final reminders

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Carrie

First, I have updated my extra office hours for this Friday to work around my afternoon meeting. Here they are again:

  • Friday, May 6, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm and 3:00 -4:00 pm
  • Tuesday, May 10, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
  • Thursday, May 12,  12:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Here is a list of what is due and when:

Thursday, May 5 at the start of class
blog reflections

By the end of our final exam time Thursday, May 12 from 4:10-6:10 pm

  1. Web project #2 including the two-page reflection in which you must explain how all of your content and its organization (including your visual design and choice of images, if any) work together to address your audience and purpose. Please make sure to explain how you made use of the CRAP visual design principles. Finally, explain what you would have done differently if you had had more time and/or technical skills. Submit your reflection in hard copy.
  2. Revision of your Wired essay for a higher grade (optional). If you turn your revision before the final exam time (i.e., not in person), you should email me your revision after receiving your grade. I will confirm that I have received your revision by replying to your email. If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours, you must send a follow up email. Do not assume that I have received your revision.
  3. Bonus blog post (optional). If you missed one of the regular weekly blog posts or submitted more than one post significantly late this is a good opportunity to earn 10 extra points on the project. You must email me to let me know that you have published a bonus post. I will reply to your email to confirm. If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours, you must send a follow up email. Do not assume that I have received your message.

That’s it. Be checking your email this week for grades posted to the Writing Studio!

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final week updates

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Carrie

Here are a few updates for this week:

Remember that someone will be coming to our class tomorrow (Tuesday) to take photos for the new English Department website. If you absolutely do not want to be in a photo, sit on the side of the room away from the windows.

In class last Thursday, I unveiled my secret weapon—you have until the end of our final exam time (Thursday, May 12 from 4:10-6:10 pm) to finish your website project. I will be in our classroom during the final exam time to help with any last minute website projects. You can use the exam time to finish the website project or the two grade-boosting optional assignments:

  1. revising your Wired essay for a higher grade (I will return the graded essays this week via the Writing Studio)
  2. doing a bonus blog post for 10 extra points. If you missed a post or posted significantly late on more than one occasion, this is a good way to boost your grade on the blog project.

I will say more about these optional assignments in class Tuesday.

If you wish to get extra help with any project, I will have special office hours on the following dates:

  • Friday, May 6, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm and 3:00 -4:00 pm
  • Tuesday, May 10, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
  • Thursday, May 12,  12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
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plan for week 15

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Carrie

Yikes! Is it really week 15? Exciting and scary at the same time. Well, we’d better get to it. Here is the plan for this week.

First, hooray to Carly for actually reading the syllabus! ;-)

She pointed out something that I forgot to mention in class last Thursday. The daily schedule said that drafts of web project #2 were due tomorrow. Obviously we are not ready for that. I have updated the schedule so that drafts are due Thursday.

What you will bring to class this Thursday is your in-progress project to share with two other classmates. You will not be turning in anything to me, but I will be walking around the room to see what you have done at that point. Thursday will be a work day for 45 minutes and the last 30 minutes will be for peer review when you will share your work with two classmates to get their feedback on your design. The goal for Thursday is to have (in addition to your design plans and storyboards) a working (but not necessarily finished) version of your index/home page and one additional page template.

Remember that designing your templates is the hardest part of the coding process. Once you have your layout working, you can duplicate that page, change the content, and customize small pieces of the code to work with your new page. I’ll demonstrate this in class tomorrow (Tuesday). I’ll also be returning your storyboards and design plans so you can reference them as you begin to code.

Also remember that if you are having trouble working on the coding outside of class, you can work on drafting your text for the about and portfolio pages.

I have also made the code for the example page I showed you in class available for reference.  This way when I show something in class you can look back at it later. You can view the page at http://www.writingonlineatcsu.net/lamanna/cv-images.htm. The code documents are:

cv-images.htm

screen-images.css

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plan for week 14

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Carrie

First I want to call your attention to a lecture this Thursday at 3:30 pm sponsored by the Journalism Department:

The Department of Journalism and Technical Communication at Colorado State University welcomes Cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow as this year’s presenter of the Holmes Distinguished Lecture.  Barlow will speak at 3:30 p.m. April 21 in Behavioral Sciences room 131. The title of his talk is “The Right to Know.” [...] He is the co-founder for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization that has been protecting the free flow of information on the Internet since 1990, and remains on the board of that organization. Since May 1998, he has been a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

This promises to be an excellent talk, and I’d love to discuss it with any of you who can make it.

Now, onto the plan for the week.

Tuesday, April 19

Remember that your design plans and storyboards for web project #2 are due today. After we go over the items below you will have about 30 minutes to finish up these items. The revisions of the Wired essay are also due today although you have grace period until Wednesday at 11:59 pm before I will count the revision as late.

Today I’d like to go over some the issues I have been seeing as I examine the code of your resume pages. Getting a better handle on these things is essential going into web project #2 and for those of you still working on your resume, these are likely problems you are currently having.

  1. file paths! Understanding and managing these pesky things.
  2. the box model or “what the heck are all these divs for anyway?”
  3. separating form from content: determining what goes in the XHTML and what goes in the CSS
  4. how to use the print.css file
  5. menu bars (see pages 211-222) and positioning (see pages 239-261)

********************

Thursday, April 21

This will be an important day of class for web project #2. I will go over the basics of using Photoshop to design page layouts and prep images for your website. We will only learn the basics of Photoshop, which is a robust program. Once you have the basics down, you should be able to learn other specific functions to create the images you want for your website by searching for free online tutorials or using the lynda.com tutorials that CSU has subscribed to.

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Wired essay update

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Carrie

Hi to all of you who still need to turn in a revised version of your Wired essay (which is most of you ;-)

Earlier in the week I returned drafts with comments to each of you via the Writing Studio. You should have received an email alerting you of that, but it has come to my attention that some of you did not receive that email. The email came from the Writing Studio’s odd address of DoNotReply@colostate.edu and was sent to the email address you use to log in to the Writing Studio. The message you should have received is pasted below and contains information about the revision due date. I also want to encourage you visit the Writing Center for assistance with your revision or to meet with me if you have questions.

Finally, make sure to read both my marginal comments and my longer comments at the end of your essay. If you have any trouble accessing my commented draft from the Writing Studio, please email and I will send you your file as an attachment.

_______________________________________________________________

Your instructor, Carrie Lamanna, has added a file to your class inbox. To view the file, please visit the Personal Files page in your class, CO302 Writing Online.

You can also view the file by visiting your personal page in the Writing Studio, clicking on the Files tab, and viewing your class files.

The following comments have been added by Carrie Lamanna:

Hi (insert your name here),

I have commented on your Wired essay draft and put a copy in your personal Inbox folder in the Writing Studio. Please let me know if you have any questions.

You will revise and submit the essay for a grade next week. The official due date is Tuesday, April 19 at the start of class, but I won’t count the revision as late until the end of the day Wednesday the 20th. After this revision, you will have one more opportunity to revise (and raise your grade) when you adapt the essay as a web document for web project #2.

Carrie

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