Your fieldnotes should, from this point on, be very focused on your project’s research. Note that the requirements for you fieldnotes ask for a minimum of 500-word entries. Q: What kinds of things should end up in your fieldnotes? A: Things that you can use in your project!

• Descriptions of scenes, observations
• Transcripts (partial, even) and analysis of interviews
• Quotes that you might use
• Analysis of findings
• Questions that you have about how to proceed
• Description of images or sounds you’ve gathered

I’ve been fairly lenient when grading these fieldnotes so far, but I will begin to look more closely at the quality of your work from this point on.

An important word about naming conventions on the wiki: In order to avoid overwriting someone’s page with the same name (”Fieldnotes 5″), please name the whole link with your name and the fieldnotes number (e.g., “John’s Fieldnotes 5″).

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For your next set of “finds,” please focus on The Combination and Nichols’ chapters.  I’d like you to focus on how The Combination’s author tells her narrative (what does she do/how does she do it).  What do her rhetorical goals seem to be, and how does she accomplish those?

Pay close attention to Nichols’ discussion of documentary methods. Though he is talking about film documentary, the theory he discusses can apply to any media/form of documentary.

When listening to and reading the online materials for next week, I’d like you to especially examine the way these authors are putting things together in a pattern. How are the three (very) different stories in This American Life put together around a single theme, for example? How is the Folksongs project putting various sounds together to make a pattern?

You will want to start thinking about the question of patterns for your own project. How can you put together different pieces of research and writing in order to find patterns in the “junk” you’ve collected?

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There will be NO CLASS on Thursday the 13th (our next class).

Spend time developing your topic ideas. You should commit to a topic by the 18th.