“Corona Hotline… No, I don’t know what a two-week pause is supposed to do in this pandemic either, professor…”

For those of you who weren’t with us last year when everything shut down and everyone was scrambling for assignments, exercises and general help, we established the “Corona Hotline” page as kind of a stockpile of stuff that I had built and folks were willing to share. You should feel free to click here to peruse it. All the stuff is freebie and I hope it helps.

For those of you who know all about it and are suddenly going on a “two-week pause,” (at least they didn’t call it an “inflection point”) and you need some additional help, I’ve added a few things to the page today:

• Two lectures on blogging that I do. The topics are audience-centricity in terms of finding out whose out there and how to serve them as well as a deep look at the concept of “Why you?” in terms of what you should figure out before you pick a blogging topic to see if you can deliver value.
• A blog-building exercise: It’s not tech stuff (if you want that, I can point you in a few directions), but rather kind of a pre-launch assignment that has the student analyze what’s out there in the area in which they wish to blog, determine what kinds of things they can put into their blog effectively and more. Think of it as kind of a “pitch” like they would have to make to a company if they wanted to start up a blog for those folks.
• Grammar exercises:
  • Antecedent-pronoun selection
  • Who vs. Whom selection
  • Active vs. passive voice (I’ve had this for years, thanks to the late, great Patty Atwater)
  • A “medley” exercise that mixes all sorts of stuff in grammar.

You can get all that on the page as well. It’s up at the top. Hope it helps.

May the odds be ever in your favor, even when they’re not.

Vince (a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)