History 105 assignment

Have this sheet handy as well as the sheet called FORMAT SAMPLE PAPER for Assignment 1.

1. Go to the Week 3 unit and find the blue link ASSIGNMENT 1: DEALING WITH DIVERSITY…. Click on it.

2. You will see instructions on the screen and at the top “Assignment 1: ecree”. Click on that to enter ecree.

3. You will see some summary of the assignment instructions at the top of the screen—scroll down to see the three long, blank, rectangular boxes. You will be typing into those. Remember—do not worry about a title page or double spacing. Start composing your paragraphs. It will start as a rough draft.

4. As you start typing your introduction—notice on the right that comments start developing and also video links. Also on the right you will it say “Saved a Few seconds ago”. It is saving as you go. At first the comments are red (unfavorable). The more you do, usually the more green (favorable) comments start to appear. You can also keep revising.

5. When you hit the enter key it takes you to the next paragraph box—and sometimes it creates a new paragraph box for you.

6. Doing your Sources list in ecree—Your sources do have to be listed at the end. The FORMAT SAMPLE paper illustrates what they might look like. But, putting them in ecree gracefully can be a challenge.

a. Perhaps the best way is this: Have the last regular paragraph of your essay (Part 4) be in the box labeled “Conclusion”. Once that paragraph is written—in whole or in part, do this: Click on the word “Conclusion” to form a following paragraph box marked by three dots. Keep doing that and put each source in its own “three-dot” box. In other words, after your Conclusion paragraph—the heading “Sources” gets its own paragraph box at the end, followed by separate paragraph boxes for each source entry.

b. If the approach labeled “a” above is not working out, don’t worry about the external labels of those last paragraph boxes---just be sure to have a concluding paragraph (your Part 4) followed by paragraphs for the Sources header and each source entry. In grading, I will be able to figure it out. I will be lenient on how you organize that last part, as long as you have that last paragraph and a clear Sources list.

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UPLOAD OPTION: You can type your paper or a good rough draft of it into MS-Word as a file. Have it organized and laid out like the FORMAT SAMPLE paper. Then Upload it to ecree. Once you upload, take a little time and edit what uploaded so that it looks like what you intended and fits the 4-part organization of the assignment.

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7. Click “Submit” on lower right only when absolutely ready. Once you submit, it will get graded.

Have fun! (see next page for a few notes and comments on ecree)

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NOTES AND COMMENTS ON ECREE

1. Watch the video about how to use ecree and the options.

2. Then click into ecree (in the week 3 unit’s Assignment 1 link) and navigate around. Practice a bit—keep practicing until comfortable (you can always click “delete” at the bottom to start over if you wish). To practice, find the long rectangular boxes at the bottom of the screen. Start typing into them and watch the feedback notes develop on the right side as you type. Note that things automatically save. (You can delete after you play around some). The automatic saving means you don’t need to worry about losing your rough draft and can always come back to right where you started. Also, while it is best to type right into ecree, you can copy paste things from a document as you type into the ecree squares.

3. You get more comfortable with ecree as you work with it. The comfort level will come.

4. SOME GREAT FEATURES--The ecree program is very good at helping with paragraph development, sentence structure, and paper organization. And it provides some great immediate feedback on these things. It also helps some on spelling and just a little on grammar. With ecree, you will not need to double space or have a title page.

5. What ecree does NOT do: It cannot really judge content as per the paper and topic; it cannot detect sources---it will not help you on where a citation is needed or on the form of your in-text citations or your sources list. It only helps a little on grammar and spelling. So, don’t expect those things. Example--You could have a well, developed paragraph, but if your content is off topic, lacking in-text citations or poor on the sources list—your grade will end up being lower (no matter what ecree says). Like most writing tools one might use (Grammarly, tutor.com, etc), ecree is a good tool, but it is not a guarantee of an A paper. It is only a tool that can really help move you the right direction in writing papers. Our students who have used it have become real fans of it.

6. After doing and considering numbers 1-thru-5 above, determine whether you will compose directly into ecree or whether you will compose on a traditional MS-Word file that you upload. If you type on a Word file and upload it, you can still think of that as a rough draft that you finish polishing in ecree.

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