Author: admin

Social Media Remix Assignment

Now that you have received feedback on your draft from your instructor and at least one peer, and have made revisions to your GSR draft, it is time to cultivate an audience. As you are well aware, social media is essential for marketing and publicity. This is true for authors and literary magazines as well. For instance, Margaret Atwood – author of the Handmaid’s Tale – has 1.9 million followers on twitter, and posts regularly on Facebook and Instagram. Her posts promote her work, but also share information about her passion for gardening and her opinions on politics.

Screen shot of Atwoods twitter page

And the Paris Review, which you should remember from the Rhetorical Analysis assignment, has 974,5000 followers on twitter and 399,319 followers on Facebook.

Pretend you are in charge of the social media for the Greenspring Review. How would you promote your submission? How might you craft an engaging post for twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, snap chat, or tik tok that would draw readers to your creative piece or review? What is appealing about your short story, poem, media, or review that is worthy of the time and attention of the GSR audience?

Follow these steps to craft your post. Post your mock up and respond to these questions in a summary paragraph in your post on WordPress.

  1. Choose your platform, and explain why you think this platform would be effective for the GSR and your submission. Consider choosing the platform that you are familiar with, but that will also address a specific audience of the Greenspring Review. Who might be interested in reading your piece, and what platforms do they interact with most?
  2. Craft a pitch that fits the constraints of the platform. Consider the common conventions for that site. Will you use text as a caption or an overlay? Do you have a character or space limit? Can you manipulate the font or color of the text? Should you include emojis and punctuation?
  3. Craft media for your post. Should you use an image? A video? A screenshot? A GIF? What works best for this platform?
  4. Consider when and how often to post. What time of day does your audience use this platform? How can you increase likes and comments? How can you get more views?

You can use your personal accounts to mock up your posts, or create fake accounts to use temporarily. Alternately, you can use any of the many free templates online. For example:

https://medium.com/@esinan/35-free-social-media-templates-for-brands-bloggers-9f6af52e17a1

https://medium.com/@esinan/25-free-social-media-mockups-and-templates-35547b499a3

For samples and advice, check out this blog and search through their posts on how to use twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to promote literary texts:

https://insights.bookbub.com/category/book-marketing-ideas/

This is due by the end of the day on April 29th. Use tags “social media” and your platform, and category “blog.” Then, comment on at least five other posts before Monday, May 4th.

Style Sheet Exercise

To work in Digital Publishing, you need to know how to read, implement, and adapt a Style Sheet. A Style Sheet is an ever evolving tool used to ensure the process of copyediting is uniform across every piece published. A Style Sheet can and should be customized to a specific publication based on their needs, and must be updated according to changing trends and technical developments (think one space after a period, or the Oxford comma). In terms of digital publishing, a Style Sheet might also include instructions for implementing or customizing HTML and CSS to be consistant with the aesthetics of the publication.

For this assignment you will apply a Style Sheet for an online scholarly journal to a sample article submitted for publication. All the materials you need are in this folder:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HUC1Yymxt1JKtDRnN1eJrL5jddj69T-D

Steps:

  1. Read over the documented titled “Style Sheet” and use the comment feature to add questions for your classmates or Dr. L to answer.
  2. Choose the Word or Google doc version of “Immersive Pedagogy” based on your editing preference.
  3. Make a copy of the article and save as Immersive Pedagogy_yourlastname.
  4. Using Track Changes in Word or Suggesting mode in Google Docs, apply the Style Sheet to the article to make changes.
  5. If your first name begins with letters A-J, edit pages 1-8. (Stop at the section titled “Decolonial Foundations: Critical Approaches to the Development and Curation of 3D/VR/AR Technologies”).
    If your name starts with k-z, do pages 9-the end. (Start at the section titled “Decolonial Foundations: Critical Approaches to the Development and Curation of 3D/VR/AR Technologies” at the end of page 8). 
  6. This is your ‘in class” work for this week, and is due by Monday, April 20th. 
  7. To turn this in, please post a link to your doc on the blog with category “blog” and tag “copyedits” and write a short 8-10 sentence reflection on how the process went and what you learned.

Coding Reflection

Over break you worked on a self-guided HTML coding lesson. Now it is time to collect and reflect on that experience. Instructions:

  1. Go to https://www.w3schools.com/html/ and follow along the sections listed on the left navigation menu. Your goal is to compete up to and including the section on “Images” before Monday, March 23rd.

For each section you will complete the “Try it Yourself” and “Exercises” tutorials and save your code in a Google Doc (see screenshots below). You will collect all your lessons with brief reflections on what you learned, how difficult/easy it was, and how you might apply this lesson when building a website.

2. At the end of the week you should have a robust log of all your lessons and reflections. Save the doc as HTML_ENG256_yourlastname. Share the link with amanda.licastro@gmail.com by March 23rd. 

3. On the 23rd, you will read over all of your work and compose a reflection on the entire process. In this essay you should detail:

  • A summary of your daily work, with specific skills listed.
  • How you completed the work and what obstacles you overcame. This should include details about how you structured your time, which sections your found easy or difficult, and what problems you encountered working on your own.
  • How familiar or new this coding work was for you, and if you feel confident applying these skills to a real website in the future. Do you think you could put HTML on your resume now? Why or why not?

    This reflection will be posted to our course blog with a link to your Google Doc using category “blog” and tag “html.” Please make sure you set your Google Doc link to “Can Comment” before posting. This is due by March 25th at noon. 

Poster Assignment

Using the open source accessibility posters we discussed in class, you will design your own “Do’s and Don’ts” poster for a specific audience for the Greenspring Review. In this poster you want to address the needs of a group that might interact with this site on a regular basis. Think of the common afflictions or concerns of Stevenson students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and be thoughtful about their experience in online spaces. What might help accomodate their needs? What might be triggering or distracting?  The ultimate goal is to ensure the GSR site is as close to “universal” in its design as possible.

Poster Requirements:

  • A poster designed using Canva, or a pre-approved program we have access to at Stevenson (see tutorials on Blackboard).
  • At least 5 “Do’s” and 5 “Don’ts” listed with related images (you can have more, not less).
  • The design of the poster must meet the needs of the audience you are targeting, following your own guidelines.
  • The poster must thoughtfully utilize the modes and affordances of an online publication.
  • You should use the skills learned from reading Writer/Designer and the articles on accessibility, UX/UI, and usability in class.

In addition to the poster you will provide a written justification of the audience you chose and the design decisions you made. This should be at least three paragraphs: one explaining the audience, one explaining your do’s/don’ts, and one explaining your aesthetic choices. You should cite at least two of the articles we read in class using MLA in-text citations. You also need a Works Cited list. If you use sources we have not read in class, make sure they are reliable, trustworthy, academic, and cited correctly.

You will turn this in on WordPress using category “blog” and tag “poster” by noon on March 5th.

Rhetorical Analysis Assignment

Now it is time to compose a rhetorical analysis for a professional website. These will serve as models for our final project – a redesign of Stevenson’s literary magazine. Pay careful attention to elements of these websites that  you would like to emulate or avoid when designing our literary magazine. Remember, your analysis needs to start with a strong thesis statement that presents an argument about the site, and then all of your supporting evidence needs to reflect and connect back to that thesis. Please use the OWL at Purdue “Organizing your Analysis” guide to structure your essay spatially, chronologically, or by persuasive appeals.

Here are your choices:

  1. First, you need to choose one website to focus on. Then, you need to determine the audience, purpose, context, and genre using chapters 1 and 2 in Writer/Designer (like we did in class). You should address each of these topics thoroughly with direct evidence from the site and your research. You must use MLA citations for any information you summarize, paraphrase, or quote from any website or textbook.
  2. Next, you should include a thorough visual analysis of the the site you have selected. You should  provide an analysis of the interface – in other words the platform the text is published on – and how that interface affects your experience of the text. When analyzing the interface consider the modes and affordances, including: color, font, media, information architecture, and user experience. You should analyze how the visualizations look,  and what argument the visuals are making (in other words, what is the purpose of the images, videos, etc).
  3. You should write out a script using the evidence you gathered and the organize the script in a way that is easy to navigate visually. This script will be included in the post.
  4. Then, you will use screen captured videos (I suggest Quicktime, Screencast-o-matic, or LiceCAP), or another tool of your choosing with permission from your professor, to record your analysis. The idea is to walk your audience through your analysis aurally, visually, spatially, gesturally, and linguistically. Aim for 2-3 minutes.
  5. You must post this to our WordPress site with the media in the appropriate places. To share the video you can save it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or YouTube and provide a link in the post. Then, put the script underneath the video.

    This is due by noon on 2/14. It should be posted as category “blog” and tag “rhetorical analysis” plus your section number.

Students must assent to and to uphold the University Honor Pledge:

“I pledge on my honor that I have neither given nor received

unauthorized assistance on this assignment/exam.”

Peer Review

Please choose one post from the Visual Rhetoric Practice assignment from your section of 256 (ideally someone you do not know or hav not worked with before). Then, in the comments, respond to the following prompts:

  1. Is the thesis clear and debatable. Does the author express an opinion about the site?
  2. Does the author analyze at least two modes? Does the author provide specific evidence of each mode?
  3. Does the author identify the affordances of this site? Do the affordances connect back to their thesis?
  4. Does the author provide screenshots that relate to the evidence provided? Is it clear why the include these specific images?

    When you are finished, find the person in the class and have a discussion about what the author did well, and what they could improve on in the next assignment.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis Practice

Please  post your visual rhetorical analysis of The Villager website on our WordPress site. Please use the following OWL at Purdue sections to guide and organize your analysis:

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/visual_rhetoric/index.html

I want you to list and explain the modes, affordances, color, font choice, and layout of the digital publication. You should use more than the front page, considering the entire site for this project. Use the “organizing your analysis” guide above to structure your writing.

Please post this by midnight on Tuesday using category “blog” and tag “villager” and your section number.

WordPress Tips

Here are a few basics you can refer to if you need to know the basics of our WordPress site.
  • To sign in, click “Log In” on right side

  • Username = Stevenson username (email)
  • After the first time you use the password your professor provided, you should change it immediately to protect your privacy.
  • To change your password, click on your profile in the top right corner, then click on “Edit My Profile,” and then scroll down to change your password.
  • To add your own blog posts, click on the Dashboard, and then go to “Posts” – “Add New.”
  • To add media, you can use the box on the top of your post.
    Don’t forget to use Advanced Google Image search for “free to use or share” or upload your own original images. Every image needs a citation.
  • Always add the categories and tags your professor provided to each post.
  • To “turn in” your work, click publish. Otherwise, you can save it as a draft until you are ready.
Ask me if you have any questions!

Viral Content Assignment

Look for a meme, gif, video, or social media post about “college life.” Look specifically for a post you feel either very accurately describes some aspect of your college experience, or one you feel is misleading or does not reflect your experience in college.

Post that meme with a link and a citation to our WordPress site. Under the image and citation, please include a 7-10 sentence description of the image with an explanation of why you chose this – focusing on how it does or does not represent your experience and why.

You must use the category “blog” and two tags – “meme” and your section number (ON1 or ON2).

Example:

Cat with "Is On the Syllabus" meme
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3sp65t

“The answer to your question in on the syllabus.” Quick Meme. Accessed Jan. 2020. http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3sp65t