Walmart and Catfish Grades

Below are your Catfish scores, and your Walmart scores (so you can see how you compared).

In both assignments, the students who followed the directions posted on this blog most closely tend to be the ones with higher scores.  Yes, the ability to write well and meet a word count is important, but so is doing what the assignment actually asks for.  With the Walmart essay we had a variety of issues to fix, and with Catfish we also have some easy things that could be improved.

First of all (and I mention this in many comments), I think the Catfish reflections that were written immediately after watching the film were by far the best.  Many of you chose to talk about Facebook and privacy issues at great length while barely discussing the film itself, and this probably means you either slept or waited too long to write about the film.  As with reading journals, responses to things like Kony and Catfish should be written "when the iron is hot" (even if I gave you two weeks).  I even said this in my initial explanation of the assignment.  So, while I did state that you could branch out and discuss things related to the film, I still think the film has to be central to your response.  And while I didn't say your responses had to be over 500 words, 450 words (seemingly the average) does feel short of "something."  Sometimes a conclusion, or in most cases your clear opinion on the film itself (without all the distracting detours about Facebook privacy).   

As for the blogs, many of them are very suddenly "coming to life" with many diverse posts, and this is great to see (like this - wow).  Last year I gave you a list of extra things to write if you felt like it, this year I've informally "mentioned" things you might want to write.  Blogs are for writing whatever you feel like writing, so I trust you to use your own imaginations and not recycle stuff.  Kony is a perfect thing to write about and only a handful of you did respond to that.  30 minutes of rapid typing doesn't hurt.

Keep in mind that your extra blog content is much more important now than it was last semester (when you were freshman and final scores were paired with another class and hefty exams).   

Write for the sake of writing itself, 

and not just for personal gain.:)

	Walmart MLA #1	Catfish
Charizard	89.4	92.0
Mewtwo	92.0	93.0
Blastoise	88.6	88.0
Lugia	91.6	92.5
Dragonite	88.8	93.0
Rayquaza	93.2	93.0
Zapdos	91.2	91.0
Tyranitar	92.4	87.0
Arcanine	87.0	PENDING
Ho-Oh	89.2	92.0
Venusaur	89.2	PENDING
Gengar	92.4	90.0
Raikou	88.2	88.0
Kyogre	89.6	91.5
Snorlax	88.8	91.5
Alakazam	89.6	93.0
Scizor	90.0	91.0