English 108 0201

The portfolio assignment has been added to the projects page. The portfolio, with revisions and reflections, is due Wednesday of final's week.

Attached is a quick guide to locating articles and journals, for those of you that need a refresher.

The two new forums for the weekly document assignment are up. Please remember to post your comments for both documents by Friday's class. Also, pleas post a comment about our visit to the envision center under the "Envision Center Forum."

Remember, we begin the weekly document assignment this week! Please read through both the document itself and the analysis of that assignment, then offer your own comments. You should post your comments by clicking the "add new comment" link at the bottom of the post. You also need to post your topics and sources for project I: comparing realities. There is a forum set up for this assignment. Also, the class listserv is: engl108rlec0201061@lists.purdue.edu. Please send your drafts of project I as attachments to this address. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Please note that the website has changed format slightly--the "course resources" page is no longer available. Instead, links to daily assignments can be found in the "calendar" section on both the day they are assigned and the day they are due. The three larger project assignments can still be found on the "projects" page--the first assignment will be posted there later next week. Also, notice the edition of the "forums" page--here is where you will post your definitions during Monday's class, as well as where we post other interesting tidbits. Have a great weekend.

Hi!
Welcome to English 108, Advance Freshman Composition: Computer Science and our course website. On this site are assignments, handouts, contact information. This site will also act as a forum for our class, a means of communicating with each other (me with you, and just as importantly, you with me and with your classmates) outside of classroom time proper.

Please click around the site and familiarize yourself with the options and components.

Let me also introduce myself:
My name is Alexis (yes, you can call me that, I don't need a formal title like Miss or Ms) and I have been in school longer that most of you have been alive (scarey, isn't it). But, the end of my education is near because I am working on my dissertation (which means I'm no longer in classes). My major is rhetoric and composition--don't worry, you will all become way too familiar with the first term! When I'm not writing or teaching, I love to buy shoes, eat chocolate, play with my kitten, or sleep. My favorite food is a Greek Salad, followed closely by Mac and Cheese, and I hate cheeries.

We hope you like your new Drupal site. Jeremy Tirrell, Michael Salvo, Charlie Lowe, and I have tried to tailor this installation so that it suits instructor needs across a wide range of courses. We know that you'll want to customize it to your liking, so you can get started right away.

First, go to the DrupalEd Installation Guide. The Guide will first walk you through the process of changing your username, password, and email address. The Guide walks you through that. Then you can have at it.

Have a great semester!

Dave Blakesley
Director of Professional Writing
Purdue

Drupal, at its base installation, is a blank slate, a content management system that can be used to create a large variety of different websites. This installation is preconfigured for creating a community site suitable for the online writing classroom, a highly configurable platform that better facilitiates community interaction and collaboration than is otherwise possible with proprietary course management systems (e.g., WebCT). Educators will find that this distribution eliminates 95% of the work involved in setting up a Drupal site for a writing class.

It is not possible within the scope of this text to explain all Drupal configurations, modules, and features. Instead, the DrupalEd Site Configuration Guide is intended as a getting started FAQ that will guide you through some basic issues and answer some specific configuration questions. As you become more comfortable with Drupal, it is certainly worthwhile to learn more -- so that you can take advantage of the flexibility and wide range of configuration options and additional features.

For much more detailed information on Drupal configuration and usage, consult the Drupal modules and features section on drupal.org. Also be sure to read the help material available at the top of many of the administration pages.