Author Archives: Joseph Harris

Class, Tues, 4/24

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Digital Essays, Spring 2012


Presentations: Affordances and Constraints

iMovie

Slides: Prezi

Slides: Other

Blog Formats

Infographics

Digital Arcade

 

Class, Tues, 4/17

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r12: Final drafts, presentations, and arcade

Workshops: Second drafts

  • Main text: Fuss the details. Tweak specific phrasings, images, scenes, etc.
  • Transitions between elements
  • Establishing frames and context

Post-Workshop Note

Send me an email. What questions or worries do you have about your project at this point? How can I help? If you’d like to meet to talk, suggest a time on Thursday between 10–12 or 2–4.

To Do

  • Tues, 4/24, 2:00 pm: Post r12, with a link to the final draft of your digital essay, to this site.
  • Tues, 4/24, class: Be ready to present your digital essay in 3–4 minutes (or less). Bring your laptop to class for our digital arcade

 

r12: Final Drafts, Presentations, and Arcade

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I’d like us to spend our last class meeting presenting your digital essays. This closing celebration of your work will be in two stages.

Presentations:  Affordances and constraints

I’d like each of you to offer a brief presentation of your digital essay to the class.  Plan to speak for 3-4 minutes—absolutely no more! In the second half of the class, people will have plenty of time to read through your piece and talk with you about the substance of your work. So in your presentation, I’d like you to focus on what composing for the digital media allowed you to do, and what doing so made difficult. Point to particular moments in your essay that allow you to discuss:

  • How your project developed, from idea through drafts and revisions to final product,
  • What you felt you were able to express that you could not have done in print (affordances),
  • What proved difficult for you in working in this medium (constraints).

At the start of this course, I asked the question: What changes when you write not for the page but the screen? This is your chance to offer an answer.

Final drafts: A digital arcade

The Paris Arcades

Please post a link to the final version of your essay to this website. We’ll spend the last half of the class walking about the room, viewing and discussing one another’s work

In the body of your post, write a version of your presentation of your project to the class. The written form of your presentation may be read by people outside this class, so you might want to:

  • Offer a somewhat longer description of your actual project—a “teaser” to attract readers;
  • Say a little more about the history of your project, about how you developed it;
  • Insert an image from your project.

Please post your work to this site by 2:00 pm on Tues, 4/24. Use r12 as your category. Your post and presentation will count as r12. Your final draft will earn a letter grade. I look forward to a fun last class!

Class, Tues, 4/10

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r10: Digital Culture

Some cool stuff to look at

Some issues to consider: The social media and  . . .

  • Society
  • Media
  • Economy
  • Learning
  • Identity
  • Privacy

Draft Two

Post two documents to your group folder:

  1. A full draft of your digital essay, in the format you intend it to be read or viewed, and
  2. A set of questions for your readers, posted as a Word doc with the title <yourname questions.docx>.  Due: Friday, 4/13, 9:00 am.

x11

Write a note to the author in which you respond to their questions and also offer them one piece of unsolicited advice concerning some specific change they might make (add, cut, tweak) in preparing their final draft. Type your note in the Questions document, just like in responding to first drafts. Due Tues, 4/17, 9:00 am.

Workshops, class, 4/17

Bring your digital essay and six copies of the Questions document, with their responses, for your readers.

Course Evaluations

 

Class, Tues, 4/03

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r10: Writing Digital Culture

Workshops: Draft One, Digital Essays

Authors

  • Distribute overviews with comments
  • Summarize responses
  • What are your plans? What are your questions?

Readers

  • How do you respond to what the other readers have said?
  • How do you respond to the author’s questions?
  • How can you add to the comments you’ve already offered?

Post-Workshop Revising Plan

Please write me a brief email (jdharris57@gmail.com)  in which you:

  • Summarize the responses you received;
  • Outline your current plans for this piece;
  • Tell me what sort of feedback you’d like from me at this point.

My response to your first draft will take the form of a response to this revising plan, so please make it as detailed and pointed as you can.

To Do

  1. Tues, 4/10, 9:00 am: Post r10 to this site
  2. Fri, 4/13, 9:00 am: Digital essay, draft 2, full, posted to Dropbox

Let me know if you’d like to set up a conference to talk about your digital essay!

 

 

r10: Writing Digital Culture

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Part of our work this semester has involved reading and discussing a set of writings about digital culture—including both Christopher Johnson’s Microstyle and the essays in Mark Bauerlein’s Digital Divide. For this assignment, I’d like you to add another text to this conversation, to bring what you see as a smart and useful piece on digital culture to our attention.

In practical terms, what this means is: Post a link to a piece—print, blog, video, audio, multimedia—on digital writing, online culture, or social media that you admire and that you think other people in this class would learn from. Write a paragraph or so about what you’d like us to  take away from this piece.

My naked self-interest in this assignment is to assemble an archive of comments on digital culture that won’t seem hopelessly outdated by Spring 2013. Help me!

Use r10 as your category and tag your post with abandon and imagination.

r9: Responding to a materials draft

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Your (r) assignment for our class on Tues, 4/03 is to read through the drafts posted by your fellow group members and to write a brief response to each in preparation for our workshop that evening.

Begin by reading the overview of each project. This should give you a sense of what the author aims to do, the general structure of the piece, and the materials she or he is working with. Write a brief note to the author in which you:

  • State in your own terms what you think the project is about;
  • Note what strike you as its principal strengths or points of interests;
  • Ask any questions you may have about the shape or direction of the project;
  • Offer the author one bit of advice/issue to keep in mind as they develop and revise their work. Try to make your advice specific, do-able, and useful in taking the piece to the next level.

Type your note to the author at the end of his or her overview. Address the writer by name and sign yours. If other readers have already responded, read their comments, too, and feel free to bounce your thoughts off theirs. (Each project overview should thus have five reader responses attached to it by class on Tuesday.)

During our workshop on Tuesday, I’ll ask authors to guide their readers through the materials they are working with, and to try out any ideas they have formed for revising their project in response to the comments they’ve received. So as a reader, you’ll want to glance through each materials folder, but you shouldn’t feel responsible for reading everything in it.

Readers: Please post your responses to your group Dropbox folder by 9:00 am on Tues, 4/03.

Authors: Please print out 6 copies of your overview with reader responses and bring them to class on Tuesday evening.

Class, Tues, 3/27

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Digital Essays: Materials Draft

  • Dropbox
  • Submitting Draft One: Materials Folder and Overview
  • Responding (r9)

 

x8: Blog Favorites

English 212: Creative Nonfiction, Fall 2012

  • Section 1, Mon: 6–8:30
  • Section 2, Tues: 6–8:30

 

Fair Use on the Web: Eric Faden, “A Fair(y) Use Tale”

To Do

  1. Post Draft One, Overview and Materials Folder, to Dropbox group folder, by Fri, 3/30, at 9:00 am
  2. Post responses to drafts in Dropbox group folder by Tues, 4/03, at 9:00 am
  3. Bring 6 copies of overview with comments to class on Tues, 4/03

Draft One, Digital Essay

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The first draft of your digital essay is due on March 30.. Please post a Materials Folder and a Project Overview to your group Dropbox folder by 9:00 am on Fri, 3/30.

I’d like you to think of this as a materials draft. That is, please focus your work in the next two weeks on doing the sorts of fieldwork and gathering the various texts you will need to compose your essay. If you plan on interviewing people for your project, schedule them now. If you’ll need permissions from your subjects, draft a form for them to sign. If you’ll need to take photos or record audio or video, get going. If you need to locate print or web texts, do so now.

I suggest that you place the materials you’re collecting in a set of folders on your hard drive. In working on multimedia projects, I’ve found it helpful to set up folders for Audio, Video, Images, Links, Print, and Other—though your categories may differ. Please then collect these folders in a single, larger folder, titled <Yourname Materials>. and upload this folder to Dropbox.

In addition to assembling your materials, I’d like you to draft a sentence outline of your project in which you state, as best you can, your aims as a writer. Come up with a title that suggests both your focus and slant. Identify those materials you know you’re going to use and what you plan to do with them. Also add a few questions you’d like to ask your readers as they look through your materials and think about your project at this early and formative stage. Title this document <Yourname overview.docx>, and upload it to Dropbox. Your group members will read and respond to your overview, and we e will break into groups to discuss them further during class on Tues, 4/03.

As I hope is clear, my aim here is get you started in a serious manner on the research you’ll need to do before you start shaping and refining your actual project. You don’t want your materials to dictate what you’re able to say; rather, you want to have plenty of texts to work with, remix, and write about. That should be the focus of your work in the next two weeks.

Good luck!