Sunday, November 1, 2009

CI 5475 Week 9 - "Everybody Writes" Podcast

As I am currently a Graduate Writing Consultant at the University of Minnesota's Center for Writing, I plan on designing a podcast to be utilized as an outreach tool for the C4W. Because the clever advertising slogan for the C4W is "Everybody writes: we'll help you get better at it," I thought it equally clever to appropriate a shortened version of this slogan for the podcast's title - "Everybody Writes."

As an outreach tool, I envision the target audience of this podcast to be the University of Minnesota students, staff, and faculty that utilize /may potentially utilize the C4W and its many services. Overall, I plan on designing this podcast as a sort of one stop shop for listeners to quickly acquire information, news, goings on, upcoming events / workshops, and so on taking place at the C4W. In addition to myself acting as the show's "host" to deliver this information, additional C4W staff and faculty can appear as "guests" on the show.

Bellow is a tentative script that I believe will help me fulfill the aforementioned purposes.

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University of Minnesota Center for Writing Podcast aka "Everybody Writes."

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

-Let intro theme play for ~15 seconds

"Welcome to week 9 of Fall Semester Gopher writers! Rick Filipkowski here with episode ONE of the University of Minnesota's Center for Writing Podcast "Everybody Writes."

Just to give you a bit of background about myself, I have been working as a writing consultant at the Center for Writing for going on 4 years now - 2 as an undergraduate English major, and 2 as a graduate student in the English Education M.Ed. program.

Anyways, enough about me, on to the rest of the show!"

NEWS

-mySWS successfully up and running.


"At the start of this current fall semester of 2009, the C4W launched a new web-based application accessible through the UofM student portal, as well as the Center for Writing's website at the usual writing.umn.edu.

Before the launch of mySWS, students were required to speak to SWS staff in order to make changes to their appointments. Now, once logged in to mySWS, students have the capability to create appointments, cancel appointments, reschedule appointments, and see future, as well as previous, visits to the C4W.

And mySWS provides students with more features than just the ability to manage their SWS appointments. To tell you more about the portfolio nature of mySWS, I sat down with Kirsten Jamsen, the Director of the UofM Center for Writing and co-designer for the mySWS application
This is what she had to say:

-Run Skype interview.

-Changes to SWS Online

"And now on to the second piece of news... For those of you who have previously used SWS.Online, the application has undergone a major change to benefit you as a writer.

Previous to this semester, student writers were unable to further revise their writing once submitted to SWS.Online. Now, writers are able to re-submit their writing up to 2 hours before their scheduled chat appointment with their SWS.Online consultant.

Have more revisions? Well then keep writing. As much as you want. Remember, you can upload any revisions you have up to two hours before your schedule appointment time!"

-Return of old consultants

"And finally, some of your favorite former SWS consultants who had to say goodbye to the Writing Center upon their graduation are back! They're happy to be back, and we're happy to have them! So, stop in and help welcome back Grant, Miranda, John, Emily, Brad, and Maggie, and schedule your visit with them today!"

UPCOMING EVENTS

"In addition to the return of these consultants, there is a lot going on during the month of November at the Center for Writing Teaching With Writing Program, here are some of the upcoming highlights:

Instructors and TAs

  • On Wednesday, November 4th, from 12:00 to 1:30 pm, a panel discussion will be held on the topic of responding to graduate student writing. As described on the Teaching With Writing website, "This session convenes a panel of experienced faculty members who will share their own approaches to giving feedback and comments to graduate students they work with, attending to issues that include committee politics, non-native speaker concerns, and professional development."

  • On Thursday, November 12th, from 12:00 to 1:30pm, a panel discussion will be held on the topic of teaching with digital writing. As described on the Teaching With Writing website, "In this interactive workshop, we will consider a variety of tools that might be appropriate for your specific assignments and students, and think with you about the ways in which wikis, blogs, social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, Ning), course management software (Moodle, WebVista), document-sharing and co-authoring programs, online document mark-up tools, chat tools, clickers, and a slew of others can support the work you do with student writing."

To register for your seat, as well as explore additional upcoming events, please visit the Center for Writing's Teaching With Writing website at writing.umn.edu/home/events.

GENERAL OUTRO

-Play outro theme

"Alright Gophers, that's all for the week 9. Thanks for tuning into "Everybody Writes." And remember, we'll help you get better at it. Bye now!

2 comments:

Katie L. said...

Hooray, Rick! This is going to be great!

Jeff said...

I talk on my blog about having "guest interviews", in which I could bring in other staff, administration, or teachers, and have them give their perspective on any unit from my classes. I see you incorporated the "guest interview" into your podcast as well.