Insignificant Wranglings

I am going to go a bit easy on you at the end of this semester. Rather than ask you to both compose a final Thomas paper and craft a “Kalman with a side of Rice,” I will instead ask you to combine these two activities into one project. 

For your final project this semester, I will ask you to:

“Make me a PechaKucha that addresses rhetoric”

This is a bit different than what I had originally planned, but I believe it focuses attention back on the goals of the entire course: to survey the range of rhetoric(s) informing contemporary rhetoric. 

Anticipated Questions:

What is a pechakucha?

A pechakucha is a presentation format that can be executed in any number of different programs or mediums. For this project, I will ask that you use either Microsoft Moviemaker or Apple iMovie. Please do not use PowerPoint. Your final project can be any combination of still images and video clips. It should also include an audio track narration of your argument. 

The pechakucha presentation format is 20×20: 20 slides lasting 20 seconds each. This works out to be 6 minutes and 40 seconds, which works out to be about 4 pages typed and double-spaced. 

Learn more about the pechakucha format here. 

What do you mean “addresses”?

I don’t know. I choose this word because it is ambiguous and thus gives you space to interpret and navigate as you see fit. 

How many readings/sources should I use?

I don’t know. But I think I would like to see you make an attempt to tie together the material we have worked through in class. You have all worked with a slightly different collection of materials. 

We opened this class with you writing definitions of rhetoric. I still have those definitions. I think I’d like to have a sense of how you might define rhetoric now. What would the one sentence definition be? How would you thread that definition through our readings? 

And, since I am combining this assignment with the final Thomas paper, I will ask that your final project address Latour, Davis, Rickert, Rice, and Rice. How does their senses of rhetoric align? How do they differ? How do they compare with your definition of rhetoric? Where is the place of the postmodern tradition for you/them/us (as in, our class or our discipline or our society our or planet)?

Can I use material from outside of class? 

Certainly. 

Do I have to use material from outside of class?

No. 

I’ve never used Moviemaker before. Should I be freaking out?

No. Moviemaker is ridiculously easy to use. There’s a million quality Internet tutorials that can walk you through it. 

The only thing I would highlight upfront is the difference between SAVING A PROJECT FILE and EXPORTING A FINISHED MOVIE. When you are working in Moviemaker, you are creating a project file. You need to store that file in the same place as all the images, video clips, and audio clips you plan on using in your movie. They all belong in one place. If you save the project file to a flash drive, but save all the project components to, say, the desktop in a library computer, you are screwed. Save everything you will use for the project in one folder. 

When you are done with your movie, you need to export it into a video file or upload it to YouTube. 

Here’s a walkthrough I composed a few years ago as part of USF’s Teaching With Technology workgroup: 

http://www.marccsantos.com/video_workshop/web_video_presentation.html

Tuesday: An Introduction to Code

Today offers a crash course in all things web. 

Learning the Basic Language: #1 Mechanical Parts

1. Server: this is the database(s) that store(s) web pages. Every page on the web is stored on a server somewhere. 

2. Domain: this is the unique id for a particular web address, its URL (Universal Resource Locator). 

3. Browser: this is the software on your computer that interprets a web page’s code(s). These include Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Every browser will interpret code a bit differently, which is why some pages can look different in different browsers. For this project, I highly recommend using Chrome, because the “developer’s tools” (View > Developer > Developer’s Tools) are amazing for people learning how to code. 

Distinguishing Different Kinds of Code

The web is comprised of three primary kinds of code, each with a different primary function:

1. HTML, otherwise known as Hypertext Mark-Up Language, is used to mark up content. 

2. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is used to style content.  HTML handles content, CSS handles form/design. 

3. Javascript, often designated .js, is used to create interactive or dynamic elements. We will not be playing with .js in this class (although we might look at how to borrow existing .js from open-source libraries. 

Getting to Know HMTL

HTML code “tags” different kinds of information, informing the browser what that kind of information is and how it should be displayed. While CSS can alter the default presentation, adding more sophisticated layouts and styles, every browser has a default style for presenting “naked” .html code. 

Today we’ll talk about the various parts of a web page coded in .html. We’ll first think about this structurally, then talk about the specific .html tags as you code up print versions of your resume in the program Notepad++. Note: Mac users should download a program called TextWrangler. It is both free and amazing. 

Basic Parts of an HTML Page

An HTML page has two basic parts, the head and the body. 

The head is something that only the browser can “see.” It contains information about what kind of page it is (thus telling the browser how to render or display the page), the title of the page (this is what appears in your tab in chrome, for instance), the author, and the subject matter. Information regarding the subject matter is called “metadata” and is a major component of SEO, or search engine optimization. Often PWRT majors are asked questions about whether they are familiar with SEO. 

The body contains the actual content that people will see once rendered by the browser. ALL content in an .html page needs to be in at least one tag. Tags operate according to a simple rule, open and close. For instance, opening a paragraph looks like this: <p>, and closing it looks like this: </p>. That slash in the second tag is the close symbol. Certain special tags will open and close in the same tag, like the line break tag: <br />

There’s two ways to think about tags–structurally and semantically. 

Structural tags say what kind of information something is:

• is it just regular writing? What, in .html, we call a paragraph: <p>?
• Or is it a header, which we number by order of importance: <h1>?
• Or is it a block-quote that we want set off and indented? <blockquote>?
• Perhaps it is a bulleted list: <ul>?
• In which case each item in the list would be a list item: <li>?

These are the basic content tags that you will use to code 99% of all textual content on a web page. There are other tags to “point,” or link, to images, audio content, or videos. We’ll talk about those later. 

There are other tags we use to point out the significance of particular content. These are called semantic tags, because they influence the meaning of specific text within structural .html. That sounds a lot more complicated than it is. 

• Right now you might feel fubar. Don’t worry, .html is not that hard–especially the acronym tag!
• You might want to stress a particular word. No problem, use your friend the emphasis tag: <em>!
• Perhaps you really need to call attention to something important. Go &lf;strong> or go home.
• And if you need the code for a special character — like that m-dash I just used — you can find that here: on this Special ASCII HTML character code page

That last bullet above contains the most powerful of all HTML tags: the anchor tag. The anchor tag is what facilitates links. Links are what allow the web to exist, and what have radically transformed the availability and dynamic interaction of our contemporary information ecology. Yay links! 

Of course, most of us know what they are, but how many of us know how they work? A link is composed of two parts, the SIGNAL and the TARGET. The signal is the language you see underlined in blue (or, more common today, set apart via a different color and/or font-weight). The target is the URL for the desired page. For instance, I could write the sentence: I love the Oatmeal because he makes awesome comics about the Internet. The code looks like this:

<p>I <em>love </em> the Oatmeal because he makes <a href=”http://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet”> awesome comics about the Internet</a>.</p>

I tell beginning coders: humans are forgiving readers. If you make a small grammatical mistake, the majority if readers will fail to even notice it. Or if they do, then they will fox it for you in their heads without any problems. Jerkfaces will make a comment about your improper grammar because obnoxious. 

Here’s the thing: browsers are not forgiving readers. If you make one little mistake in your .html code, then the browser will “break” the page and laugh at you. You will spend hours pouring over your code, wondering why something isn’t working right. You will show it to me. I will look at it for 30 seconds and find the mistake. You will laugh a laugh that crazy people would think sounds crazy. This is an unavoidable component of learning to code HTML and CSS. 

Your assignment: you brought with you to class today a .doc(x) of your resume. I want you to transform that resume into some HTML. I want you to run that .html page through the W3C (World Wide Web consortium, a group that works to consolidate and standardize coding practices to minimize the impact of browser disparity and make the web increasingly accessible) Validator. The Validator will tell you how many errors you have made with your code, and identify the specific lines in the code that contain errors. Please validate by file upload. You can find the W3C Validator by clicking on this link. Once you have the Green Bar of Happiness you are done with this assignment and can submit the page of .html to the assignment folder in Canvas. I am here today to help you. Good luck!

Shipka’s “This Was (NOT) an Easy Assignment”

How students negotiate more open-ended assignments, at the same time, how to escape linear, thesis-driven composition:

Instead of requiring that students produce linear, print-based texts, the framework for composing I describe here provides students with open-ended, inquiry-based tasks that invite students to draw on a much wider range of materials, methodologies, technologies and rhetorical strategies than writing courses have traditionally tended to allow.  

There is no single formula for good writing, no single method for teaching writing:

Students who enter the course hoping that the experience will provide them with “the” formula for good writing for all time and for every purpose learn that the successful production of texts is not determined by a stable set of universal composing laws that the student has yet to master, but by how successfully he/she is able to identify, align with or negotiate the objectives, tools, rules, materials, and conventions of a specific communicative genre, activity system, or discipline.  

And:

Otherwise put, instead of providing students with opportunities to explore the communicative potentials of new (or older) media in a context where I, as the instructor, decide what their final products will be, do, or mean, I provide students with open-ended, inquiry-based tasks that ask them to consider how even seemingly simple, straightforward, and relatively familiar communicative objectives (i.e., creating a text based on outside readings/research, summarizing and analyzing a text) might be accomplished in any number of ways, and with any number of semiotic resources, depending on how they choose to contextualize, frame or coordinate their response to the tasks. 

Students expect the instructor to decide, to teach. Shipka frustrates this expectation. Such frustration opens us a space in which they can learn. Working with the best students, Shipka show “they know jack,” that they can make sophisticated and meaningful decisions:

The case studies presented here suggest that students are, as Nelson argued in 1990, “sensitive decision-makers,” people who are able to “size up a writing situation and adapt their goals and approaches to meet the demands of different classroom contexts” (p. 388).  What’s more, the studies suggest that when given the opportunity to set their own goals for their work, to draw on the resources they believe will facilitate those goals, and to account for the choices they made with their work, students demonstrate a capacity to be markedly sophisticated and highly flexible material, methodological, and rhetorical strategists.

Sketching Out the Rest of Our Year

The rest of our semester will revolve around two projects, the Personal Portfolio Project and the Just One Thing Project. 

Project One: Just One Thing…

In this project I will ask you to help me develop a social media campaign that will be implemented this summer and next fall in my graduate level courses on “Digital Rhetoric and Sustainability” and “New Media Production.” In a sense, you are test subjects so that I can get a sense of the trials future students will face in contributing to this campaign. 

The inspiration for this campaign is Joe Smith’s viral TED talk “How to Use a Paper Towel.”

Based on Smith’s work, students will create 1-2 minute videos explicating one small life change everyone can make and estimating how that simple change would improve sustainability (or, for this practice run, any change that would make the world a better place). These videos should include empirical research into the effects such a small change could cause. Changes should be low-cost oriented. What we want is to overcome apathy and cynicism by introducing little, tangible, realizable changes that just about any person could enact any day. 

You will work in teams of 2-3 for this project. Each time will be responsible for producing 2 videos. 

Each group needs to develop an intro “animation” or sequence for their video series. The intro graphic should be developed in Photoshop and “animated” in Adobe Premeire. Also, it should contain some kind of sound/music obtained from a legal, open-source collection, such as CreativeCommons, freestockmusic.com, or another such service. The intro–music included–need not exceed 5 seconds. Of course, the archetype for this part of the project is NBC’s “The More You Know…” 

The intro, in addition to the “Just One Thing…” title of the series, needs to include Patel Center for Global Sustainability branding. 

Let me be clear: I am not looking for you to simply film a TED style talk. That would be boring (or, in the precise terminology offered us by Steve Stockman, that video would “suck”). Rather–take Stockman’s advice for filming engaging videos, and apply it to producing a short, TED inspired message. 

Project Two: Personal Portfolio

The second and final project of the semester asks you to develop your Squarespace webspace into a portfolio showcasing your best work from all of the classes you have taken as a part of this major. 

We will spend a class session looking at portfolios of professional writers, designers, and academics so that you get a sense of the range of possibilities for developing a portfolio. Often times, a portfolio–like the clothing we wear–is a highly rhetorical and stylized method for telling someone who we want to be and how we want to be perceived. In short, it is an opportunity for distinction. 

There are some requirements for the project: 

• First, it must construct a sensible ontology for organizing projects. This probably shouldn’t be by class. 
• Second, the portfolio section should provide brief BUT FUCKING MEANINGFUL commentary on the project. In short, explain to your audience (potential employers, graduate or law school admissions committees, etc.) what this project tells us about you and your abilities. Learn to develop language for talking about your work. 
• Third, even if it is just a paper, include an image, not just a link. For boring old papers, you can take a screen cast of a page or even a hyper-magnified portion of a page since that looks cool. 
• Fourth, at some point you must customize the design of your site by editing the CSS. Don’t freak out, I’ll help ease you into this in class. 

To get us started learning html and css (just enough to edit and navigate existing code), I want you to bring a one-page Microsoft Word copy of your resume to class on Tuesday. 

In today’s class, I want to get us started on Project 3 by discussing Kalman’s …And Pursuit of Happiness and Rice’s chapter on Woodward Avenue from Digital Detroit. As with our other projects this semester, the idea here is for you to extract from these readings a sense of direction for your own project. 

The prompt: 

Make me a Kalman (with a side of Rice). 

This marks our third, and most radical, exploration of genre this semester. First, I asked you to make me a MEmorial that wasn’t a memorial. The best projects here worked through traditional expectations for a memorial and tackled Ulmer’s rather idiosyncratic ideas for a MEmorial. Second, I asked you to make me a map that wasn’t a map. We did readings on the genre conventions / rhetorical expectations of maps. Some of you were able to subvert these conventions in your map projects. 

This time I ask you to invent a genre from a specific artist. And a theorist (Rice–make me a Kalman with a side of Rice). The idea here is for you to realize Ulmer’s ambition, Rickert’s ambition, Santos’s ambition: to realize that, in the 21st century, students aren’t merely called to invent answers via pre-existing heuristics, but rather to invent the very means of their own invention. To invent the question. 

Maira Kalman. “An Empty Brain.”

A few sources. A talk by Kalman focusing on “Epiphany” by THNKR. Another by THNKR on the difference between thought and feeling. Bonus: a longer a video interview with Kalman titled “Art and the Power of Not Knowing” by Creative Mornings. 

Jeff Rice Digital Detroit and Digital Re-search(ing)

Some questions/points:

1. What is the difference between a narrative and a database? Between a narrative and a network? [pages 65-66, 70]
2. Understanding commonplaces [60, 62 -categories/associations, 79 -home]
3. Distinguishing Rice from Virilio: what is the purpose of Rice’s project?
4. Rice’s framing of rhetoric via Mailloux [74]

Homework

Read Jody Shipka’s piece “This was (NOT!!!) an Easy Assignment.” We will discuss this article on Tuesday. 

Read the first 2/3 of my article draft “Maira Kalman and/as Choric Invention,” co-authored with Ella Browning. 

Create a recipe for making a Kalman/Rice. Your recipe should specify ingredients. It should articulate a process. Specifics welcome (e.g., if you are already imagining a “place” or “commonplace” or have a specific research agenda in mind). 

Bring enough copies of your recipe to class for everyone to see. 

We will share recipes in Tuesday’s class. 

Today is our second night discussing the major theorists and theories associated with postmodernity. Katherine developed a spreadsheet to help organize our discussion; let’s try to flush out more of the sheet this week:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiCj7a4lv2s2dHZhcWVvd25VN1dLcEEyaEtDUG1KWWc&usp=sharing

Next Weel’s Reading

Next week we will be focusing our attention on James Berlin’s Rhetoric, Poetics, and Cultures. While I would love to read the whole book, but we do not have time for that. I am more interested in Berlin’s treatment of postmodernism, especially given his influence over the discipline. So let’s read pages 1-122. 

I also want to read Victor Vitanza’s response to Berlin. Berlin and Vitanza were close friends and intellectual rivals. They went back and forth across a number of articles over the years. Berlin’s contribution to the discussion is generally re-worked in the book. Unfortunately, Berlin died suddenly before the book was even completed, and before Vitanza had a chance to respond. Victor then revised the introduction to Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric as a response to Berlin–imaging how a conversation between the two of them might (not) go. You’ll read that conversation this week (1-24, pdf). 

I’ll also ask that you read another piece by Vitanza, Abandoned to Writing: Notes Toward Several Provocations, in the online journal Enculturation. The essay was part of a special edition that asked contributors to theorize the meaning of relationship between Rhetoric and Composition (which Victor takes up as the meaning of the slash). 

Hi all, 

Thanks to everyone who came to the optional workday. Here’s my thoughts on the questions you raised today:

1. I have opened a quiz called “Map Postmortem.” There’s only two real questions–both intend to prepare your abstract/supporting material(s) for Thursday’s showcase. There’s a number of ways to present your map: use a tri-fold posterboard (or, as Emil called it, the “science fair” format); provide a handout, create small slide cards that use some kind of menu holder as a base, work the explication of the project into the project itself. What is important is that your method makes sense and doesn’t feel like it was thrown together as an after-thought. 

2. Realize that part of this project involves learning how to work with printed images. This might be trickier than you think. Pay attention to image size (especially if you are working in Photoshop). Charlie recommended printing directly from Photoshop rather than printing from a .jpeg in preview or some other program. This makes sense–.jpeg is a file format created for the web, it is not intended for printing. Most importantly–leave time for trial and error. 

3. Here’s the revised grading rubric:

• Visual / Technological [15]
  • Uses image editing software
  • Uses Photography
  • Uses one other “technology” or technique
• Genre Awareness [10]
  • Involves awareness of the Genre Conventions of a Map
• Creative Adaption of Genre [15]
  • Devolves some genre/material/convention (etc) expectations for an “academic” map
• Scholarly Component [10]
  • Some element of research, theory, or rhetorical sophistication (“What makes this smart?”)
• Presentation Component [10]
  • Method of presentation makes sense
  • Material presentation doesn’t look shoddy or rushed

Tuesday

Hi all. In today’s class we will take some time to talk about potential map projects and then will focus attention on Photoshop. I have sent out a .zip file with images for us to work with. We will:

• Use the “too-dark.jpg” picture to adjust the brightness of an image
• Use the “correct-contrast.jpg” image to adjust the contrast of an image
• Use the “faded-family.jpg” image to adjust the brightness, contrast, and size of an image
• Use the “dust-scratches.jpg” to “heal” an image with the healing brush
• Use the “wrinkle-hands.jpg” to “heal” an image with the healing brush / clone stamp
• Use the “color-to-bw.jpg” to change an image from color to black and white
• Use the “camera-raw.jpg” to change a portion of an image to black and white
• Use the change-car-color.jpg” to change a portion of an image to a different color

In Thursday’s class, we will play a bit more with Photoshop–particularly with layers. 

Thursday: Photoshop and Layers

First, a quick Youtube video on layers by Nathan Ridley. 

Second, a very simple exercise from Photokaboom to demonstrate how layers work. 

Third, a quick and dirty trick developed by Fotoshopped for combining images (opacity). 

Fourth, let’s try a more advanced tutorial, like Photoshopstar’s exercise on aging an old woman. 

Homework

Remember that next Thursday is our presentation day for the map projects. As previously indicated, I expect you to have a way of displaying your map in class. This may involve posterboard. It should involve one or more pieces of text that succinctly explain your project–its intentions, your methods, etc. Remember that you are presenting to a live audience, so think about font size, contrast, and visual interest. Here’s the revised grading rubric:

• Visual / Technological [15]
  • Uses Photoshop
  • Uses Photography
  • Uses one other “technology” or technique
• Genre Awareness [10]
  • Involves awareness of the Genre Conventions of a Map
• Creative Adaption of Genre [15]
  • Devolves some genre/material/convention (etc) expectations for an “academic” map
• Scholarly Component [10]
  • Some element of research, theory, or rhetorical sophistication
• Presentation Component [10]
  • Method of presentation makes sense
  • Material presentation doesn’t look shoddy or rushed

Tuesday: Photoshop

I want to spend sometime in class today working in Photoshop. I have two exercises to work on. The first will work with a few images, practicing cropping, filtering, textual overlay, and perhaps a few other tools. I will also talk about these images via Devoss and Platt’s “Image Manipulation and Ethics in a Digital World” article. This should take about 30 minutes of today’s class.  

The second exercise, which will take 45 minutes, hinges on the use of Motivational and Demotivational posters. 

Thursday: Academic, Psycho, Critical, and Personal Geography. 

In today’s class I want to talk about geography as you begin to articulate a response to the second project prompt: “make me a map that isn’t a map.” 

We’ll begin with a “quiz” assignment. 

I also want to share a simple heuristic that can be helpful when trying to work your way through a theoretical argument like Crampton and Krygier’s:

1. What do they see as the problem?
2. Who don’t they want to be?
3. What are the key terms / thinkers / traditions they align themselves with?
4. What are their favorite examples?
5. What do they hope to accomplish?

Below are some of my reading notes while prepping for today’s class:

Crampton and Krygier. 2006. “An Introduction to Critical Cartography.”

*Make me a map that isn’t an (academic) map.*

*Question I have–is geography ready to transform from a discipline that makes maps to a discipline that teaches and evaluates public-map making?*

Intro

All geographic knowledge is caught up in power (I think Nietzsche, they think Foucault). How is map-making caught up in power? (See Berry’s discussion of Amerigo Vespucci, 5). 

Technology makes it possible for everyday people to make maps. Later: “Indeed, it is rare to find references to the cartographic literature in these new developments” (19).

“If the map is a specific set of power-knowledge claims, then not only the state but others could make competing and equally powerful claims.”

What is Critique?

“A critique is not a project of finding fault, but an examination of the assumptions of a field of knowledge. Its purpose is to understand and suggest alternatives to the categories of knowledge that we use.”

They connect themselves to Foucault and the Frankfurt tradition. They ultimately find the root of critique in Kant (conditions of disciplinarity/discourse). 

*Essentially, maps tell us where to go., they being to impose “soft” limits on what we think is possible.* They avoid the term ideological. 

Expanding “what is a map”

Harley and Woodward adopted a new definition of the map in order to include examples of maps that did not fit with textbook cartography: “maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world” (Harley and Woodward 1987: xvi). 

Example: “such as the famous 1929 surrealist map of the world, reproduced in Pinder” (1996, 2005).

“Writing in an important book on humanist geography, Wood argued that unlike contemporary academic cartography, a cartography of reality must be humane, humanist, phenomenological…It must reject as inhumanly narrow both the data base and subject matter of contemporary academic cartography” (Wood 1978: 207)” (22).

They conclude offering 4 different potential genres for critical cartography:

1. map artists
2. everyday mapping
3. maps as resistance
4. map hacking

“Map artists … claim the power of the map to achieve ends other than the social reproduction of the status quo. Map artists do not reject maps. They reject the authority claimed by normative maps uniquely to portray reality as it is, that is, with dispassion and objectivity” (Wood 2006b: p.10.)” (25)

*How do you make a passionate, subjective map?*

“Everyday mappings, whether performative (Krygier 2006), ludic (Perkins 2006), indigenous (Lewis 2006), affective and experiential (Cieri 2003, 2006) or narrative (Pearce 2006), creatively illuminate the role of space in people’s lives by countering generalized and global perspectives. A recent cartography text (Krygier and Wood 2005) implicitly integrates critical cartography, ideas from the arts and everyday mappings, and is designed with a populist intent.” 

Maps as resistance, counter-mappings and participatory GIS, take up maps and politics in an explicit manner to provide alternative mappings of space not represented by official state agencies (Sparke 1995; Cobarrubias et al. 2006). Map hacking provides a whole series of inexpensive or open source capabilities that combine spatialized knowledges in ever new ways (kanarinka 2006a, 2006b). As we stated above, it is not the technology that is important, but how it is used, and with what effects. 

Map hacking provides a whole series of inexpensive or open source 
capabilities that combine spatialized knowledges in ever new ways (kanarinka 
2006a, 2006b). As we stated above, it is not the technology that is important, but 
how it is used, and with what effects. Personal Geographies

“Maps make known our relationship to the world” (4). Berry provides a couple of heuristics (pg. 7).  Thought: *What if you used a board game as a heuristic for making a map?*

Parts of a map–how many of these can you use? Thinking about scale in particular. 

*Think of how Berry’s mapping the self differs from Debord’s “pscyhogeography” (19).*

*Could you, via Ulmer, think of mapping the abject?*

*Could you, via Kalman, think of mapping delight?*

Project One: “Kalman” Project

A multimedia project based on the work of author and artist Maira Kalman.

Technologies:

• Digital Photography
• PowerPoint / MovieMaker or iMovie / Haiku Deck
•  Photoshop

Objectives:

• Photography skills / concepts
• Image editing
• Visual Rhetoric (design principles–alignment, typography, color, etc)
• Rhetoric (core concepts of communicating to specific audiences–kairos, ethos, pathos, etc)
• PechaKucha presentation principles

Project Two: Remediation Project

This project asks you to take a research project of 8 to 80 pages and remediate into two different formats. First, you’ll transform it into an engaging conference length presentation (12-15 minutes) with an accompanying handout. Second, you’ll transform it into a more “viral” length project of 3-6 minutes. 

Technologies:

• PowerPoint / MovieMaker or iMovie / Haiku Deck
• Digital Video
• Photoshop
• InDesign (?) [depending on Project 3, desire for handout sophistication]

Objectives:

• Visual Rhetoric
• Rhetoric
• Image editing
• Image generation [requirement: one “slick” chart, graph, table, or illustration]
• Document Design [depending on how much InDesign demand their is]

Project 3: TBD

The third project will likely grow out of your expectations for the course. I have a number of possibilities.

First, we could do an interview project. I believe there is a lot of value in learning how to conduct, shoot, edit, and present an interview. 

Second, we could do a promotional project, developing materials for a particular event (perhaps connected to the Patel College?). Or we could put together materials that explain what/who the Patel college is/are. Of course, this could include doing interviews. 

Third, we could do something similar to the project initiated by the San Francisco School of Medicine; 4th year medical students there are contributing their expertise to Wikipedia. We could not only dedicate expertise to improving articles, but also create some kind of video/website/presentation that documents those contributions. It might make for an interesting “viral” possibility. 

Fourth, we could work on creating an infographic. This kind of project would get us more familiar with “high end” document design–in other words, InDesign. 

Fifth, and also on the InDesign front, we could design a high end whitepaper. This would involve transforming some existing data into something slick. 

Sixth, we could pay more attention to video and produce a documentary on a particular issue. 

Any of these projects could be scaled to be individual projects, team projects, or even an entire class project. In the past I have done “competitive” projects (a la reality programs like Project Runway) to see which team can create the best representation for a single thing. 

It is hard to list the “objectives” and “technologies,” since I think each option suggests its own array of possibility. I am hoping we can have some discussion about which of these works the best for you. 

Project 4: Web Presence

This project will begin from the first day of the course and run concurrent through the entire semester. The idea here is to cultivate an online presence using traditional web (yeah, that’s a thing now) and social media. 

In terms of traditional web media, I would have you create a website using the social media platform SquareSpace (note: I am not opposed to you using other platforms, but I recommend paying a little money for a quality site with prompt customer service). Squarespace costs $50 a year, plus there is an additional cost of about $10 a year for registering your domain name (e.g., www.yourname.com). This will involve generating a CV, writing an “about” page, generating a headshot (the “about” and headshot are good to have for grant opportunities etc). The SquareSpace site will also highlight a kind of portfolio of research. 

We’ll link that portfolio to/through a few other sites like academia.edu. But that’s just the start of the social media push. We’ll create / update Linked.in accounts. And, of course, we’ll spend some time with Twitter (if you are an intellectual professional today, then twitter is increasingly unavoidable). 

Materials and Costs

• Squarespace and domain name: $60
• Presentation Zen Design
• Photo Device
• Video Device (?) / Tripod for iPhone (about $20)

Of course, I can assuage these costs depending on how many people have access to video equipment.