a blog entry using the "attach new file" function. As noted at the top of this sheet, your first submission is due on 3/28 and your second submission is due on 4/11.

Please note that first submission does not mean "rough draft." Your first submission should be a good-faith attempt at completing the assignment. I will comment on first submissions using Microsoft Word Commenting. These comments will help you to approach a thoughtfully revised second submission.

Format Guidelines
You must include a table of contents for your anthology. On this page, you might want to break your book up into sections, but this isn't required. The introduction to your anthology should be 4-6 pages long, typed, double-spaced, and carefully proofread. Any references to articles or other research must be in MLA format. REFER TO THE SF EXPRESS HANDBOOK. THE PAPER VERSION OF YOUR DRAFT SHOULD LOOK LIKE THE MODEL PAPER ON PAGES 87-98 of SF Express.

RHE 309K (43920)
Fall 2005
Jim Brown

Due Date: 4/4

Assignment Description
In this class, we've talked about revision as an involved process. It's a process that forces you to rethink ideas, rewrite large portions of your argument, and add or subtract entire sections of text.

This assignment will allow you to perform this type of revision on someone else's writing. In this sense, you'll be acting as a collaborator or possibly even an editor. Your approach to someone else's writing should also help them approach the second submission of their paper.

For this assignment, you will write a 2 page (double-spaced) revision plan for your partner. This document will explain what you see as the strengths and weaknesses of their argument, suggest some ways to revise the paper, and guide them in what should be added or taken away. Your document should provide specifics and SHOULD NOT be a discussion of mechanical issues such as sentence structure or grammar. You can mention these types of issues, but they cannot be the focus of your write-up. Your focus should be on your partner's argument, how it's constructed, and how it could be constructed in a more effective way.

Submission Guidelines
You'll be submitting your revision plans as a word document. You will submit this document just as you do a paper assignment - as an attachment to a blog entry. Revision Plans should be posted to your blog before class on April 4. During class on April 4, you will meet with your partner to discuss your revision plans.

RHE 309K (43990)
Fall 2005
Jim Brown

Due Dates
•4/6-4/18: Conduct Site Surveys
•4/18-4/20: Project Proposal Due
•4/27: Presentations Due

Project Description
Your final project will take you on a short trip to one of Austin Free-Net’s free public internet access sites. At your assigned location, you will interview those in charge. Your interview will gather a wide range of information including what kind of access the site provides to visitors, what the site’s needs and wants are, the profiles of their typical users, and much more. Upon conducting the survey, you should be paying close attention to what these site managers say. Your goal will be to identify some need and to make an attempt to fill that need. Here are some possible projects you could take on:

•Take video footage of your site survey and use it to create a promotional video for the site and for AFN.

•Help those in charge of the site to set up a blog that they could use as a way to interact with their users. This site could become the default homepage on their browsers and could notify users of things like upgrades, changes, training classes. Alternately, the blog could be a place where users could post creative work such as poetry and short stories.

•Create informational materials in the form of a web page or a packet that your AFN site can provide to those who make use of the facility. This could be information about the classes they offer, suggestions about how to make use of digital technology, job search tips, easy online publishing strategies (such as Blogger or LiveJournal), or online communities (such as Friendster, Xanga, or Facebook).

•Design some classes that your AFN site could offer to their users. Many sites already offer classes, but you could put together some syllabi of new courses or maybe even offer new ways of teaching their current courses.

This is only a short list of possibilities, and the project you choose will depend on what you uncover during your site survey. Remember that your main tasks will be to 1) listen closely during your conversations with those at the site and 2) use your writing and critical thinking skills to help them fill a need or solve a problem. The options I’ve listed above fit into different rhetorical situations and address different audiences. As you work through this project, remember who your audience is and think about the best way to address that audience.

Site Surveys
Austin Free-Net has provided us with a survey. This form will help AFN get a feel for what’s happening at their various sites. You will use this survey as a guide for your interviews, but you should also develop additional questions you’d like to ask before you conduct the survey. Also, as you conduct the interview and listen closely to the responses, additional questions will arise. Your survey should be a conversation with the people at the AFN site. This means that the survey will provide a guide for the conversation, but these won’t be the only questions you ask.

While you should allow the interview to guide the project you’d like to work on, you could also consider some options ahead of time. If you have an idea in mind, you should discuss this when you schedule your site survey (probably by phone). For example, if you think you might like to take video footage you’ll have to first check with the site to make sure this is okay with them. Feel free to brainstorm projects ahead of time, but be careful not to force a project that doesn’t quite fit the needs of the people you’re working with.

Project Proposal
Upon completing your survey, you’ll turn in a project proposal. This proposal will include the results of your survey and how those results have led you to the project you’d like to work on. Think of this as a way of pitching your project. This proposal should answer these questions:

•What is the rhetorical situation for your project? Who is the author? Who is the audience? What media will your project make use of and why did you choose these particular media?

•How does your project fit with your previous discussions of the digital divide?

•What need are you filling for the site?

•What did you learn during your site survey and how did you apply these findings when coming up with a project?

This list of questions is by no means all inclusive. Regardless of how you approach the proposal, it must explain your project and the justifications for it in some detail. It should also contain some explanation of how this project applies to our discussions of rhetoric and the arguments we’ve read about the digital divide.

Presentations
During the final week of class, you’ll present your projects to the class. You should consider inviting the people from your site to view your presentation. Your presentation should be both a showcase for your work and a reflection on what you’ve learned during the project. It will be a way to talk about the problem you identified, how you’ve proposed to solve it, obstacles you encountered throughout the process, and advice for future classes that work on similar projects.