Style Activity: The Anecdote and Colorful explanations:

Ed Yong often begins his blogs with a narrative—one either directly related to the science he is about to divulge, or one that is only tacitly related. He also finds interesting and relatable ways in which to explore or explain complicated concepts to a broad audience.

For the following activity, we’re going to do just that—working from another blogger who has less panache than our wonderful Ed Yong.

http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2011/02/climate_and_the_singularity.php#more

In groups, come up with an appropriate anecdote to set off this entry and an appropriate way to define explain complex concepts.

Spend a few minutes writing about your selected text:

1. What interests you about the text? What topic or theme will you be investigating in this text?
2. What other text might you pair with it? How? Why? What are they doing differently or similarly?

Brainstorm and Generate Ideas:

• Keep writing
• Don’t censor or evaluate
• Keep returning to the problem
  

Talk to your reader:

• What questions would they ask?
• What different kinds of readers might you have?

NOW, YOUR TURN:

Spend a few minutes thinking about the article you choose to review for this assignment. Choose one of the invention strategies we discussed and develop a few ways you can use this invention strategy to develop your own introduction.

Things to consider: What other information might you need to know to fully explore/explain the significance of this article? What terms will you need to explain in more detail? What terms can you leave out all together?  Can you think of any colorful analogies to better explain any of these concepts?  What kinds of anecdotes will best set off a blog on this topic?

NEXT….

In groups, discuss your choices and choose one group member who’s invention strategy worked particularly well and prepare it for presentation to the class. Prepare a summary of that group member’s article and a brief description of this invention strategy.  Remember, you each group will be presenting their choicest invention strategy: you need to a) summarize the argument and b) outline the main idea for inventions strategy.