Previous Blackboard Items
In Chronological Order, most recent at the bottom
 Welcome
to Composition 5230 for Fall 2002. This page will be the main posting
area for materials we use in class this semester. Items that appear here
will eventually be archived on the "previous Blackboard items"
page, which will be available from the link just below.
The URL for this page is
http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/comp5230/
The syllabus for the 5230 is now available
online. Please let me know if
you have any prelimary questions.
For a preview of the work you'll be doing, you might also take a look
at the Assignments page, particularly the
first project, the Personal Home Page.
As an example of a personal home page, take a look at Christian
Sandvig's page at the University of Illinois at at Urbana-Champaign.
In what ways does it
- speak to multiple audiences simultaeously in both the words and images?
- convey not only information but a sense of texture (the texture of
life, of work, or experience)?
- uses images as a site-wide system, rather than just local decoration
or illustration?
In our discussion of Jakob Nielsen, we'll look at the followinig:
- his phrase "shovelware" on 119
- the Queen's Speech on 153
- the "better than reality line" on 157. See my Four
Views of Duluth page.
Journal Entry #1: Look over the readings we did in Nielsen for
today: Chapter 1 (8-14), Chapter 4 (162-224, 259-60).
In your journal, label the first page "Journal Entry #1 (9/5/02)",
and write a brief paragraph about each of the following:
- a point, example, technique or principle that you found useful, surprising,
or interesting
- a point, example, technique or principle that you didn't understand,
weren't sure of, or disagreed with.
Today we'll create a new folder in our "www" folder on
our disks. This new folder should be called "exercises"
and should contain, like the others, a folder called "assets."
Then, place your Web banner page in "exercises" and put the
image file of the banner in "assets." Open up the page in Dreamweaver
and re-place the image on the page.
See the directions for
- Setting up a Local Site on Towers pg. 25
- Setting up Remote Info on Towers pg. 551. See my File
Transfer page for directions on filling out the Remote Info window.
Layers of Content: Compare how, and how well, the following sites
present an effective "first layer of content" on their main
("index") pages. Do any of these pages give us a first layer
that's too thick? too thin? too vague or too specific?
Introducing the Analytical Essay assignment
due December 17.
Journal Entry #2: On a new page in your journal, create a "cluster"
around the idea of "me." As a starter, think of places you identify
with, events or public moments you've been a part of, activities and hobbies,
groups you belong to, TV/music/movies you're into, Web sites you visit,
etc. Don't be limited by these suggestions, though, since in a cluster
you're supposed to free associate on paper. (9/10)
You'll find the blackboard items from the first day of class archived
on the "Previous Blackboard" page at the link below:
Today, we'll be discussing chapters from Jakob Nielsen's book, as well
as the ideas
- public / personal / private, and
- logos, ethos, pathos
Journal Entry #3. : Look at the three questions in the Analytical
Essay assignment, and then look at what Heim is saying about the dangers
and drawbacks of being in cyberspace on pages 81-84. In a paragraph, try
to put into your own words what Heim is saying about issues raised by
one of the three questions. As a user of the Web and now a designer of
Web pages, what do you think of Heim's position?
Today, we'll be discussing chapters from Jakob Nielsen's book, as well
as the ideas of
- public / personal / private (9/10)
In his essay "Self Reliance," Emerson said,
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart, is true for all men,--that is genius."
Here's a high resolution picture
you can download and use for your Web banner exercise.
We'll be doing "Journal Entry #4" electronically using
the "Discussion" link on the left of this page. Once you get
into our class's folder, choose the discussion "Journal Entry #3"
and do the following:
Choose an interesting and characteristic passage from Nielsen's chapter
on "Content Design" and Turkle's essay "Who Am We?"
Both these writers are concerned with "digitality" and with
people who are using the digital realm. In a paragraph, use their passages
to examine their very different approaches, assumptions and concerns.
After you've posted your paragraph, read over some of the other entries
and then reply to one of them (or two someone else's reply to an entry).
This entry and response is due by next Tuesday at class time.
In working on your Web pages today, try focusing on Chapter 3 in
Towers, pages 47-65.
Don't Do This: There are many examples, like this
one, on the Web of pages that follow the totem-pole model of
page design: centered, vertical, one-thing-at-a-time.
Instead, use
- enough verbal and pictorial content to fill out the page horizontally
- don't center everything (note the jagged profile that centering gives
to the content--the design shows no clean lines)
- invisible layout tables to pour content into to create a more horizontal
layout (note here the column on the left for navigational links. See Towers
page 272
When you need to do online work outside of class time, you have access
to all our classroom software in any of the full-service labs on
campus. See ITSS's schedule
of operating hours and class reservations for locations and times.
Today, we'll begin
working on the Web site version of the New Media Writing Project. See
the assignment page again for some goals in
making this Web site. 10/8
We are adjusting our
schedule by moving the deadline of the New
Media Writing essay to October 8. 10/8
Journal Entry #6
(online) On page 112 of Trend, Brenda Laurel writes, "...the representation
lives between imagination and reality, serving as a conductor, amplifer,
clarifier, and motivator. It seems to me that computer-based representations
fundamentally work in the same way...."
Look elsewhere in Lauren's essay for passages, phrases and ideas that
echo, illuminate or help explain this quotation and what she's saying
overall. Post one or two of these other quotations (with their page numbers)
to the discussion
board in the discussion "Journal #6 Lauren." Add a sentence
or two of your own to say how your quotation extends or explains my quotation
above (for instance, does your quotation help us understand what she means
by the word "imagination" or "representation"?)
Read over the postings from your classmates as they appear (keep hitting
"refresh").
Let's look again at
a sample Web site, Christian
Sandvig's page at the University of Illinois at at Urbana-Champaign.
In what ways is it a "performance" as well as a logically arranged
site of information?
Here's how we'll "turn
in" the various elements of the Personal
Home Page Project:
By Sunday, September 29 at 6:00 p.m....
1. post the site to your "www" folder. You can do
this from a lab at UMD using
2. post a message to the Discussion
Board, in the discussion "Personal Home Page URLs" with
the complete URL (including the http://...). Be sure to check the URL
from a computer other than the one you created the site on.
On Tuesday, 10/1, bring to class...
1. your self commentary
2. a print out of your Personal Home Page (black and white is
fine)
Journal Entry #5
(online). In the Discussion
Board, write a brief passage about each of the following:
1. Of everything we've done in (or for) class so far, what helped you
the most to prepare you to work on and--we hope--successfully finish the
Personal Home Page Project? Also, what did you find most interesting or
surprising?
2. What do you need to understand or be able to do at this point to finish
the project? (Be as specific as you can about the skills or understandings
you need.)
Thinking about your
choice of a client for the Client Project, which
we'll talk about today, consider a project for a UMD professor teaching
an undergraduate course. Such a project would make you eligible for the
Student Web Contest.
The due date for the Personal Home Page has
been delayed by one week to Sunday, September 29. See the September
schedule for details.
Today, we'll take a look at the next assignment, partly due on
10/3 and partly on 10/20: the New Media Writing
project.
As an example of how
one person's intellectual capital can add value to public information,
here's Josh Parsons' Flags
of the World site. Notice how much of the charm and bite of the site
results from the mingling of personal tastes and public. To set of sense
of the person behind this site, here's Josh
Parsons' Home Page.
On Thursday 10/10,
you will need to turn in the Guided
Reading Questions for the assigned essay in the Trend collection.
Answers to these questions will count as a quiz grade.
If you were not in class on Tuesday, please open this Word file and print
it out to complete it by Thursday. If you have trouble downloading or
opening this file, please e-mail me.
I neglected to pick
up the New Media Writing essays from you Tuesday morning in class. I will
pick these up instead on Thursday so please bring them along. If you would
like to continue to revise and develop these essays between now and Thursday,
I'll never know the difference (and will appreciate the effort if you
want to tell me!).
Journal Entry #8
(online
in discussion board)
From the perspective of 2002, it's easy to say that Howard Rheingold,
writing in 1993, is being too optimistic about the emancipatory prospects
of the Internet. Instead, in this discussion below,
1. type in two short quotations from Rheingold (with page numbers
indicated): one quotation where he's being too broadly optimistic in your
opinion, another quotation where you think he got it right.
2. Then, in a paragraph of your own, think through the differences
between these quotations. How do you account for the difference? Is he
looking at different aspects of the Internet in the two different quotations,
or applying different expectations? Given your experience with Web sites,
e-mail, listservs, online chat, etc., what do you think causes Rheingold
overstate the case on the one hand, and essentially to predict the future
in the other?
3. Finally, read over your classmates' postings and choose one to reply
to
Today and Sunday
Today, we'll work on our New Media Writing
Projects, which are due to be posted to the Web by Sunday at 6 p.m.
(Since this is an electronic submission, you can continue to update these
pages after Sunday at 6 p.m., though you'll never know exactly when I'll
be considering them in detail. You should have a functioning site up,
though, by the Sunday deadline. As they say in the tech industry, "Better
80% on time, than 100% late.")
When you post the project to your "www" folder, also send a
message to the discussion called "URLs
of New Media Projects" in the discussion board with the complete
URL of your site (including the "http://...).
Commentary and
Printout
On Tuesday, October 22, the Self Commentary
and printout of the site are due to be turned in at the beginning of class.
Anything not turned in at 9:05 a.m. on Tuesday will be counted late.
Preparing
for a "Visiting Day" Workshop on Tuesday
Before class time, prepare written responses and suggestions for the projects
done by any six of your classmates based on the criteria explained
in the original assignment as well as techniques
from Nielsen and ideas we discussed in class and conferences. Each response
should be on a separate page so you can give it to the site's creator
on Tuesday in class. Be sure your name appears on each of your responses.
Reading Assignment
Cancelled
Also note on the schedule that the reading assignment for October 22 has
been cancelled.
Attendance Policies
Clarified
A couple of clarifications of the attendance and participation policies.
Since apparently I didn't make these expectations clear enough, I
will not count instances of tardiness or early departures before today.
The syllabus says:
- In addition to your budget of allowed absences, you also have three
instances of arriving late or leaving early (with or without an excuse)
to spend if you wish. Instances in excess of three will decrease your
overall grade by a percentage point each. If you do need to leave early,
please do me the courtesy of mentioning it before class begins.
- All assignments are due at the time specified in the assignment/schedule
or, when due in class, at the time I ask for them (usually at the beginning).
10/22/02
We'll also have our
first Visiting Day Workshop of the New
Media Writing Web pages. Here's how it works:
At 10:25, we'll divide the class into two teams.
1. The first team will bring up their Web sites on their
computers and stay put. The second team will gather their six written
responses to their classmates' Web sites and find one who is sitting down
to visit with.
During each visit, the visitor will give the host his or her written
response to keep, and then both visitor and host will have a conversation
about the host's site. Visitors, you can talk about your own site and
experience with this project as part of the conversation, but keep the
focus on the host's work. Try to give constructive feedback on the conception
of the site, your reactions to and understanding of it, as well as how
the site is constructed and presented.
2. After eight minutes, Team Two members (visiting) will move
on to visit another member of Team One (hosting).
3. After another eight minutes, Team Two members (visiting) will
move on to visit a third member of Team One (hosting).
4. Then, we'll switch roles: Team Two members will sit down, bring
up their Web sites on their computers and play host to Team One members.
We'll then do three rounds of eight-minute meetings.
Here's our high resolution picture
of the lighthouse again for use in our demonstration of "Intermediate
Banner Techniques"
Today, we'll look at the Glocalization Project
examples, and critique them both as examples of Web-site design that,
in Mark Poster's words, connect "glocal connectivity with local specificity."
Here's a map of Duluth's lake front
to use in our map-making demo. You can get your own maps from lots of
sources on the Web, including mapquest.com.
As an alternative way of seeing our plan for the rest of the semester,
take a look at the Graphical Schedule.
Sixty percent of the problems beginning students experience with "Web
design" are really just basic issues of organizing and naming files
and folders. HTML and Web servers are just very unforgiving about these
things! So, here are some rules to set you free.
Today, we'll be thinking more about screen real estate and trying
out several techniques for making our pages both more concise, attractive
and usable. Among the skills we'll learn is making image maps (or what
Dreamweaver calls inserting "Hotspots" onto your images), which
is mysteriously missing from the Towers book. Here's the banner
we were working on previously. Download this image with your browser (right-click,
then choose "Save Image As," and then open it with Photoshop.
Journal
Entry #9 (online). Screen Real Estate
Find a Web page to critique in terms of its use of screen real estate:
both what it does well and what might be improved. Post the complete URL
to the discussion Screen
Real Estate on the discussion board. In your message, you should also
comment on at least 5 aspects of screen real estate using the headings
from our handout.
We'll learn about making image maps (or what Dreamweaver calls inserting
"Hotspots" onto your images), which is mysteriously missing
from the Towers book. Here's the banner
we were working on previously. Download this image with your browser (right-click,
then choose "Save Image As," and then open it with Photoshop.
Journal Entry #10 (online). In a short paragraph posted to the
discussion "Your
local place and global audience," describe the local place you've
chosen for the "Glocalization" project and the interest it holds
for a global audience who will never physically visit.
If you're interested in more things your forms can do, visit the page
CGI
scripts for Web Forms at UMD.
Here's how we'll "turn
in" the various elements of the Gocalization
Project:
By Sunday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m....
- post the site to a folder in your "www" folder on
the server.
- post a message to the Discussion Board, in the discussion Glocalization
URLs" with the complete URL (including the http://...).
Be sure to check the URL from a computer other than the one you
created the site on. Also, make sure your first and last names
appear in the message (you'll see why below...).
Between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning at
10:00...
- Go to the discussion "Glocalization
URLs"
- If your last name begins A-H, visit the Glocalization sites
of everyone whose last names begin with K-Z
- If your last name begain K-Z, visit the Glocalization sites
of everyone whose last names begin with A-H
- With the original assignment in mind,
prepare an informal, written response/suggestion page for each of the
sites you visit. Put each written response of a separate sheet of paper
so you can leave each response with the site's creator.
On Tuesday, 11/19,
- Come to class ready to discuss the sites you visited (see above) with
the creators and to leave your written response with each one
Today, before you work on your Client Projects in class, we'll learn a
little bit about Javascript in Dreamweaver. Visit the Javascript
Demo and follow the directions.
To review the schedule, after Thanksgiving:
- You'll have Tuesday and Thursday (Dec. 3 and 5)
to complete the BETA version of the Client Project.
- You'll bring in copies of your Client Project Proposals for everyone
in the class on Thursday, Dec. 5
- The BETA version of the Client Project should be posted to the Web
by Sunday, December 8 at 6 p.m.
If you haven't completed your Dialectical Paragraph Exercise from as class
meeting, please do so at the discussion "Dialectical
Paragraphs (Journal Entry #10)". Since this is an especially
important skill, I'll be giving extra weight to this particular journal
entry.
12/5/02
If you were
absent on Thursday, December 5,
you'll need to collect copies of the Client Project Proposals to participate
in the workshopping next week (see full explanation below). I'll put your
copies in the bin on the front of my office door in Humanities 420 (my
office is 424 inside the 420 suite). Take one of each and follow the directions
below.
You'll also need to leave the 9 copies of your own proposal in
the bin so that you're classmates will be able to give you feedback on
your project.
Next Week
We'll be having a class-wide workshop of our Client Projects in
class on Tuesday and Thursday of next week according to the schedule below.
Please number the proposals you receive today with the following numbers:
Tuesday, December 10
1. Kristin Braam
2. Andi Dickson
3.Trent Hanson
4. Sarah Harrington
5. Katherine Hengel
Thursday, December 12
6. Bjorn Krause
7. Breanne Massee
8. Adam Sayler
9. Stephen Sobiech
10. Blaine Thompson
Here is the timetable
for events between now and next Tuesday:
- By Sunday, December 8 at 6 p.m., post a working ("BETA")
version of your Client Project Web
site to the Web . Check the site with your browser to make sure everything
is functioning.
- By 6 p.m. on Sunday, send the complete URL to the discussion
board in "Client
Project URLs"
- Between Sunday at 6:00 and class on Tuesday, write a written
response to each of the sites for Tuesday in the schedule above (1-5).
Write your response on the Client Project Proposal you received in class
on Thursday, December 5. The response should focus not only on issues
of design, but on writing, strategy, conceptualization, etc. Respond
both as a fellow designer and as a would-be visitor to the site. You
can make comments in the margins to particular passages in the proposal,
but be sure to sum up your impressions and suggestions in a paragraph
on the bottom or back. Sign your response.
- Between Tuesday's and Thursday's classes, write written responses
to projects 6-10 on the schedule above.
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