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Welcome to a new section of Strategic Writing...

 A second section of JTC300 joins us for the final 8 weeks of our online writing course... and this section will be hustling. The 8-week version of our course asks each student to complete TWO modules per week and that can look quite challenging. The key, as with most anything else involved with a college education, is to create a personal schedule that forces us to have a standard calendar with time for our readings, video lectures, and writing assignments.  A LOT of time has to go to research and analysis and writing and design of a final recommendation report, and students will find that assignments are divided between the core lessons of Strategic Writing and the specific and pragmatic practice of putting those lessons to work in a recommendation report. Interestingly, this term the 8-week course begins during spring break.  But the good news is that you can work on this course anywhere in the world. You just need a laptop and an internet connection. Even during our c...
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Hey, is that a giant data center over Denver?

If you click this link in the next couple weeks, the gifted article will open up. If it does not, here is the link to the New York Times site with the post. Much of the technical controversy surrounding AI (not even getting at ethical or end-of-the-world scenarios) concerns energy and space... and water use. Right now, the data centers consume massive amounts of electricity and water (for cooling) and that raises valid environmental concerns. But what if we could move data centers into orbit? Unlimited energy from the sun. Tech that can cool the stations with the help of frigid space. New tech that would allow data to move at incredible speeds without wires or cables. Yes, all big challenges. But what if?  After all, AI itself was science fiction material not long ago.
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Room temperature

Left alone, a cup of coffee will gradually cool until it reaches room temperature. Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system. The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture. Sooner or later, unless you push back, you’ll end up at room temperature. (As I write this, the built-in grammar tool has made suggestions to every single sentence, pushing to make it sound less like me and more like normal.) blog post by Seth Godin, published Jan. 10, 2026 The above post applies to generative AI in many ways. It also applies to you and me, I suppose, since the last thing we want to end up is "room temperature." AI, like spell check and grammar check, depends upon lots of rules and lots of previously published material. For now, at least, anything these program produce is based on a predictive model, with results matching what is "expected." They can surprise you, of course, but the robo...
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'I did not think Aristotle would come up in this course.'

The expectation in an advanced college writing class is that we all are somewhat familiar with the traditions of rhetorical arguments. Things like the Aristotelian triangle and the academic approach to analysis (we are more interested in HOW the author created the argument than in our "gut-level" reactions to the argument) are two important "tools" that we all can use to write more clearly and effectively. But I have often been reminded by students that they somehow missed those basics of rhetoric (and I suspect the truth may be that many students just were not required to use such rhetorical appeals and tactics enough to "fix" them in their brains). I also know that it never hurts to review material we can make use of to be more successful in a writing course like this one. Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as you are aware, and that reminded me of a cool document I found years ago that color-codes the primary rhetorical appeals used in Dr. King...
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Start here, and welcome!

Welcome to JTC300 and our little Strategic Writing and Communication Blog .  Your instructor ( Jack Kennedy ) will post throughout the semester, focusing on new resources and insights and opinions on everything from building a personal "brand" to trends in AI-use for writers and researchers , to articles on hiring trends .  You may want to follow this, but it is not required for the course.  My goal is to expand a bit beyond what any textbook or large, multi-section course can provide. A large course, with many instructors, can provide important background and skills, but it can be unwieldy and "course corrections" are tough to make. Bottom line: this blog is supplementary to JTC300.  BTW: I will include links, in many cases, within posts. They may take you to sites like the New York Times or Washington Post , and those sites may be protected by paywalls. I will provide summaries when possible (or share some articles as gifts, through my own subscription, though th...
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