Assignment Page
In this assignment, you will create a web site of seven to ten pages which focuses on a central, critical term/idea and several related ideas drawn from our 
readings. These terms in your cloud should collectively present an observation, position, or prediction about some aspect of web design or digital culture.
Each of the pages will present a critical summary of a sources or sources from our readings, written in formal, analytical prose which uses the academic conventions for summarizing and commenting on secondary, sources.
As examples of "critical summaries," see the course handouts about Tim Berner-Lee's vision of the Semantic Web, Peter Elbow's Believing and Doubting Game, and other pages from my Ideas Site. (Note that, as a collection of online handouts for classes, this site contains only some appropriate models for this assignment.)
Home Page
The home page of the site will feature:
- a critical summary of the central term/idea,
- a "word cloud" graphic of showing this idea in relation to the others on the site, with each word a clickable link
- a text menu of "structural" links for navigating your site
- at the end of the summary, "associative" links to outside resources, including pages on your classmates' Critical Clouds
Subsequent Pages
Each of the other pages will feature:
- a commentary on a critical idea using quotations and citations from our readings,
- a graphic of some kind,
- a menu for navigating the site,
- links to outside resources, including pages on your classmates' Critical Clouds.
- MLA-style citations on each page for the sources of all works cited.
Critical Focus
In writing the text of these pages, keep a critical focus. This means summarizing not just the definition of, for example, the Believing and Doubting Game, but Peter Elbow's particular description of and argument for it in his book Writing Without Teachers. Your critical focus keeps Peter Elbow and his larger, critical agenda constantly in the frame as you discuss this particular idea. Similarly, if you have a page of "disintermediation," you'll want to define and discuss that term/idea as it appears in Keen's The Cult of the Amateur and as it exemplifies the book's cultural/political/critical project. See the "Critical Focus" page from my Ideas Site.
An Overarching Point and Purpose
The Critical Cloud is an alternative to writing a critical essay. Your project should therefore be advancing an opinion, concern, prediction, or observation about digital culture, rather than simply summing up some major idea in a cloud of loosely associated ideas. This project differs from an essay, however, in presentation. That is, rather than making an explicit argument or proving a thesis, you will make your point through the selection of your "home" idea and the related ideas you choose to float and circulate around it. While the pages themselves should be primarily descriptive, your overarching purpose should be clear from your choice of terms. This purpose can also inform your writing of the summaries, your selection of images to include, and the design choices you make to unify your site.
You will have the opportunity to explain and elaborate the point and purpose in your project commentary.
Banner
The design of your banner should present and reinforce the thesis of your project (the central argument, observation, or concern that relates the ideas in your cloud), in the graphic and verbal elements and how they are brought together.
Color Design
I will expect you to apply principles of color contrast, dimension, and emphasis in the choices you make in your unifying site design. These choices will also be analyzed in your project commentary.
Commentary
At the beginning of the class meeting after you turn in your project online, you will turn in a five-hundred word commentary (2 pages double spaced), describing your strategies for fulfilling the assignment.
In addition to fulfilling the general criteria for good commentaries, your commentary should explain, in one substantive sentence typed in bold, the argument suggested by your cloud: a claim, insight, or observation about the digital culture or web design. This "thesis statement" will not actually appear in your cloud itself, however.
Your commentary should also use critical language from the color tutorial to explain your choices of color and how you have used color contrast to direct the reader/viewers' attention and to make the substance of your argument more effective.
Hard Copy of the Text
In addition, I will ask you to copy and paste the text of all your pages into a single Word file, to print it out, and to staple it with your commentary to hand in. This printout should include the term/idea at the top of each chunk of text, and the citations after each chunk. There is no need to put page breaks into the printout.
Keep in mind that I will be reading and marking these pages as if they were formal, printed papers written for class. Correctness, rigor, conciseness, and thoughtfulness count.
Resources