This is the blog for Professor Parent's Fall 2005 seminar on Digital Composing. This site will contain material related to the course and discussion of course topics.

Final Assignments Posted

The last assignments of the semester -- the Narrative Web Dream Project (Described) and the Final Blog Analysis Tally -- are now posted under the Assignments tab.

"But what are the Narrative Web Dream Project (Described) and the Final Blog Analysis Tally?" you ask...

Click through and find out!

Guidelines Posted for the Revisions and Analyses

I've posted guidelines for your Visual/Verbal and PowerPoint revisions and analyses under the Assignments tab.

As always, if you've got questions, I've got answers. E-mail me, IM me, or drop by my office.

Revised Schedule is Up

The revised schedule is up. Click on the Schedule tab, and then follow the link.

Long story short: nothing due this week except reading Justin Hall's Autobio and Gavin Inglis' Same Day Test, and thinking about your Narrative Web.

You Are Not Alone

In the blogosphere, that is.

Via Cathy Resmer and her 802 Online meta-blog comes word of a new-ish UVM student group blog (one that has nothing -- I swear -- to do with any of my classes!).

I give you: UVM BARF! As the BARFers note: "Tired of the high price and low quality of food at UVM? Join UVM BARF: the Blog About Residential Food. We think the food here sucks and we want to do something about it!"

And they really do seem to be moving toward a model of community and campus activism -- good for them!

Link to BARF, talk them up on your own blogs -- they just might return the favor. And you'd be doing your part to make the dining sitch at UVM a little less BARFy.

Jamie Kane

I've started a new thread of posts on my personal blog about the BBC's Jamie Kane game (which you should have started before class on Tuesday).

So far I've just posted a brief description and my initial thoughts. I'll update it as we move farther into the story, and as I get your reactions. Feel free to comment over at Digital Digressions on any thoughts you might have about the Kane game.

On Torture

A cartoon from The New Yorker, sent to me by a student:

Priceless.

Blog Midterm Analysis Assignment Posted

The detailed assignment sheet for the Blog Log & Reflection-in-Progress (due October 20th) has been posted to the Assignments tab.

Check it out, and as always, if you have questions, come and talk to me or zing me an e-mail or IM.

PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

Post your best tips & tricks for using PowerPoint here.

Panel Discussion: Coming Out as a Scholar

Anyone who is going to be in Burlington from 1:30-3pm on Wednesday the 12th of October is invited to come to a panel discussion moderated by yours truly.

As part of UVM's celebration of National Coming Out Week, "Coming Out as a Scholar" will bring together lesbian, gay, and straight academics researching diverse topics such as queerness in Native American populations, the history of gender and sexuality in the British Empire, LGBTQA issues in nursing, and the ways queerness is "played" or hidden in online communities, to discuss possibilities, pitfalls, and what it's like either being out on campus or studying "out topics."

The panel will include:

Paul Deslandes, Assistant Professor of History
Brian Gilley, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Cheryl Laskowski, Assistant Professor of Nursing

and the discussion will be moderated by Richard Parent, Assistant Professor of English.

Coming Out as a Scholar
1:30-3pm, Wednesday, Oct. 12th
North Lounge of the Billings Student Center, UVM

For more information, feel free to zing me an e-mail at REParent (at) uvm (dot) edu.

I hope to see you there!

(x-posted on Digital Digressions and 340)

New Visual/Verbal Post

There's a new post over at Digital Digressions that both discusses Guinness beer and talks about the Visual/Verbal assignment and ways of thinking about visual & verbal interactions.

Check it out.

Draft Visual/Verbal Projects

Here are some draft Visual/Verbal Projects for us to look at and discuss:

A project in PowerPoint.

A very large image file.

A series of Word documents. First. Second. Third. Fourth.

An image file.

A Word file.

An image file.

An image file.

A PP-type slide

A Logo is Worth... About 75 Bucks

Just in time for our work on Visual / Verbal projects, Wired Magazine created a fake company and hired six low-cost logo designers to give image to their name.

Wired told the designers that the name of the company is "GenVoyant," a "genetic-testing service that can see into your medical future" with the corporate slogan, "Know. Choose. Thrive."

Here is the first of the six attempts:

The other 5 are below. What do you think of these? How do they communicate (or fail to communicate) GenVoyant's purpose and services? Bonus points for anyone who can be as dead-on snarky as Wired.

Continue reading "A Logo is Worth... About 75 Bucks"

V / V Drafts

View image

The MU Freshman iLife Challenge

The University of Missouri School of Journalism (and Corporate Sponsor Apple) is launching their second annual Freshman iLife Challenge.

In a nutshell, the iLife Challenge asks incoming first-year students to produce 5-minute films about life at MU using Apple's iLife software suite. Films should conform to one of the following 5 categories: Advertising; Arts and Culture; MU Life; News; or Sports.

What do you think about this? Would you enter it? What problems do you think you would have with it?

Visual / Verbal Project Proposal Posted

I have posted the assignment for the Visual / Verbal Project under the Assignments tab.

Check it out. And, as always, if you have questions, just let me know.

Blog Tradition - TLAPD

Listen smartly, ye lubbers. This be yer captain.

Check out me personal blog fer important news o' the highest o' high holy blog days --

TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY.

It be today, September 19th.

That'll be all. Now get back t' swabbin the decks!

ARR!!!

Section F -- Workshop for Thursday's Class

Same deal, pretty much, for you guys.

Check out SCIncident's post "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" and K-Theory's post, "Lost Weekend."

In addition, however, I want you to look at SCIncident's other post, "Round One," and K-Theory's blog's appearance Free Heady.

Those are the two bloggers we'll be looking at in class, so you need to be familiar with their work before class begins.

Things to think about:

• What works well in each post?
  
• What's not working so well?
  
• What do you make of "Round One"? Do you want to see more? Why/why not?
  
• What are your feelings about the look/style of Free Heady? Why?
  

Section G -- Workshop for Thursday's Class

Check out Interface Dominatrix's post "M4d Sk1llz" and TallH's post, "Coldplay: The Concert: The Concept."

Those are the two posts we'll be looking at in class, so you need to be familiar with them (they're both kinda lengthy) before class begins.

Things to think about:

• What works well in each post?
• What's not working so well?
• Both involve reportage of some sort. How to make this engaging and not... dull?

When you can't do anything else... blog.

Tulane is a well-respected university in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Well, it was a well-respected university. Now, driven from its city by the flooding of hurricane Katrina, and with students, faculty, staff, and administration forbidden to return, the university has been reduced to...

a blog.

The blog structure (easily updated, arranged chronologically, most recent info at the top) is an ideal format with which to communicate with the extensive Tulane community in exile around the country.

Interestingly, there are no comments enabled on the site. I wonder how long it will be until someone starts a Tulane discussion blog?

Reading back through the posts at the blog, it's surreal seeing how the university sought to take practical, reasonable steps to safeguard its people and facilities, and how those steps (and the projected timetable for resuming classes and reopening campus) were so far off the mark.

[Cross-posted to 340 and Digital Digressions]

UPDATE: Here's a link to a LiveJournal site detailing the devastation from the inside. This is worse than most floods. In most floods, the water rises, life gets really, really bad, people die, and then the water goes away. The Interdictor blog really brings home the bowl-like state of New Orleans -- there's no where for the water to go. It's there. It's gonna stay there. The only way to get it out is to pump all gazillion gallons of it away. Check it out.

Words and Images

We're not going to focus on words & images for a few weeks, but this has been bouncing around the blogs and is really interesting.

Two captions to photos of people chest-deep in water in New Orleans:

1)[X walk/walks] through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin) (emphasis added)

2) [X wade/wades] through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen) (emphasis added)

Continue reading to compare these captions with the 2 photos they "describe."

Continue reading "Words and Images"

Readings for September 1st

Here are the links to the readings we'll be discussing on September 1st:

• Anton Zuicker – Blogging 101

• Pew Internet & American Life Project – The State of Blogging, January 2005
  
  
• Pew Internet & American Life Project – Content Creation Online
  
  
• Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide – “The Brain of the Blogger”

• Eszter Hargittai - “Privacy in the Age of Blogging”
  

UPDATE: It appears that Anton Zuiker's "Blogging 101" is having server problems. Hopefully the site will be back up before class on Thursday.

What is a Blog?

For today's class, we're going to talk about blogs -- what they are, where they came from, and where they seem to be going.

To that end, we'll check out Jill Walker's excellent definition of "blog" for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.

For further reference, check out the "Very Limited Blogroll" under the Resources tab.

Welcome

Welcome to the course blog for English 095: Digital Composing, at the University of Vermont.

This class looks at and experiments with the ways that computers and the internet affect the ways we read and write, what we read and write, and how we read and write.

This blog will be the central hub for information, questions, and random thoughts arising from both sections of English 95 that I will be teaching this semester. So, if you're in 095-F and see comments or posts by people you don't recognize -- they're in the other section, 095-G. And vice versa. I'm doing this to increase the size of the Digital Composing community of thinkers and composers, so that our dialogues can have a wider range of input and discussion.

Again, welcome to what promises to be an exciting semester!