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!
