Assignments
Reading & Work Journal Blog
During this course, you will keep a blog in which you will record responses to the course readings and keep a running journal of the work that you do as you develop your multimedia projects. When noted on the syllabus, you will post a reading response (answering a specific prompt) before class begins. These responses can be brief and informal; however, they must fully address the prompt and demonstrate specific critical engagement with the reading material. Work journal blog entries should be completed at the end of each work session; their purpose is two-fold - to give me some insight into your composing process with new media, and to provide a record of strategies and techniques you can refer back to as your media pieces become more complex.
Blog responses will be evaluated holistically at the end of class, but I will email you privately at least once during the quarter to give you evaluative feedback and a tentative grade. If you would like more regular feedback, just email me and I will provide it for you. Your grade on the blog will be based primarily on the depth and sophistication of your reading responses; if you choose not to keep a work log, you will simply be depriving yourself of a resource that will ultimately affect your course projects.
Technological Explorations
Throughout the quarter, you will complete several informal technological explorations as a way of learning and critically analyzing digital composing technologies. Usually, these explorations will ask you to manipulate existing texts/images/sound (provided by the instructor). We will begin these explorations in class, but you may have to spend some time completing them outside of class. You will post the results of your technological explorations to the class blog. Once they are complete, you will write an extended blog posting (approximately 500 words), in which you analyze how your use of these tools drew upon and/or transformed your understanding of the “writing process.”
During the quarter, you will complete the following technological explorations:
- Creating a one-screen visual argument in Graphic Converter or Illustrator (combining images and text)
- Adding images and links to multimedia wotk online to your blog
- Combining text, image, and sound in Flash / Audacity to “publish” on your blog
- Publishing your media campaign projects (bumper sticker, audio essay, and multimedia piece) on your blog
Media Campaign I: Bumper Sticker
For this assignment, you will create a visual argument, in the form of a bumper sticker, that makes a claim. Although you will eventually choose one that works best from a rhetorical perspective, for this assignment you must create four different versions for class review. You may work out your designs in any medium you wish, but your final versions should be rendered in Graphic Converter or Illustrator and turned in as a PICT file with a resolution of 150 ppi (se below). You may use images too, but your bumper stickers must make a significant part of their claim, not just through word choice, but also through the visual manipulation of text. Finally, your claim should meet the requirements of a well-developed thesis.
Media Campaign II: Audio essay
For this assignment, you will create an audio essay for broadcast on WOSU, Ohio State’s NPR station. The essay should focus on what you believe about your chosen topic. It should be, in the words of NPR’s “This I Believe” web site “a statement of your personal beliefs, of the values which rule your thought and action.” As the original invitation to this series puts it:
Some examples: Amelia Baxter-Stoltzfus, “Returning to What’s Natural”
Matthew’s Shortlist
Amanda Wells, “This New Game”
Media Campaign IIIA: Digital Media Project Proposal and Story Board / Script
Before you complete your final digital media project, you will complete a project proposal. In this proposal (approx 3-4 pages), you will discuss the purpose and audience for your project, the media you will use (and why you chose them), and the resources and skills you need to complete the project. You will also analyze and point to numerous exemplary “models” of the kind of project you are proposing.Your proposal will also include an informal story board which sketches out the visual look of your project. Alternatively, you could write a tentative script that outlines the “sound” of your project.
Media Campaign IIIB: Final Digital Media Project (and Reflection)
Your final project will be a Campaign Video, a multimodal composition which incorporates interactivity, sound, images, and words. Your project must have a clear rhetorical purpose in mind (and it must be doable in 4 weeks). We will negotiate the parameters in individual conferences.
In addition to publishing your final project to your blog, you will also write a reflective essay in which you outline the rhetorical, ethical, and technical choices that you made in your project and articulate what you learned from the process of producing it.
Presentation
During exam week, you will show your campaign video to the class and make brief comments on the intellectual and technical challenges you faced and surmounted as you worked on it. (Your reflective essay will be a source for this.) You will also listen to and evaluate the presentations of others based upon the rhetorical and technical criteria we have identified as a class.