Projects

Project One: Digital Literacy Narrative Due Wednesday, September 21, 11:59pm CT

Project Description

This project asks you to create some kind of digital story about how you became literate in using digital communication technologies. Included in the story somehow should be a second story of your experience teaching yourself the rudiments of some new digital communication practice that you will use to create and share your project. While the primary media you will write in should be text, you may enhance that with any other type of media you choose (image, audio, video).

You will first send a proposal email to the instructor with the new digital communication technology you intend to learn for creating your project, along with a rough idea of how you will construct your story. Keep in mind that common word processors (Word, Mac Pages, Google Docs) are not allowed in this class.

Then, as you draft your narrative, you will turn in two in-progress drafts; the drafts should be shared as Dropbox share links that post to Basecamp. Those are due on September 7 and September 14 (both Wednesdays). If you opt to learn something that is Web-available, you can send the link to the project wherever it's hosted, rather than a Dropbox share link.

Deliverables & Milestones

  1. Proposal email to instructor (by Wednesday, August 31)
  2. Draft No. 1 in a Basecamp post pointing to a Dropbox link (due Wednesday, September 7)
  3. Comment on three other students' drafts on Basecamp (due Tuesday, September 13)
  4. Draft No. 2 in a Basecamp post with a Dropbox link (due Wednesday, September 14)
  5. An email to the instructor (due Wednesday, September 21) that includes:
    • A Dropbox share link pointing to your final draft
    • A reflection memo, written in the body of the email, of about 8-10 sentences that talks about your experience working on this project, and your work in class so far

Project Two: Reflective Social Presence Due Wednesday, November 9, 11:59pm CT

Project Description

During the months of September (beginning the week of September 26) and October and into early November (until ~ November 8), you will blog or privately journal weekly about your activities on a primary social networking service (e.g., through social media like Twitter, social reading sites like Reddit). Additionally, you will join a new-to-you community or service and begin to establish a presence there as well.

The primary deliverable for this project is your blog/journal. You may write about anything you like regarding your digital presence: for example, the different rhetorical identities you notice yourself projecting on, say, Facebook versus Yik Yak; or perhaps a major local, national, or world news event and how it unfolds on Twitter. As we begin reading articles and book chapters about digital being & presence, you should compare your own experiences to the predictions, observations, and arguments in the materials we read for class.

You are welcome to blog/journal however you like, either via a public blog or some kind of electronic document that you keep on Dropbox or another service, to which you can share a link on Basecamp.

Deliverables & Milestones

  1. Proposal email to instructor with the two social networking services you plan to be present on; at least one of them should be brand-new to you (by Friday, September 23)
  2. Draft journal/posts to Basecamp near/by 10/5, 10/19, and 11/2 (Wednesdays, every other week)
  3. An in-class presentation of your project/experiences (Tuesday, November 1)
  4. Link to final journal/posts emailed to instructor. Include in the email an 8-10 sentence reflection memo about your experience with the project and your work in class to that point (Wednesday, November 9 11:59pm CT)

Project Three: Teach Your Teachers Due Wednesday, December 7, 11:59pm CT

Project Description

For this project, you will work in small teams to develop your own abilities to write and collaborate digitally on a project that teaches IIT faculty members how to assign and support students pursuing alternatives to "the paper" for course projects.

Specifically, you will create an oral presentation for a faculty audience in which you pitch an electronic assignment in lieu of a traditional paper. Given that your audience is IIT faculty, your assignment should be workable across different kinds of classes (and your presentation and handout should suggest possible alternatives/modifications accordingly).

Project Requirements

  • Collaborate in a team with one or two other students
  • Coordinate all collaboration electronically, using a free service (e.g., Google Drive, Basecamp) of your group’s choosing.
  • Develop an assignment that could work well across different courses, with minor modifications. It should include some kind of social media component.
  • Example of the completed assignment should be for a specific course (but not for Digital Writing)

Deliverables & Milestones

  1. Proposal memo (group-authored; due Wednesday, November 2)
  2. For your group presentation on November 29:
    • A 15-slide slide deck that supports a...
    • ...15-minute oral presentation, aimed at a faculty audience
    • A two-page handout detailing the electronic assignment you develop, aimed at a student audience (draft)
    • An example of the completed assignment (draft)
  3. Final deliverables due December 7:
    • Slide deck
    • Two-page handout
    • Example completed assignment
    • The archive of your collaborative activity (e.g., a separate Basecamp site you give the instructor access to)
    • A written evaluation of your group members (emailed privately to instructor)

Project Four: Electronic Tuesday Soundtracks Due Some Tuesday in the Semester; See Course Calendar

Project Description

You will be assigned a random Tuesday over the course of the semester to present a 10- to 15-track Spotify playlist. The tracks in your playlist should be both autobiographical somehow in that each track says something about you, but should also be connected to the course materials that week in some way. For each track, you will offer a max 140-character story explaining why you included the track in your playlist. Your entire story should include a visual design and visual elements (images, silent video) of some kind.

Project Requirements

  • A 10- to 15-track playlist created with only the music available on Spotify
  • A visually compelling story, including 140 characters of text for each track, available as a Dropbox share link or publicly available URL

Deliverables & Milestones

  1. A Dropbox share link or publicly available URL pointing to your playlist’s story and URL pointing to the Spotify playlist, due at the start of class the Tuesday you are assigned and posted in the Basecamp chat room
  2. A short presentation of your playlist, in the Basecamp chat room