Just in case you are having a hard timing digging through the weekly syllabus on Moodle to find out what it is I would like you to write about in your own course space, here is a list of the prompts.
To review, this is what I hope you do in your assigned responses:
Once or twice a week, you will post a thoughtful, well-written, informed response to the material we are reading, viewing, and discussing for class. The general prompt in the homework description provides a direction for what you write, but you are invited to make connections to ideas and materials beyond our class as you see fit (rhetorically fitting!)
Craft your responses as writing appropriate for the public audience it may (or may not) attract. At a minimum, your classmates and I will be reading and responding to what you write. Be sure to provide context and citation information (author/composer, name and title of work) when referencing the work of others and where and whenever possible, link to the works/spaces that you are discussing. You can approach your posts as commentary, critique, analysis, reflection, evaluation, or any combination of those things that you can think of. Be interesting. Be smart. Be thoughtful. Be provocative.
I also expect you to read the work of others, and, when so moved, I hope that you take the time to make comments on your classmates’Â responses (use links to your web space and/or Twitter). I strongly encourage you to make this a dialogue.
All of your responses should be tweeted with links when completed, using the #cccwnm hashtag.
Happy posting!
Week 1 – Materials: xkcd “The Pace of Modern Life,” Principles of New Media” from Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2001, “What Else is New: How uses, not innovations, drive human technology” by Steven Shapin 2007, How the Internet Gets Inside Us by Adam Gopnick
- Post 1: What is so “new” about “writing new media?” What do the readings for this week make you think about in relation to the affordances and constraints of digital, networked communication?
Week 2 – Materials: Introduction and Writing in the Genres of the Web chapters of Web Writing Style Guide, version 1.0,  proposal for HTTP by Tim Berners-Lee (link here), How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes, Berners-Lee’s Long Live the Web/A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality, Leaked: The Internet Must Go
- Post 1: Post a brief response on your class web space in response about what the most significant idea or moment in what you read or watched so far for this week was for you. What surprised you? What made you think? What was new, or more nuanced, information? Explain what and why. Make sure you contextualize what your write so that anyone reading your post would know what you are talking about. In other words, write this stuff, don’t just answer the question.
- Post 2: Write ANOTHER post in your online space about your reaction to the Berners-Lee piece and the Leaked mocumentary and bonus materials. In your post, Exploring both your reaction to the pieces and why you believe or do not believe that net neutrality is an important issue for people in general and for people working in creative arts and communications industries specifically.
Weeks 3 and 4 – Materials: “The Rhetorics of Writing Pages,” Ridolfo and DeVoss Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery 2010,” Shirky “The Political Power of Social Media 2011,” Baym and boyd “Socially Mediated Publicness: An Introduction” 2012, Tufekci’s “What Tear Gas Taught Me about Twitter and the NSA: It’s Time to Rethink Our Nightmares about Surveillance” 2014, Jane McGonigal’s Ted Talk Saving the World in Games 2010
- Posts 1 and 2:Â Select two of the five pieces that were most interesting and/or provocative for you in some way. *Write* a separate post for EACH of the two pieces, accomplishing the following:
- a brief overview of the main argument of the text/video with selected quotes to exemplify the idea (use links when/where possible and appropriate),
- an explanation of what, for you, is the most significant moment/idea in the text/video and why
- a discussion of how the text/video connects to other texts you’ve read, listened to, viewed, or interacted with so far in the course,
- a commentary on what you learned as a result of reading/watching and reviewing the text/video and what you would now like to know more about.
- Then Go find the posts of at least two other classmates and post comments or give them a twitter shout out (use their @handles)
By *write* I mean that you can and should begin to include multiple modes (image/audio/moving image…) in your digital, networked *writing* when modes beyond alphabetic text help you convey what you are trying to say. And, if you’re thinking that this is very similar to the book review, just on a smaller scale, you’re right. We’re practicing.
Week 5 – Materials: The Pitches, RIP: A Remix Manifesto, Creative Commons (Mission and other areas), Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
- Post 1: What did you think about the pitches you saw this week? What worked? What didn’t? Why? What do you feel that you can contribute most to the final projects we selected? What ideas do you have at this point? Tweet your post link with #cccwnm tag.
- Post 2: As a student planning to work fields related to creative arts and media industries, what do you find either most compelling or most disturbing about the issues of copyright and copyleft raised in RIP: A Remix Manifesto? In response to the documentary and the materials from Creative Commons, write your own mini-manifesto about your position on remixes and CC-licensed, public domain, or open-access materials. In your post, find a way to creatively use (and attribute) the CC-licensed image, video, and music you discovered in your Creative Commons search.
Week 6 – Materials: Vee “Understanding Computer Programming as Literacy,” “What Most Schools Don’t Teach”, and HTML Tutorials at HTML Dog
- Create a new post on your wordpress site, add a title, and then click the “text” button instead of the default “visual” button for the page content. Using the html you have learned, write a response post about your thoughts on the value of learning to program and to write in HTML for the profession or career that you hope to enter. Is there value? What is that value or why is there not value? What are the advantages on knowing some basics of markup (html), design elements (css), and basic programing (writing your own scripts/codes to make things happen)? What happens if you don’t know any of these things? You can also share your thoughts on working independently through some of the HTML Dog tutorials. In your post, I expect to see headings, paragraphs, formatting, and links! You must also, at some point, upload/include in your post an image of the html file you created in Notepad or Textedit.
Week 7: Materials:Â Team work on final project proposal
- Post your complete proposal for the final project by 5pm Thursday, March 20.
Week 8: Materials: w3schools.com; team work on final project
- No formal post. Work on project, complete HTML and CSS modules on w3schools
- Spring Break!
Week 9 – Materials: Selected Texts for Book Review, Content Strategy Toolkit (Lavine and Lee), “The Discipline of Content Stratgey” by Kristina Halvorson (2008)
- Write Response Post on Content Strategy: In the context of your readings on Content Strategy, how would you define/describe your team’s content strategy? How are you defining your audience? Describe a representative “persona” for that audience and explain the tone/voice/or strategy you believe will best reach that audience. Finally, write or create one piece of content for your final project for that “persona.” Include it/embed that piece in your post.
Week 10: Materials: Your Final Project
- Each team member must post the two “deliverables” due for the Final Project Phase One assignment to his/her individual blog. This includes: 1) the complete annotated bibliography for the final project (if you have already posted this in some form on your project web space, you can link to it from your individual posts) and an explanation of how you plan to present it as part of the final project, 2) the storyboard/wireframe (a visual representation of content, hierarchy and layout for your digital, networked project) with a written plan for what be accomplished by your team in the next 3 weeks.
Week 11: No formal post this week – work on final project; tweet about your work!
Week 12:Â No formal post this week – work on final project; tweet about your work!
Week 13: Materials – The Book Reviews and Presentations
- Now that we’ve seen all the book review presentations, write a post about which book (other than the one you reviewed) you found most compelling, interesting, or helpful. Explain why you find it valuable and in what ways. Remember to use author names (and links) when reference the works and give props to the classmate(s) who introduced you to the book.
Week 14: Materials – Writing New Media Course
- Post Your Collaborative, Researched Writing New Media Project Self-assessment Essay
Reflecting on what works and doesn’t work in a large-scale collaborative effort is often one of the most important learning experiences you can have. To that end, I will ask you to complete a self and team evaluation survey (link posted in Moodle) and to craft a longer piece of writing as your final post with your reflections on:- the process of creating the project,
- the collaborative process itself,
- your assessment of how well the project does what you hoped it would do,
- a reflection on what you would do differently
- your reflection on what you learned about “writing new media†in the process of creating the project and engaging with our course materials (refer to at least 3 of the course materials we read/watched/reviewed during the semester in your reflection)
Post this final writing to your course web space by May 16, 2015 – and, of course, tweet the link with #cccwnm.