Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Additional Resources on Our Website

Go to the Public website for our course and click on any of the links under Authors, Writing and Research, or General Resources (under the Links section). Write a comment here about 1-2 resources you find, what you may have found that seems interesting in terms of our course, and what might be helpful on that link for your classmates. The Public website can be accessed through the link on the right side of this blog.

(If you find any dead or broken links, please send me an email message.)

6 comments:

  1. I followed the link to Steve Brewer's blog titled Home Front. He has some interesting blog posts ( going all the way back to 2007) and you can even comment!

    I think we can learn a lot about him through his posts before Monday when he comes to speak to us. It seems like he prefers to write crime novels, which would explain A Box of Pandoras. He also posted something about three novels he will be writing and publishing soon. It seems like all three are set in Albuquerque! Maybe we can ask him about this on Monday and see how much he can tell us, since he writes that he has a contract pending on the books.

    In his blog he also commented about teaching at UNM Honors College. I didn't know he taught here! It seems like he is constantly writing short stories and novels, so I wonder how difficult it must be to write short stories, have contracts pending, and teach at UNM.

    In his blog he mentions that in his novels he incorporates humor, which he doesn't do in his short stories. By reading his blog posts you can tell he is a funny guy. I really like his slogan under the “About Me”: “I write books about crooks”.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I went to the Purdue MLA Formatting link, which I actually needed for my Spanish class. I had been told to write an essay in MLA format, and didn't quite know what MLA format was beyond how the bibliography was done, so I'm really glad I found this resource.
    I also went to Steve Brewer's biography on Amazon, and learned that his book "Lonely Street" had been turned to an movie with actors that I actually know. I haven't seen it, but good for him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had heard of and visited most of the links on the writing resources page because I work as a writing tutor for CAPS and we use many of the links ourselves. There was one that I hadn't seen so I clicked on it. It was the link called Zotero. It was very interesting. Basically you download their software and as you do research you can save the pages and the information and then later you can build your bibliography. It seems like it would be really useful! I usually bookmark the pages I visit and then I have to collect all the information I need manually later. Zotero seems very easy and simple.

    I also visited the author link page. I wish I had seen this page bofore our class with Dr. Thomas. It would have come in handy. I ended up clicking on a few links but the one called Wordharvest writing tip from Steve brewer. It was a youtube video where he gave tips about writing. I really likes it because its not tipical. Everything else was a website or something written and this was a video. I also liked it because I got an idea of what he looks like and how he talks. It gave me a good sense of what to expect on Monday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I went to the writing a thesis section and I found it helpful because writing a thesis is something a lot of people undermined. A thesis is in fact probably one of the most important parts of writing an essay if not the most important part. While being one of the most important parts it is also one of the most difficult, especially for me. The thought of placing the idea of my entire essay in a single sentence kills me. I anticipate relying on this resource quite strongly when the time comes for me to write my Leslie Silko research paper. Thank you for giving us these resources!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I looked under the Writing a Thesis section, because that is where I have the most trouble on when I’m writing an essay. My essays tend to have many themes and ideas and that makes it hard for me to pinpoint what I want to prove or disclose to the reader in just a sentence or two. I went to the specific link “How to Write a Thesis Statement” and the writers gave me good tips on how to first pick a thesis statement. Then they give certain criterias that your statement must have to give it more strength. As Summer said it is the most important part of the essay and if your thesis statement isn’t clear or strong enough to support itself the essay won’t be appealing to the readers.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I checked out the "Evaluating Web Pages" section, specifically the link to Berkeley's page on the subject. I thought I was very good at telling when a website was reputable (looking for .org or .edu rather than .com, that sort of thing), but their list is much more exhaustive than that. They tell you how to see if a particular user of a larger website wrote the page, how to see how old the information of a site is, and how to see if other people link to the page for additional information. This is particularly important in an age where a quick Google search can get me an answer faster than going to the library and doing old-fashioned research.

    I also looked at V.B. Price's website, since I'll be leading his discussion in a few weeks. It's such a great resource to see what his writing will entail before I ever glance at one of his poems. I love what he says about himself: "I won’t glorify my standoffishness by calling myself an outsider, but I am a stubborn character, anti-social when it comes to being influenced, eccentric in the sense of needing to be utterly free, while well disguised in normalcy, and a believer in the ordinary genius of everyone." It makes me actually look forward to his talk!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.