Grading breakdown:

• Attendance 10%
• Participation 10%
• Weekly Reading Responses 15%
• Oral History Transcription and Reflection 5% — due Sept 20
• Wikipedia Assignment 10% due Oct 16
• Three Stories 15% — due: Aug 30, Oct 9, Nov 6
• Lightning Presentation of Final Project 5% — due: Nov 27, Nov 29
• Final Project 30% — due: December 11   ————>Grading Rubric

EXTRA CREDIT:

Submit. Anywhere. Give proof (email copy or letter of receipt). For example, submit to the Brooklyn College literary journal: Stuck In The Library.

SLIDES: Google Slide deck

CITE EVERYTHING:

zbib.org

ATTRIBUTE:

openwa.org/attrib-builder/

Attendance (10%)

due: every day!

Come to class! Learning is about being there. Three late attendances count as an absence. You are allowed one excused absence.

Participation (10%)

1. Participation means being prepared (having done the reading and coming with all assignments), and
2. active participation (speaking and listening)

Weekly Reading Responses (15%)

due: 4 P.M. Mondays

format:

Each week, you should respond briefly to the assigned readings (200-300 words). Your response may take any form – oral, written, visual, or digital. Responses must be substantive reflections, but may be focused on a single issue or may tackle concepts more broadly. For each of the 15 weeks, you should compose a brief blog post on this site. From the dashboard, go to ”’ + New ”’ and select “Post.” You may write your response in the editor on WordPress, or you may write a brief paragraph to include a link to another platform (you may add media directly or link to your other accounts — YouTube, Instagram, SoundCloud, etc). Before you publish, please add relevant tags (the author’s name or a pertinent topic).

grading:

These responses are meant to be a place for you to track your reactions to what you read. Grading will be based on engagement.

Short Assignments (35%)

NYPL Oral History (5%)

due: Thursday, September 20

As we begin to consider how our stories get transmitted, we are going to contribute to the NYPL Oral History project. Go to the website and select a story. You can choose anything you like. First review the brief transcription tutorial (takes about a minute) and then put in 30 minutes of work. Depending on the difficulty of the transcription, this may mean you review as much as 20 minutes of tape or as little as 5. Please write a 200-300 word response to the exercise describing what was easy and what was hard about the process. Share this response on the blog and mark the category “NYPL Oral History.”

TECHNOLOGY NOTE: This NYPL site doesn’t have support for maintenance (we will talk later about web sustainability). You have to look on the transcription page to find an interview to transcribe then return to the full audio and listen there. (If you scroll to the top of your selected interview you will see a blue link “Listen to the original audio” under the description of the interview. You can then go back to the transcription window to edit. Don’t worry about logging in or getting the NYPL tracking to work.

Wikipedia Assignment (10%)

due: Thursday, October 16

To complete the Wikipedia assignment, you must create a username and register your account on the course page. Then complete the tutorials– the general guide on Editing Wikipedia, and some subject-specific resources.

Your two options:

1. Illustrate Wikipedia – consider what we’ve been talking about when we say “literacy”. How do you choose photos to accompany descriptions and what do these add to an article? How did you select the photo? What aspect of an article did you choose to represent?

• You must find sources that are licensed for use.

1. Improve citations. The idea here is that you dig around a little and do some scholarly research. (You can use your library login to find a respectable journal article to support an idea you find uncited, or you can find a reputable website that confirms an idea).

• you can find articles that need improvement on various Wikipedia editathon group pages: Action=History, Black Lunch Table’s list, the Women In Red list of articles to create or the WikiProject Women Artists list of stub articles.
• Improving citations is something like a treasure hunt. If you see an abandoned fact, try to track it down.
• What does it mean that we need third level references? Does passing through several books — books which are edited and fact-checked — give fact due weight? Do you consider where the information you’re reading comes from and how many people have vetted it?

The Wikipedia dashboard will track the improvements you make so I can see that everyone has contributed.

Three Stories Assignment (5%, 5%, 5%)

due: August 30, October 9, November 6

format:

Oral story due Thursday, August 30th.

You will have a week to come up with a story that you have heard before but never seen written. This story may be family lore (how your parents met, the hijinks of your favorite pet, some crazy thing an aunt did that time) or a favorite story you have with friends. Be prepared to present this story to the class. You should not need to prepare. The idea of the assignment is to think about a story that doesn’t get written down.

format:

Written story due Tuesday, October 9th.

Now that you have told your story, you get to write it down (400-500 words). What details matter? What details change? What happens when you write it down? Do you transcribe what you would speak? If your story is very short, you may use the remaining words to describe the metamorphosis from spoken to written.

Turn in 400-500 words (1-2 pages double spaced) on paper in class Tuesday.

IN CLASS:

write down: something you notice about the WRITING. (Point of view, tone, structure, word choice)

and

write down: something that really works in the transformation to writing

format:

Computer technology story due Tuesday, November 6th.

That story you told and wrote down… what happens when you think about it with computers? What does that mean to you? Does it mean distributed on networks? Does it mean visualized using computational analysis? Does it mean emailed as a chain letter? Or does it mean telling the story in a string of gifs? Consider the ways computers permeate our speaking and writing habits.

TURN IN A BLOG POST. In the heading call it “Computer Story” and include your name.

Type, add pictures, add charts… whatever.

Then describe how it fits your idea of “computer technology” in 1-2 paragraphs.

grading:

Each portion of the Three Stories will be graded pass/fail.

Final Project Lightning Talks (5%)

due: Tuesday, November 27, Tuesday, December 4

format:

Each student will present the main idea of their final project. This presentation should be succinct and cover primary sources and main ideas. Consider it a chance to make sure the project or paper is coming together in a coherent way. Everyone should submit any slides (1-2) to a shared Google Slide deck before class the day of their presentation.

Final Project (30%)

due: Tuesday, December 11

format:

Your final project may take the shape of an 8 – 12 page research paper or a creative project with an accompanying description in the form of a 3-5 page letter of explanation or artist’s statement with citations. More details will be handed out in class before Thanksgiving.

Requirements:

• minimum 6 cited sources — 5 from class readings
• creative or multimedia project — 3-5 page letter of explanation, artist’s statement
• research paper — 8-12 pages double-spaced, MLA formatting

grading:

Assignments will be assessed for clarity, creativity, and effort based on the criteria in a given rubric.

Computers and Conventions

Technology:

For this course, we will be using the CUNY Academic Commons for our collective blog and resource hub, YouTube and various websites. You will have the option to use your own blog, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media as part of your course reflections, but I ask that you link from the group site.

Writing conventions:

Typed work should be 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, double-spaced, 1” margins (left, right, top, and bottom), with page numbers, and in basic MLA format. See p. 55-56 of A Writer’s Reference for an example of MLA paper format or the Purdue OWL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/13/ — “the most important and basic convention of MLA, for the purposes of this course, is the parenthetical, paginated citation” (Griffiths 2). As Timothy Griffiths states in his syllabus, “parenthetical, paginated citations are simpler than you think” (2). PAPERS MUST BE PRINTED AND STAPLED.

It should be noted that though this class will help improve your writing and thinking, it is not a class in writing instruction. As such, if you are aware that writing essays is challenging or produces anxiety for you, you should make arrangements to meet me early in the semester and/or schedule meetings with a tutor ASAP (see more information about the Learning Center on their website or on the Learning Center Facebook page).