Schedule
September
October
November
December
Graphical

Journal Entries

Jounal Entry #1: Look through our readings in Williams for this evening. Locate one point, example or principle that you find particularly useful, surprising, puzzling or interesting. Note the page number. Write a paragraph explaining and examining your response to the passage. How might you have used this idea or technique in things you've done before? How about in the future? 9/16

Journal Entry #2 (online) : In the Discussion Board, post a list of phrases, passages, examples, etc. (with their page numbers in parentheses!) which somehow echo the idea expressed in the following quotation from Chapter 1 of Levy.

“…to look at the way … [documents are] situated, or embedded, in a huge web of human practices and knowledge distributed through space and time” (18).

Doing this collectively will give us a list of snippets from Levy to begin elaborating and developing this one idea. Such development would be necessary in writing an analytical essay based on this quotation.

In your list, use Levy’s own words, within quotation marks, as much as possible. Notice I doctored the quotation so that it applies to all documents, not just the receipt. 9/23

Journal Entry #3 (online): "a technical debriefing, post 'Revision of Ad'"

In the discussion board, post a message to this discussion explaining any technical difficulties you had with creating or printing this assignment. If you overcame these difficulties, please explain how! If you had problems printing, be sure to say exactly where you were printing from, printing to and what you were printing that didn't come out (e.g., particular fonts, etc.)

Journal Entry #4. In your journal, make a cluster of ideas, examples, principles, etc. that you might introduce from your chosen university discipline in the Lakewalk University brochure. Use the books about your discipline which I asked you to bring in to generate ideas. Be sure you're getting into some depth, including terms and ideas that your audience won't already know or have thought of. Include concrete examples and analogies that the authors use, which might serve as models for what you could do with specific objects, sights and activities on the Lakewalk.

Journal Entry #5. To think some more about your "Personal History/Public Experience" essay (for the New Media Writing Project), try doing a "double-cluster" on a public experience and some aspect of your personal history that are somehow on the same circuit in your mind. Free associate around both starting points, looking for connecting ideas and associations. Then, post a paragraph to the discussion board describing your idea(s) at the moment, or your uncertainties if that's where you are.

Journal Entry #6: You are now about to move your New Media Writing Project from the print environment to the digital world, from paragraphs and sequential pages to chunks of text, images and links. (Consider the differences between diachronic and synchronic principles of organization for a longer view of this). Now, looking at your New Media Writing Project essay, try doing a cluster of its points, examples and ideas on a blank piece of paper. By doing this, you're mapping these elements non-sequentially and beginning to re-imagine the format of the project as a hypertext rather than a linear reading.

No Journal Entry #7

Journal Entry #8 (sent as e-mail message to me with subject line "5220 Journal 8")

Consider again the opening to the Analytical Essay assignment:

In his introduction to Scrolling Forward, David Levy writes, "I am less interested in persuading you that I am right than in encouraging you to think things through for yourself and from your own experience" (6).

Write an eight-to-twelve-page essay in which you engage a particular question or issue raised by Levy in Scrolling Forward by recounting in detail an experience with the class projects this semester and/or an experience you've had with creating documents. At the same time, project your analysis/experience forward to the possibilities of creative practice in your intended field of work (or perhaps in a political, civic or cultural endeavor that you will be involved with).

Let's try this out by trying to write a paragraph in which you attempt to bring these two elements into "dialetical" (that is, productive and creative) contact:

1. a question or issue raised by Levy
2. your own experience with creating documents (in this class or not) and/or creating documents in your intended field.

Tip: Try to get these two different kinds of content talking to, arguing with, or interrogating one another. This is an informal writing--an experiment more for you the writer than for me the reader--so try, but don't be stressed about correctness or coherenece. Think of yourself as staging a scene in a movie or a wresting match between Levy's idea and your own experience/future.