During Week 8, I will be in San Francisco for CCCC (the big conference in my field). Since you guys have lots to do, I'd like to hold class anyway--providing necessary studio time and a good support network in Sylwester, Luca, and Angela (not to mention the rest of you smart folks!).
Here's what I want you to do before/during class that day:
1. Blog about our readings for Week 9 (MC's Griffin, Selfe, and Cooper). DUE 3/12
2. Blog about your plans for the final project. Use the questions on page 34 (MC) as guide. I'm talking about Figure 3.2. You'll have to adapt the tense to your future project rather than your ongoing one, but I think you can handle it! ;) DUE 3/12
3. If you've not yet shared your audio project with me (three of you haven't), ready that for me by burning it to a CD and/or sharing it via your blog. If you have questions/concerns about how, let me know. And/or take advantage of the CLiC space in the Library, where you can find Luca and Sylwester from 10-2 TWR each week. DUE 3/12
4. If you've not yet shared a video project (just a rough/short one is required at this point), ready that for me by uploading it to YouTube and/or Google Video and embedding it in your blog. If this is a draft of/portion of your final project for this class, you can identify it as that by adding "rough draft" or "incomplete" to the video description when you upload it to Google Video and/or YouTube and you can repeat that information in the blog posting itself. Email me when that's ready. DUE 3/12
5. If you've already shared a bit of audio and video with me, then you are all caught up. Save your new video project: the "video sentence."
Have you shared a "video sentence" or two yet? (see last week's assignment). If not, finish that up and share it today. DUE 3/12
If you have, then consider preparing a "video sentence" or two for your current project. If you captured video throughout the week for just that purpose, download it, label the parts of speech represented (noun, verb, adjective/adverb), and begin developing a new sentence or two.
Be great if you could ready these to share before we meet again after Spring Break (3/26)
Any questions or concerns? Let me know!
Posts
[from my email response to Cheryl]. . . Thanks for sending these along. A welcome break from this darn CCCC paper that I can't seem to get to writing/finishing. I did get a chance to view them and really enjoyed myself. I like them all, for different reasons.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks ago, Bump and I spoke about how fun we thought it'd be to include all of them. If you think that's appropriate, I think we'd welcome it. I'm not sure if Bump's had a chance to view these yet, but that was what he was suggesting before we'd seen 'em. I'd certainly welcome it.
If we go with just one (or two or three), my favorites are . .
a.l.wasowicz and Blue Suede Shoes
I also liked WetWyered, for different reasons. Well, I guess I liked them all for different reasons.
For what it's worth, here's my feedback.
devana's
Interesting choice conceptually, both timed at the one minute mark and providing some good action for "cooking" the call into something tasty ("success"!).
Change the word "papers" (in "Call for Papers") to "texts."
a.l.wasowicz (enjoyed this! though the text does peter out at the end before the message is complete.
This and the Blue Suede Shoes pieces are my favorites. Some of a.l.wasowicz's text is difficult to read, but I do love the "The Machine is Us/ing Us" feel! What a great way to represent multimodality. I'm not quite sure what to do with the image of the car/driver in development. Perhaps there is a way to unpack that image some more?
Also, some more care with the ways in which the text you WANT us to read is presented in relationship with the text that is less important. Might a shadowbox effect be possible? If not, perhaps additional time with the portion of the screenshot that you want us to read. Help the viewer know where you want him/her to look and when.
daharla
Catchy music, interesting effects. It does provide the message we want, with nice flashes of the "writer" working at his computer. The "proposal guidelines" provide too much text to read in the short time provided and I'm not quite sure what to do with the Teddy Bear (adorable, but . . . ?!)
jasondr
I like the juxtaposition between old ways of composing and new ways of composing, and digital projects exploring the actual literacy practices of students would be one possibility for students interested in sharing their work with us. But there are many other possibilities, so perhaps there is a way to get that idea in there too. We want subjects tightly related to new media, technology, and pedagogy. We also want students to share their new media work on other topics, coupled with a reflective piece explaining the moves they made and why. So if there is a way to open this video cfw up to these other types of submissions that'd be great.
WetWyered
The information is all there, which is great. Presented at a good pace so readers can follow it. And the idea of putting the call to this Star Wars ensemble is great fun. I can see why we would want the images to be a bit repetitive so the user can focus on the text. But the text is a pretty small for this focus, even so. Perhaps we can enlarge the text window and present it again that way? And the final note is a bit jarring. Perhaps there's something that can be done with that so it does seem it was just cut off at random (strategic cut would be better). And though I like the repetition of image/audio given the amount of text shared here (seems appropriate), I wonder if there might not be a way to integrate a little more action in that bottom half of the screen and/or with the audio track(s). Loved it when one of the characters clapped over his head. More of that sort of thing would be cool to see. Pushing more action up near the text so the reader doesn't feel she needs to look down to see some fun stuff but isn't left to believe that the only action worth viewing is the text itself.
Blue Suede Shoes
This is my favorite. The message is clear, presented at a good pace and in an inviting way. My only suggestions are that you slow it down a little in a couple of spots where the amount of text and the specific movement made it difficult for read to both reorient herself and read the text before we'd moved on to the next set of information.
Especially the "Does your work cover something else???" bit. Perhaps you can give that its own slide so the reader can take a minute to answer the question (in their heads, of course) before you tell them not to worry.
I love the opening image (Belushi, ala Animal House--a nice, iconic image of the college student, complete with the generic "college" on his sweat shirt). The next few images are a bit too stock for me. Perhaps other choices might offer the call more dimension? You might do a search via Creative Commons (click the Flickr tab) for film, video, writing, multimodal, students, audio, sound, images, and other such key terms. That might help push the envelop with respect to relevant images but still easily recognizable and fun (as you did with the Belushi choice).
I'm also not loving the "Join the party @ Kairos" line. As one of your viewers put it, "Is that a club?" Perhaps another line would be just as inviting but a little less confusing.
I do love the "You'll be famous" birdie. So delightfully Partridge Family! And well timed.
At the very end: They don't have to submit their masterpiece by October 2009. We just want to see a brief description of what they are planning to do, with the actual submission due a few months later.
Thanks for this great work! I'd love to see it included in the CFW!
--
Sorry for the shifting focus, Cheryl. Some seem to be address to the student, some to you. I should go back and clean it up but I better get back to my CCCC paper now. Fun is over (j/k--my project is fun, but I'm more interested in video right now and my panel ain't about that. Sigh.)
Best,
Shannon