Tag Archives: affordances

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

 

r12

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whosafraidofthepen.wordpress.com

My digital essay “Who’s Afraid of the Pen” is an exploration into adolescents’ habits, beliefs and predispositions about writing through a close analysis of three students’ responses to interview questions. It occurred to me as an interesting topic as we first brainstormed the blogs, and I quickly found that it was a topic about which I wanted to write more than a measly 400 words. Several of my posts neared one thousand before I had hardly scratched the surface of the topic for that week.

It seemed intuitive then, to continue that work, and to transform it in a way that would carry some of the interpretive work I had done in the blog, but to rework it such that it was in a format that was meant to be assessed (accessed?) in a few number of sittings, and that wasn’t supposed to have the overt temporal that a blog has , at least to me.

this is the kind of calculated idiocy I used to manipulate the tone of my essay

Relatedly, I really enjoyed trying to mesh different forms of media together. It would have been exceedingly tedious of me to have to transcribe dozens of minutes of student interview. With this format, I didn’t have to. I could let the students speak for themselves and to each other, while I sat back and drew connections, made commentary. Although I feel that I did some serious intellectual work here, writing in such a context made me feel more free to play with the tone of my own writing, such that I think I manage to come off as a a voice with authority (somewhat) that can poke fun at itself as well as the pseudoscience of trying to make claims about students every where, or even all across Durham, by studying three students in the same school. I felt very few constraints in the wordpress medium. It was intuitive enough for me to use technically, and the added affordances felt like opportunities, not hurdles to be leapt or obstacles overcome.

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!