Previous Blackboard Items
(in chronological order, most recent at the bottom)
 Welcome
to Composition 5220 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 at the bottom.
The home page and "blackboard" for the class is at
http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/comp5220
Because of our class starting a week late and the once-a-week schedule,
I'd like to ask you in advance to purchase and bring to class on Monday
four of our five required books.
- Ted Alsapch's PageMaker 7 For Windows and Macintosh, Peachpit
Press, 2002
- J. Tarin Towers' Dreamweaver 4 for Windows and Macintosh. Peachpit
Press, 2001
- Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas, Photoshop 7 for Windows and
Macintosh, Peachpit Press, 2002
- Robin Williams' Non-Designer's Design Book
Having these books will enable you to get acquainted with some of the
software we'll be using during the semester (and save you the inconvenience
of having to do it on your own time in the lab/classroom.
Here's a high resolution picture
you can download and use for your Web Plate/Name Plate exercise.
Find a quotation on any subject for your nameplace exercise at
Bartlet's Familiar Quotations.
The syllabus for the course is almost final.
Take a look at it for an idea of what we'll be doing in Document Design.
If you're curious, you might want to read the line-up
of assignments, and the full description of the first project, the
Review of an Ad.
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.
9/16
Tonight, we'll learn about the next project we'll be working on,
the Bookmark/Web page
project (2). 9/16
To transfer your Dreamweaver files to the Web, you'll need to follow
the directions in Towers' book on setting up a local site (page 25) and
setting up a remote site (page 551, for which you'll also need information
from my File Transfer Page). 9/16
To log onto the Web Crossing discussion board, click the "Discussion"
link on the left, and then enter your
- UMD userid, and
- "webx" as the password
Then, from the screens that follow, choose the links "Craig Stroupe"
> "comp5220" > "Name Plate exercise: lessons learned,
questions raised" and post a message in response to the prompt.9/16
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
This evening, we're
turning in the Revision of Ad project, including a print out of
our revision, a copy of the original ad, and a self commentary.
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.)
Introducing the Client
Project (5)...
Don't Do This: See my explanation of the "totem-pole"
model of Web-page design.
For Dreamweaver help, be sure to review Chapter 3 in Towers, "Basic
Web Pages" (pages 47-70) for how to create and modify pages.
Also, see 101 for placing images, 128 for making links,
and Chapter 8 (173) for modifying text.
If you need a scanned
ad to practice on, here is a Photoshop
file of my example, which you can download to your desktop and open
with Photoshop. (Note that your Web browser won't display the file because
it is not in a Web-compatible format. When you click the link above, your
computer should give you an alert box with the option to download the
file.) 9/23
Journal Entry #2:
A. In the online discussion
labeled "developing an idea in Levy (Journal Entry #2)," 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.
B. On a piece of paper to go into your journal, cluster on words
and phrases from the lists of you and your classmates, looking for patterns,
associations and groupings. 9/23
Tonight (October 7),
we're meeting on the Lakewalk below Fitger's at 6 p.m.:
Here are some things you'll need to know and do to make
this meeting a success (these items were already sent to you via the class
listserv last week).
- We'll meet at 6 p.m. on the Lakewalk below Fitger's. From Fitger's
Courtyard, there's a platform that sticks out over the Lakewalk, and
from that platform you can take a set of stairs down to the Lakewalk
itself. We'll gather near the bottom of those stairs (or under the platform
if it's raining or snowing).
- Before this meeting, please read the Lakewalk
University Project Assignment. Make note of any questions or concerns
you have about the assignment so you can ask them on Monday. You might
consider printing out the assignment page to bring along.
- After reading the assignment, be thinking about which UMD department/discipline
you want to represent with the brochure you'll create.
- Bring your bookmarks and self commentaries with you so I can collect
them.
- Before the meeting, post a message to the discussion "Bookmark/Web
Site Project URL" on the class discussion board with the complete
URL for the Web-site portion of the project.
Why are we meeting outside of the classroom? When I've taught this assignment
in the past, students have said the same thing in the commentaries: "I
didn't have any idea what I was going to do with this project until I
actually went out to the Lakewalk and looked around."
On Monday, I'll present a live sample project idea using some sites and
objects on Lakewalk near Fitger's, take questions, do an activity or two,
and then you'll fan out to find some ideas of your own. Bring a pen and
pad to take notes, and even a camera if you had one available--digital
of course is ideal since you don't pay for film. If you like, you can
check out a digital camera from the UMD
AV office by calling 726-6222. I've already sent AV a class roster
giving you all blanket approval to check out cameras, though they only
have a limited number of cameras.
Whether or not you take pictures on Monday, you'll need to get some pictures
later to use in your brochure.
Please let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.
10/21/02
For Monday, October
21, bring to class (in CCtr 42) the following for use in activities
toward developing the Lakewalk University
project:
- one or two good books about the discipline you've chosen to
represet in your Lakewalk University brochure (textbooks are fine),
- a list of objects, views, locations, etc. from the Lakewalk
that you could possibly use on your Lakewalk University Tour.
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 two
instances of arriving late or leaving early (with or without an excuse)
to spend if you wish. Instances in excess of two 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).
You will be responsible
for printing problems (especially with fonts) from PageMaker in your
next project. If you had problems with previous assignments, you should
provide me with the following items (some hard-copy, some electronic)
which Jason Davis, director of the UMD computers labs, has requested of
us. Please e-mail me the following, except the last item which you should
put in my box in 420 Humanities:
- a description for each job including where it was
printed from, and from which printer it was released.
- Name of the application used (I assume PageMaker)
- a copy of the file (emailed to me)
- a printout (black and white okay) with the problem circled
Tonight, we'll be
learning about "leading" and "kerning" in PageMaker,
which will help in your Lakewalk University projects. We'll be looking
at the Alspach book, pages 86-87
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.
Here's a map
of Duluth's lake front to use in our map-making demo this evening.
You can get your own maps from lots of sources on the Web, including mapquest.com.
Here's the Observer's
article
on the Doomsday Book (original and digital version).
You can now download a
handout that formalizes the steps we followed on October 28 using
Photoshop to create an original map. I thought this might be helpful as
a souvenir and guide to fuller explanations in the Photoshop book.
Since this link leads to a Word file, you'll probably be prompted to
decide whether to open the file directly, or save it to your computer
and open it from inside a Word-compatible application. Please let me know
if you can't open this document and I can provide it in another format.
Looking ahead, you should perform you usability test on a draft of your
Lakewalk University project sometime this week. See the explanation
of the usability test.
From what you learn from your representative "user," make enhancements
and adjustments to your brochure, and bring in a printout (black and white
is okay) next Monday, Nov 4, for a workshop in which you'll get a chance
to give and receive feedback. The final, color-print version of the brochure
will be due then at the beginning of class on Monday, November 11.
Many of you are experiencing printing problems (wrong fonts, overlapping
images and text) on campus using PageMaker. We need to work with the folks
who run the labs (ITSS) to get these problems solved. If you're having
printing problems and don't want to be held responsible for them
when you turn in the assignment, follow the directions on the
printing problems page.
Introducing the New Media Writing Project.
Here's our high resolution picture
of the lighthouse again for use in our demonstration of "Intermediate
Banner Techniques"
See the new graphical schedule for an
alternative view of rest of the semester.
You will be responsible
for any printing problems on your Lakewalk University project unless you
follow the directions explained on the printing
problems page.
To get ready for the
Web version of the New Media Writing project, we need to organize our
Zip disks. See the Rules to Set
You Free page for more.
To get an idea of how numerous Carnegie Libraries are, take a look at
this Web site that provides a virtual tour of the Carnegie
Libraries of Ohio.
Here are a couple of books on Carnegie Libraries (click the covers to
go to Amazon's pages for each)
Printing Problems
We're beginning to get some feedback from ITSS on our printing problems.
See the Troubleshooting PageMaker Printing
Problems page for the solutions that ITSS has been able to suggest
so far.
Screen Real Estate
We'll work with Screen Real Estate by making our own "imagetext"
page.
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)
Tonight, you'll turn in the essay portion of your New
Media Writing project. Next, we'll create a hypertext version
of which attempts to realize the meaning and effects of that essay in
the digital medium.
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.
12/2/02
Tonight, we'll be working with some quotations from your New Media Writing
essays, which I'll also hand back. With these drafts, wI have registered
my response to the essay, sentence by sentence, by using symbols:
- Underlining major idea, regardless of relevance
- Checking in the margin where I felt you were making a relevant
point, especially where you were bringing the public experience and
the personal history into productive contact (the bigger the check,
the stronger the contact)
- Starring particuarly striking phrases or passages
It's my intention that our discussion of the quotations should give you
a good idea not only of what you have now in your essay, but how the idea
might be further developed and translated in the conception and creation
of your Web site.
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 kinds of content into "dialetical"
(that is, productive and creative) contact:
- a question or issue raised by Levy in tonight's chapter (11)
- your own experience with/analysis of creating documents (in this class
or not) or your expected future creating whatever documents are
used in your intended field.
Tip: Try to get these two different kinds of content talking to, arguing
with, or interrogating one another by moving back and forth between Levy
and your own material. 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
past/future experience.
Once you've completed your "Image Map" exercise, please post
the URL of your posted page to the discussion board in the discussion
called "Imagemap
Exercise URL."
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