22 Short Films About Grammar.

If you are looking for any of the grammar films go here:
22 Short Films About Grammar.

Here's on from YouTube: Passive Pete Awakens

The Water Debate?

Should water management be privatized?

Mention an effective argument you heard from the debate or respond to one of those posted by a classmate.

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The event:

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 : 7:00pm; Wednesday, October 29, 2008 : 7:00pm

University Park Campus
Bovard Auditorium

Leaders in the field face off over dwindling water supply, an issue particularly relevant in California.

We continue our Social Issues Speaker series with a debate addressing the limited water supply.

Stephen P. Erie, professor of Political Science and director of Urban Studies at UC San Diego, will debate Michael George, executive VP of the American States Water Company in San Dimas, California. Moderating the event is Donal Manahan, professor of Biology and Director of the Wrigley Institute at USC.

Memes versus Manufacturing

To foster our conversation on viral videos, let us have a discussion on what pushes their spread. "Viral videos" already implies one interpretation, but our readings from Wired and Techcrunch suggest alternatives.

"The Selfish Gene"
The Tipping Point, notes, notes,
The Rise of Crowdsourcing
The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
The Low-Tech Election

In the terms of the articles, are viral videos selfish, self -propagating memes or are they manufactured fads? What in these articles (pull quotes) speak best to your video?

The Oil Debate

In response to the debate you witnessed on the Oil/Energy Crisis, post what you thought was the most effective argument from each side and/or respond to someone else's comment. be as detailed as possible.

Oil

Oct. 14 - Oct. 15, 2008 | 7:00pm | Bovard Auditorium

More and more, the world experiences the consequences of our dependence on unrenewable fossil fuels and limited water supplies. The first event in the Fall 2008 Social Issues Speaker series will center on the complicated dilemma of oil. As a primary focus of the current presidential campaigns, this heated topic will undoubtedly spark a stimulating and pertinent debate. Dr. Mark Allen Bernstein, Managing Director of the USC Energy Institute, moderates the debate between Matt Petersen, President of Global Green USA, and Ralph Moran, Government Relations, BP America.

Sign up for Diigo

Diigo is a tool for social bookmarking and social annotation. That means it's a service for bookmarking pages and then accessing them from any computer. You can also make notes and then share those notes with someone else via email.

Go to Diigo here.
I highly recommend the Demo video.

For Wed, please sign up for Diigo, download the toolbar, and try to bookmark a page with notes. For now choose a page that has something to do with our current topic of changing literacies.

Diiigo Toolbar

1. Sign up for an account or using a new username or Open ID
2. Install the Diigo toolbar. (Use Firefox for best results).
3. Click the "bookmark" icon to book mark a page.
4. Highlight some text.
5. Mouseover that text and choose from the menu "add stickynote."
6. Share that page with me by choosing the "Send" icon and emailing it to me.
   

Using the Topoi

In place of Friday's class (12pm only), please take a look at the resource we've just created to teach "the topoi," an ancient tool for developing your ideas.

You'll find the resources here. Please watch all of the videos.

For now, focus on what the topoi are and how they might help you with this assignment or another one. Post your feedback on the tools as comments to this blog post. We'll discuss "the topoi" further in class.

Here is the site:
The USC Topoi Pageflakes

The Changing World of Publishing

(Updated 9/11/08) If you missed the talks on Monday (or if you left early), come on over to Writer Response Theory where I have posted my notes.

The talk was an introduction to some of the changes in publishing modes and in what Hayles called Digital Scholarship.

But in the meantime, go explore the following sites that were discussed in the talk:

Vectors: USC's multimedia Journal. Make sure you go in and look at the articles inside.
One of my favorites is here: Blue Velvet

HyperBerlin:

• article

Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Write your reactions as comments on this post.