Category: Weekly Writing Assignments

For this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, you will begin writing your Expanded Definition project. To start, focus on the first two sections as detailed below, which are the Introduction and Definitions sections. For all the definitions and etymological (word history) information that you quote, remember to use IEEE in-text citation numbers and create a corresponding References section at the end of your document in which the numerated IEEE bibliographic references match the numbered quotes in your Definitions section. Format your writing as a memo with the subject, “Expanded Definition of Your Term, First Half, Rough Draft.” There is no word count on this assignment. Its purpose is to demonstrate your best effort on the first half of your Expanded Definition project. Save your work in a safe place and copy-and-paste it into a comment made to this post (remember to click the title “Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 4,” scroll to the comment box, copy-and-paste, and click “Post Comment.”

Overview of the Expanded Definition Project Deliverable

TO:         Prof. Jason Ellis
FROM:     Your Name
DATE:         Due Date
SUBJECT:     Expanded Definition of Your Term

Introduction [Heading Level 2]
What is the purpose of this document? What term are you defining? How are you discussing the way it is defined and the way it is used in context? Describe a road map for what follows (definitions and context). This content should be published as paragraphs, unlike the heading for this section, which is a level 2 heading.

Definitions [Heading Level 2]
Compare and contrast at least two quoted definitions from different sources of the term that you selected. Provide quotes and IEEE in-text citations for each definition, and include your sources in the References section at the end of the document. Each definition that you include deserves discussion in your words about what it means and how it relates to the other definitions that you include. Consider how they are alike, how are they different, who might use one versus another, etc. And, as a part of your compare and contrast, discuss the etymology or history of the word (e.g., one definition might be more like what the word meant originally or more recently). Each quote should have an IEEE in-text citation and reference entry.

Context [Heading Level 2]
Compare and contrast at least two sentences that use the term as it appears in different sources. This discussion should focus on how the context of the word shapes its meaning. A range of sources would provide the best source material for your discussion of how the term is used in these contexts. For example, a quote from an academic journal, a quote from a newspaper or magazine, a quote from a blog, and a quote from social media would give you a range of uses that might have different audiences. For each quote, you should devote at least as much space as the quote discussing what it means in that context and how it relates to the other quotes in context. Each quote should have an IEEE in-text citation and reference entry.

Working Definition [Heading Level 2]
Based on the definitions and word history that you quoted and discussed, and the contextual uses of the term that you quoted and discussed, write a working definition of the term that's relevant to your career field or major, which you will need to identify (this is the specific context for your working definition).

References [Heading Level 2]
Order your IEEE references in the order that they appear in your document. The first would be [1], the second would be [2], etc.



[1]    "Algorithm," in Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, Mar. 2012, def. 2. [Online]. Available: https://www.oed.com
[2]    “Algorithm,” in Science and Technology Encyclopedia, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. [Online]. Available: https://archive.org/details/sciencetechnolog00univ/mode/2up 

[3]      Author,Title, volume, edition. City, State, Country: Publisher, year.

[4]      Author, “Title,” Journal, volume, number, page range, month year, DOI.

Helpful Resources with IEEE Style

• Dictionary or Encyclopedia (IEEE)
• Purdue OWL > IEEE > In-Text Citations (also click on References in menu)
• IEEE Reference Guide

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 3

This week’s Weekly Writing Assignment has two parts. The first part should be submitted as a comment made to this post. The second part should be conducted over email with your team. Watch this week’s lecture from start to finish before proceeding.

The first component of this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment is the beginning research that you need to accomplish for the second major project: 750-1000-Word Expanded Definition. Think of several possible technical or scientific terms, phrases, or acyonyms that would be interesting to research the definition, etymology, and context of. Then, using the resources described in the Week 3 lecture, see which term might have the most useful material for you to use on the project. Once you see which term might yield the most research material, write a 250-word memo describing the terms that you considered, which library and approved sources yielded the most useful material (give accurate and specific titles), and what term you decided to choose for your expanded definition based on what you found in your initial research. Your memo should look like this:

TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: [Your Name]
DATE: 9/29/2021
SUBJECT: Expanded Definition Term: [Term you selected]

First sentence should state the purpose of the memo in your own words. Follow with the possible terms you choose from, discuss the resources that you looked in, and state which term you chose for your expanded definition based on your initial research.

After you have written your memo, copy-and-paste it into a comment made to this post and click “Post Comment.” As I showed in a previous lecture, you click on the title of “Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 3” and scroll to the bottom to find the comment box where you copy-and-paste your memo.

The second component of this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment is to use email to connect with your teammates by clicking “Reply All” to the email that Prof. Ellis will send to each team. Follow the directions in Prof. Ellis’ email to initiate introductions and to share the draft of your 500-Word Summary rough draft with your teammates for peer review. We will talk about revising and posting the final draft of your 500-Word Summary during next week’s lecture.

This week’s writing assignment will help you develop the scaffolding for your 500-word summary project by creating a reverse outline of the article that you find in your research on a topic related to your field of study and eventual career field. This is due by our next week of lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 22.

Watch this week’s lecture and make notes before proceeding!

For this Weekly Writing Assignment, do the following (detailed in this week’s lecture):

• Find an article in the library’s databases on an appropriate topic and of sufficient length (Remember: go to library.citytech.cuny.edu > Find Articles > click on “A” for Academic Search Complete and Academic OneFile or click on “I” for IEEE Explore)
• Create a new document in your word process of choice (Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, LibreOffice, etc.).
• Write a memo addressed to Prof. Ellis with the subject “Reverse Outline.”
• Under the memo header, type “1.” followed by one sentence in your own words summarizing the first paragraph of the article that you chose. Then, type “2.” on the next line followed by one sentence in your own words summarizing the second paragraph. Write an enumerated sentence for each paragraph until you reach the end of your selected article. Do not make the mistake of using the author’s words in your one sentence summary–put away the article when you write each summary sentence so that you express the main idea of each paragraph using only your own words.
• Conclude with a section titled “Reference” followed by an IEEE formatted reference entry for the article. See my example in the lecture, and use this, this, and this for additional help.
• Copy-and-paste your memo into a comment made to this Weekly Writing Assignment post.

Also, you have some homework to accomplish before Wednesday, Sept. 22.

First, “reply-all” to the “Team Assignment” email that I will send you during the next two weeks. Follow the directions contained in the email to meet your fellow teammates and to show Prof. Ellis that you are actively taking part in establishing rapport with your teammates.

Second, take your reverse outline that you prepared for this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment and paste it into a new document on your computer or in the cloud. Remove the numbers before each summary sentence. Consolidate the sentences into paragraphs or one large paragraph. Read the sentences and edit as needed to create flow from one sentence to the next. Then, add a memo header as shown below (edit the subject according to my directions in the lecture or as you see below–meaning the main topic of your selected article), add an introductory sentence explaining what the document is (see the example first sentence below), and add a significant quote from your selected article with an in-text citation in IEEE Style as shown in the first paragraph below. This will yield a rough draft of your 500-word summary for the first project, which we will conduct peer review on during the week beginning on Sept. 22. Save this document until Sept. 22. We will use it for that week’s Weekly Writing Assignment

TO:       Prof. Ellis
FROM:     Your Name
DATE:     Oct. 6, 2021
SUBJECT:  500-Word Summary of Article About Virtual Reality

The following is a 500-word summary of a peer-reviewed article about tracking human bodies in virtual reality. The authors discuss the body tracking software that they developed called Pfinder by showing how the software was developed, tested, and improved. According to Wren et al., “To  address  this  need  we  have  developed  a  real-time  system called   Pfinder   (“person   finder”)   that   substantially   solves   the problem  for  arbitrarily  complex  but  single-person,  fixed-camera situations” [1, p. 780]. 

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Reference

[1]     C. R. Wren, A. Azarbayejani, T. Darrell, and A. P. Pentland, (1997). “Pfinder: Real-time tracking of the human body,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 780-785, July 1997, doi: 10.1109/34.598236.