Information and Update

Dear Students (Writing and Rhetoric, sections 06/14):

I have several important pieces of information to convey to you.

1. I want to apologize for having to cancel our second class this past Thursday, 8/4. On Wednesday, my infant son was admitted to the hospital back home in NH, where I live. He had a very high temperature and was not feeling well. After three days in the hospital, he and my wife came home this morning. He is fine, all is well, he seems to be fully recovered. Of course, I needed to head back to NH to attend to my family, which is why I missed class on Thursday. I will be back for our class this coming Tuesday, 9/9 and apologize for any inconvenience my absence may have caused you.

2. Here at RIC, we use a course management system called WebCT. At all other institutions I've worked at, I have used a different system, called Blackboard. After wading into WebCT over the past few days, I have decided that it is not a system I would like to use to conduct electronic business for our class. I have several reasons, which I will happily explain to you in class on Tuesday (if you care). Instead, I have opted to use google's services, which are free (whoopee!) and, I think, much easier to use.

I have created a google "Group" called Writing.Rhetoric. It can be accessed here:

http://groups.google.com:80/group/writingrhetoric?hl=en

Over the past 24 hours or so, I have added almost all of you as members, and I have done so using your RIC email address, which you will need to check regularly to keep abreast of correspondence in our course. I will be using our Writing.Rhetoric group for at least two purposes:

1. Communicating with you via email.
2. Posting course readings (the group page is where you will need to go to download the readings).