Writing 502

Hope everyone took advantage of the day off to go vote!

A note that readings and the weekly blog are due by class time on Thursday - I am moving the project (Part 2) deadline to a week from today.

One of the things we will look at today is the 9/11 Report: Graphic Adaptation. In honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Slate magazine reprinted the first chapter. We will compare this version to the actual PDF of the report.

For those interested in creating a graphic novel or comic, be aware of the Comic Life software.

Janet Murray's new book has its own blog, which contains useful links and exercises. Here are a couple of note:

First, there is a design exercise called Agency in an Interactive Model. Then, she has a couple of blog posts with Hamlet on the Holodeck tags - including a recent video of her brown bag session on narrative.

For this week's post, I want you to come up with your own heuristic for the upcoming projects.

• First, look at the existing heuristic for our class, the one we created for the online writing activities
• Next, look at these possibilities for heuristics: Cheryl Ball’s New Media worksheet, Evaluating Online Texts checklist, and IML’s Honors Thesis Project Parameters
• Third, look at the instructions for the remaining assignments (and feel free to look at the student projects from Fall 2010's Cyber Rhetoric course)

With this information, post to your individual blogs with ideas about how WRIT 502 will evaluate the electronic edition and multimedia projects.

Well, you are in luck! In the last month or so (since I posted the schedule), the article for Tuesday's class has been taken down. Instead, in addition to the "Did You Know? 6.0" video, I'm updating the reading list with the following sources on e-texts:

"How the E-Book Will Change How We Read and Write" by Steven Johnson

Wordnik, the online dictionary by Erin McKean

"E-Books Expand Their Potential" by Julie Bosman

You might also want to look at this website, Institute for the Future of the Book

First, you can post your weekly response (due tomorrow) on the digital text examples from Thursday or tomorrow's materials on plagiarism/copyright.

Second, we will NOT have class on Thursday the 27th. Instead, post to your blog about the second writing assignment - begin to pick DALN narratives you will analyze and include those links in your post. I'd also like you to start identifying points of comparison/contrast that you will discuss in the assignment.

Patrick called attention to a broken link in the readings for Thursday - this has now been fixed. Be sure to look at the examples of "cyber rhetoric" that I've included as we will spend time in class on these projects.

Also, I am including the link Patrick found for "page jumps," the ability to connect one part of a post with another. You can find it by clicking here.

In class last week, we decided that the deadlines for short assignments will be midnight on the due date; deadlines for the posts remain the same (before class).

Also, I will be showing a few videos in class today. Most of them can be found here on Kansas State University's webpage:

Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University

Professor Wesch's 55 minute address to the Library of Congress can be found here.

Continue to work with your WordPress blogs over the weekend. We will start the online activities on Tuesday, so the first post is due by the start of class (12:29 PM). Content of the post should be one (or both) of the intro chapters from our texts.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

Pro Blogger, How to Write Great Blog Content

MintBlogger, How to Write Good Blog Posts

Thought Capital, How to Write an Academic Blog

Also, for those who need it, I have resources in my office - including WordPress for Dummies.

Today, in class, we are doing the following:

Syllabus Response: Post on your own blog a response to the class syllabus and calendar. You should discuss your response to the course goals and projects, what you expected from this class, what you think it’s going to be about, what you value as a student, what you hope to gain from this class, what ideas you might already have for projects, and anything else you find relevant for me to know. Your post serves as recognition that you have read and understood the course syllabus and also helps me gauge what you expect from me and this class.