This is a tentative schedule by week for readings, assignments, and activities.
Tentative means I can vary it as much as seems appropriate. Many of the writing
exercises will emerge out of where we are as a class at the time, so the syllabus
will be in regular revision. I will post all additions to the syllabus on this
web page. The updated web version will always override the initial
printable PDF version.
Write an introductory post on your blog. Focus on your academic work--your major,
the type of work you do, the sub-specialty you are in, what you hope to get out of
this class, etc.--and then expand this to the kind of work you already do or want to
do outside of school. Begin thinking about the professional field you want to go
into, the audience of people in that field, and what kind of public persona or
identity you want to build on the web in relation to that audience. Alternatively,
you could focus on your individual creative work or your participation in fan
culture. But start now thinking about purpose, identity, and audience.
Post your entry by pasting it into "source" and adding some basic html codes.
An ongoing assignment throughout the semester will be to build a glossary of
terms on your blog. I'll start certain class periods by putting key terms from the
readings for that day on board or posting them on the syllabus. You'll pick one term,
go to the index or glossary in the book, and/or skim the article or chapter, and expand
on the term. Some terms won't be detailed in the book, so you'll want to go to the
web to see if you can flesh them out.
An entry should be approximately 150-250 words and include 1) brief explanation, 2) at least one concrete/clear
example, and 3) at least one link, image, video, etc. (links could be internal to the text or in a bulleted list at the
end, depending on content/purpose).
Terms: digital futures, digital work, technological utopianism, ideology (of technology), technological
determinism, post-national culture, history of the web, bias of communication, oral culture, time-based societies,
space-based culture, web as space, web as time, medium (is the message/massage), global village, video,
globalization, collective consciousness, cyborg.
People: Tim Burners-Lee, H. A. Innis, Marshal McLuhan, Donna Haraway.
R Jan 29 – before class, read
chapter(s)/article(s) below; in class, writing exercise and discuss readings
Reading:
Ch. 2 Web Theory, "Information and Networks"
Ch. 3 Web Theory, "Networks to Loose Web" (57-60)
Writing:
Check out EPIC 2014. Respond
to it on your blog by bringing in concepts, ideas, or arguments from Web Theory.
"EPIC" was originally done earlier in this decade. How are its predictions being
played out--are they coming to pass or a bit hyperbolic? Give some specifics for each.
Terms: information, network, network society, web culture, convergence, cyber, cybernetics, desktop
metaphor, dialectic of constraint/innovation, feedback loop, digitalization, postmodern public sphere, knowledge,
identity, dynamic archive, globalization, web and space, web and time, interpersonal networking, broadcast
networks, audience (mass/loose), new media (multimedia), intercreativity (interactivity),
loose web (weak ties)
People: Norbert Wiener, Gregory Bateson, Manuel Castells, Tim Burners-Lee
Check out Potrait
Illustration Maker if you are interested in creating an avatar for your blog
identity. Or, find another image that fits your intended purpose and audience.
R Feb 5 – before class, read chapter(s)/article(s) below; in class,
writing exercise and discuss readings
Terms: public-private, genre analysis, kairos, cultural context (for blogging), decorum, democratization of
celebrity, mediated voyeurism, mediated exhibitionism, culture of simulation, blog as genre (content, form, action),
blog as medium, blog classification, immediacy, intrinsic/extrinsic, purpose, nano-audience/micro-audience,
ancestral genre, commonplace book, exigence
People: Carolyn Miller, Andrew Sullivan, Kenneth Burke, Aristotle, Michel Foucault
Skim through the other student blogs and find entries that
are related to some of yours. Copy the urls for those specific entires and go back
to edit your entries to include links back to theirs. Then find 4-5 of your own blog
entries that are related and interlink them as well.
Terms: deixis, social software, expert systems, intelligent systems, ethos, centripetal/centrifugal,
academic research/writing, deictic systems, social neworks/networking, network studies, small world networks,
clustering/connectivity, classroom as network, blog roll // information management,
blogger effect, limits of time, connection machine
People: Carolyn Miller, Duncan Watts, Steven Johnson
Work on the remaining design issues to clean up your blog.
Skim the student blog list from the links page and find 4-5 class blogs that are
related to yours in identity, purpose, or audience. Link them to your blog. Then surf the web
to find blogs related to yours, maybe from the same profession or discipline, and link them from
your blog.
Discuss RSS. Consider setting up a Bloglines account
and aggregating RSS feeds through their web site, or adding the
IE7 plug-in
to your browser, or check out this
Firefox option.
Terms: blogging as filter, blogging as research, "hybrid" purposes,
blogging as thinking (invention), blogging as (online) ethnography, technological
"determinism/affordances", private-public, public sphere, refeudalization, blog as salon,
links/linking, links as context (loci amoeni), academic audience(s), documenting thought,
weblog clusters, cultural capital, trail blazers, polylogues, spontaneous writing,
writing-reading, blog as archive, topoi, memes, networks/clusters (as audience)
People: Jill Walker, Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Henry Jenkins,
Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, Roland Barthes
Revise intro: Once you've figured out your identity-purpose-audience situation, go back and
revise your original blog entry to reflect this focus. Explain your primary, secondary,
and tertiary identity-purpose-audiences and how these are reflected in your design and
tagging. It should be linked from your "about me" description that shows up under your avatar.
Tiddy up your tags. Go back through all of your entries so far and think about
your tags and how they speak to your various audiences. Make sure the terms you use
will connect with them. Add or revise tags for each entry as needed.
Terms: ethos, taste, source credibility, work/text, field, generic model
of web credibility, field-dependent model of web credibility (four components),
distributed credibility
People: Aristotle, George Kennedy, Hugh Blair, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes,
Stephen Toulmin
Write a design critique of a web site of your choice based on the design principles in WSG chapter 4.
Post it to your blog. There will be some class time to do this but getting started outside of class isn't a bad idea.
We'll take a few minutes toward the end of class to look over a couple of examples as a group.
With a piece of paper and a pencil, draw out a page grid for your site's main template. (See the
Yale example.)
Identify what types of content would go in each section, what tables should be flexible or fixed, and what elements
should be grouped together in terms of hierarchy, proximity, contrast, and/or consistency. Follow basic "document
order" (site identity, navigation, primary content, related content, footer information) and consider things like line and
page length as well. Then open up Dreamweaver and attempt to find a default layout that might work as a starting
point for your design, or try to draw out your design to create the table code.
Spend some time hacking around on Dreamweaver if you haven't used it much before
and think you might want to use it for your site. You can download a 30-day trial
from Adobe's web site. (Your web site
will be due around March 31st, so you should have enough time to use DW for the project
if you choose.)
Get a head start on reading the WSG chapters for when we return (see below).
Since I didn't see too many site spec docs on the
blogs, go ahead and write up a more formal one over break. Break it into
the category headers and give me a fairly full paragraph for each header. It will
probably run you about 1-2 pages singled-spaced. It won't be due until
the Thursday after we get back, but it won't hurt to get a head start.
Don't forget that blogging still counts toward your final participation grade.
There will be less blogging "assignments" in class, but continue to blog around
your identity-purpose.
In class, draw a site map
of your website. You'll probably be using a "category" organization (though time, location,
alphabetic, or continuum could be used in special cases) and developing an "identity"
site (rather than navigational, novelty, organizational, services, flashy, or tool based site) but
a flashy purpose might serve a creative identity or tool might serve a techy identity.
You'll also probably be using a "hierarchical structure" (but a sequence structure
would work for a tutorial if you are going for a techy identity or a web-linked or associative
structure might work for a creative identity).
For your map, include folders and files, the exact names for each, the content that will go on
each page (chunked logically), and arrows showing linked relationships.
Then each person will give a brief presentation of
the draft and the class will provide initial feedback. We'll use this as a chance to go over
some of the design principles we've been reading about. If you have a tech question,
you can pose it at this time to the class.
Take this feedback and produce a full draft of your site by next Tuesday.
Write down some basic goals for going to the English department
website: think
about inforamtion you might need to find there, maybe 2-3 pieces of info.
Go to the department site and try to find them. Write down the steps in the
process you go through to find each piece of info and note the issues or problems you
encounter trying to find that info.
Write a brief summary paragraph of redesign suggestions for the English department
site based on your experience.
In groups of 3, check out this photoshop tutorial
and find an ad on the web (commercial or political) and remake it ala adbusters.
This can be done by erasing and changing text, deleting/substituting images, or
juxtaposing images. At the end of class, briefly present what your group came up with to the class.
(persuasion/identification)
I'll put you in groups based on the four Dada
Arrangements from Dillion. Skim the above links and/or do some Google image searches
to find an example of your form. Then find a series of images on a particular celebrity, politician,
event, year, product, ad campaign, or theme and build a collage in photoshop following that form.
Following dada, include words as well as images if applicable.
At the end of class each group will present their found and made examples to discuss how they work. (juxtaposition)
Check out Cheer Accident again across the issues of theme and juxtaposition.
In groups or individually, use the materials I give you in class to put together a quick video.
At the end of class, show what you came up with.
Or, if you are already nimble enough with video, download some material to make a video
based on the popcycle
(career, family, entertainment, community). Use a montage style that juxtaposes these aspects of your self.
The video could include (pop cultural) images, quotes from "academic" sources,
and commentary from you that elaborates and makes connections among the material.
The goal is to give the impression of how these domains make up your identity.
(RHETORIC: associative)
(Also check out this simple iMovie tutorial if you have a Mac at home.)
Suggested Reading:
If you are thinking about doing a flash project instead of a video, you might check these out:
workshop projects/teacher conferences (I'll come around and ask what your project plans are, you can ask questions, or show me a draft--think of this as an informal proposal)
Week 1: Web Theory and Public Space -- Blogs
