Category — course updates

I will be holding one final web help session tomorrow (Monday, May 10) from 6:00 – 7:30 pm in our regular classroom (Eddy 4). Note that this is a slightly later time than our previous help sessions. If you cannot make the help session and need assistance with your site, let me know and we can set up an appointment earlier in the day.

Here is a final bit of interesting information for those of you who are not burnt out on thinking about technology. This week’s On the Media had two interesting stories. The first is about ROFLcon, a conference about internet memes and why they go viral (keyboard cat, David after Dentist, etc), and the second is about copyright and the Hitler internet meme—all those video parodies that take a clip from the film The Downfall where Hitler is ranting about something in German and add subtitles that have him ranting about all sorts of things such as losing his house in the mortgage crisis. The third clip is a related story about whether or not it is disrespectful to victims of the holocaust to make Hitler humorous.

Here is a reminder about what needs to be accomplished the last day of class and then during our final exam time on Tuesday, May 11 at 3:40 pm.

First, a few things to remember:

• I am holding evening web help sessions today (right now actually, but no one’s here. sigh.) and Thursday from 5:30-7:00 pm. If you would like me to schedule a help session or extra office hours for Monday of finals week, let me know in class on Thursday.
• If you are having any problems working together as a group for the I&A project, please send me an email to let me know the nature of the problem and what I can do to help.

Our last class:

• Turn in all all required element of the I&A project:
  • The final analysis, including a discussion of what you discovered through your primary research. Please provide links to or copies of surveys, etc. See the I&A project page for more details on the analysis paper. (hard copy)
  • promotional materials (hard copy if appropriate, URLs if materials are online.–e.g., a Facebook group)
  • evidence of promotional materials distribution (photos uploaded to your Writing Studio group file folder, clearly labeled “distribution evidence.”
  • All previous commented on hard copy materials: group annotated bibliography and research summary, storyboards, design plans.
  • electronic copies of ALL documents uploaded to your Writing Studio group file folder

Our final exam time:

• There is no exam, but you will have the full two hours to complete your personal website project. You will need to submit the following (see the personal website assignment page for more details):
  • mood board
  • original design plan
  • all original storyboards
  • draft analysis paper
  • final version of your site uploaded to our class server space.
  • 3-4 page analysis of the process (hard copy)
• The course evaluation: if you are finished with your website, you only need to stay for 10-15 minutes to turn in your materials and complete the  course evaluations. If you are not finished you can use up to the two-hour time period to finish your site and then complete the course evaluation.

Finally, for fun here is Jon Stewart busting Apple for its facist reaction to the “theft” of its prototype iPhone. Enjoy.

I wanted to remind everyone about the personal website draft, which is due tomorrow (Tuesday, April 6). As I said in class on Thursday, we are being flexible about this due date because everyone is at a different stage in learning Dreamweaver, HTML, and CSS. I will accept drafts through the end of this week’s Thursday evening help session (see below for details).

At the very least you should come to class tomorrow with a draft of the website “copy” (the written text—resume, biography, etc.) that you will use on each page of your site. If you do not have any pages built yet, bring your text as a word document on your flash drive. In class tomorrow, we will continue to work on our sites, and I will show you how to upload your draft site to our course web server.

Do not forget about the draft reflection paper! (see the assignment page for details)

Three important things for this week:

• If you do not want your site to go live at the draft stage you can burn your site folder onto a CD and turn it in that way.
• Tomorrow before class I will create a subdomain for each of you to use for your website. I will use your full first and last name for your subdomain unless you email me to tell me that you would like something else. My subdomain would look like this: <http://carrielamanna.writingonlineatcsu.net> Yours will have your name, of course. If you have your own server space and do not need a subdomain, email me to let me know.
• I will hold evening web design help sessions Tuesday and Thursday this week from 5:30-7:00 pm in our classroom (Eddy 2). I will accept website drafts through the end of the Thursday work session so that those who want to get more help before submitting a draft can do so.

It has been brought to my attention that several of you have questions about how to construct your website storyboards. My guess is that folks are making them more complicated than they really are (the hard part is building your site!:)). You are drawing a sketch of each page in your website as you would like it to look. Then, you are listing the elements that will make up the page. For example if you are including a head-shot photo of yourself on the page, under “images” you would write something like “head shot photo of myself” and any other details you know about it (black & white, JPG format, etc.). If you will have significant text on the page, under “text” you might write “academic biography, about 300 words.” That’s all there is to it.

We can talk more about the storyboards in class tomorrow, and if you need more time to finish them we can work that out too. So, bring your questions and your colored pencils to class!

I also wanted to give you an update on grades. As I am working my way through the manifestos and updating the gradebook, it doesn’t look like anyone who has turned in the poster and manifesto and been keeping up with the blogging is in danger of falling below a C in the course at this point. I have been unable to finish all of the grading that I wanted to over the break due to a wrist injury that limits my ability to write and type. (this is the most I’ve been able to write all day.) I have tendonitis in my wrist and thumb and have to see a special physical therapist to get treatment and a custom splint. According to the doctor, “Hopefully we caught it in time and won’t have to do surgery.” Yikes! I can work, but have to take lots of breaks to rest and ice my wrist, so everything is taking a lot longer than planned. If you have specific questions about your grade, email me and we can discuss. Otherwise, I’ll be returning graded work slowly this week.

An now I am off to find my ice pack…

First, I want to thank you all for sticking with me through the HTML and CSS explanations this week. I know not everyone finds code fascinating like I do. After the break we will learn how to use Dreamweaver to build our websites, and you will be glad that you learned a little bit of code once you start your work. Really.

So… do check out the W3Schools web tutorials over break. They are clearly written and give you easy hands on practice with HTML and CSS.

Finally, make sure that your revised technology manifesto is published as a page on your blog and let me know if you have any questions about the storyboard step in the personal website project. You can print the template and draw your storyboards by hand or adapt it to complete your storyboards electronically if you prefer. Either way is fine. Just make sure your storyboards are in color and that you use the space provided to clearly explain all the elements that will be included on each page of your website (text, images, video, audio, etc.). And make sure to title each page so that its purpose is clear.

Oh, and no blog posts next week.

As always, post a comment here if you have a question about anything discussed in this post!

Here’s an update/reminder about a few things we talked about in class Thursday. Leave a comment if you have any questions!

• we changed the due date for the revised manifestos to Thursday, March 11, which is the last class before spring break.
• the three Photoshop tutorials are due by class time tomorrow (3/2). If you run into any problems completing the tutorials, bring your questions and your Photoshop files to class tomorrow and Joe and I will help you troubleshoot so you can successfully complete them. Remember to put your name on your image file when you put it in the Writing Studio dropbox so know who it belongs to!
• remember to email your blog questions to Joe. He will answer your question in person during the next class session.
• we will spend all of class time tomorrow on the poster assignment. Bring your Nondesigner’s Design Book to class as it will be helpful in working on the assignment.

See you all tomorrow!

A few updates and clarifications following today’s class:

• I corrected the due date information on the Manifesto assignment. The draft is due Thursday, 2/18.
• For class Tuesday, 2/16 please read the Non-Designer’s Type Book. This is the second volume in our two volume design textbook by Robin Williams. Make sure to bring the book to class with you on Tuesday.
• If you were absent from class today, make sure to check out the changes I made to the course assignments and look at the additional information on the daily schedule—the schedule is available through spring break.
• Finally, I created a wiki in the Writing Studio where you can provide me with your blog information. A wiki is an online document that groups of people can edit. To add your blog information to our wiki, log into the Writing Studio and go to our class page. Choose “Class Wikis” from the menu on the right. Next, choose the “Blog List” wiki (this is the only wiki our class has!). You should now see a table where you can add your information: click “Manage” and then “Manage wiki.” Add your information to the table and click “update.” You should now see your information in the table. If you have any trouble with the wiki, you can email me your blog information.

I’m looking forward to a lively conversation in class today.

Below are links to some things I referenced in class Tuesday and to a a couple of new things that I heard on the radio yesterday that are pertinent to our conversations in class.

First, the Apple 1984 commercial:

Here is the link to the podcast of the interview with Fred Turner,“Designing for Democracy in the American Counterculture” that I summarized at the end of class.

Now here are two interesting podcasts form NPR’s All Things Considered. The first is a commentary about e-readers from author Eric Weiner and the second is a story about why if Jesus were alive today he would have a blog (it’s really a story about the Pope’s call for priest’s to blog).

Welcome to the course blog for CO302, Writing Online. Please take a few minutes to read through all the sections of the syllabus listed to the left and make a list of questions you have.