Class, Tues, 12/06

Some Important Forms

• Course Evaluations
• Career Education

Arcade

Display your Medium essay on your laptop. Walk around. See what other people have done. Talk with them. Jot down the authors and titles of at least five pieces that impress you. (Let’s make a rule: These pieces cannot be from members of your workshop group.) Note down some common strategies of digitizing that all (or at least most) of these writers use. But also try to note at least one distinctive aspect of each of the pieces you discuss.

Digitizing Worksheet

To Do

Nothing! Wait for an email from me early next week informing you of your final grade. Consider taking another writing course, or even enrolling for the Writing Minor. Say hi to me if we pass each other on The Green or in Memorial!

Essays on Medium

• Amelia Abobo, “Getting Back to Normal“
• Andrew Botti, “Men and Women“
• Connor Casey, “Baseball’s Underlying Villain“
• Ariana Chipolone, “Repair Is Inevitable“
• Jen Curran, “Solution, Not Silence“
• Olivia Daniels, “Don’t Risk It“
• Jillian Dean, “Recovery“
• Andrew DeStefano, “A Creative Response“
• Jasmine Edwards, “Recognizing Our Failures“
• Julia Forbes, “The Household’s Cry for Help“
• Carly Frank,” “Type 1 Diabetes Islet Cell Transplant“
• Karley Fraser, “The Boston Marathon Bombings“
• Savannah Gallagher, “Fitting the Criteria“
• Andrea Glennon, “Repairing in the Name of Beckett Brennan“
• Tyler Glock, “The Justice of the Mind“
• Daniel Gruber, “Repairing of a Steel Bridge“
• Erica Haas, “Enthrallment in Antiques“
• Sarah Kerik, “Women Are Not Solely Repairers of Relationships“
• Rachel Levine, “End the Stereotyping, Start the Change“
• Hannah Mackler, “Characters Not Caricatures“
• Mike McCloskey, “Repair Hidden in Plain Sight“
• Ryan McDevitt, “Repairing and Rebuilding the Modern Classroom“
• Lauren Mellor, “Imagination and Creativity“
• Ashil Patel, “Reparations Within Blood Doping“
• Amanda Piccione, “Tragedy, Repair, and the Road to Recovery“
• Nicholas Pirhalla, “Deepwater Repair Deeper Than Clean Water“
• Travis Romano, “The Killing of a Stereotype“
• Natalie Ross, “Becoming Whole Again“
• Eyal Schwartz, “Make America Green Again“
• Kit Shum, “Homo Reparans Runs Amok“
• Anne Skorohobaty, “Repairer or Despairer“
• Kelly Summers, “Spelman v Superheroes“
• Sonia Tracy, “Where Is Your Superhero?“

Class, Tues, 11/29

Grades

• Tabulating your final grade
• Arak Journal

Copyright and Fair Use

• Medium
• Creative Commons
• Eric Faden, “A Fair(y) Use Tale“

Digitizing Essay Two

Email the link to your essay on Medium to the members of your workshop group. Read through at least two of the pieces you’ve been sent, looking for points where the writers might “digitize” their essays through adding:

• Hyperlinks
• Images
• Video clips
• Audio clips

Note these possible additions on a piece of paper or in an email to the author. Try to make it as clear as you can what you think the author might do. (For instance, “add image from the ad campaign here”, or “insert link to critic’s essay here”.) If you can suggest a specific image or file, please do so. Try to suggest at least five items the author might add to her or his essay.

We’ll spend about 20 minutes with these pieces. When I call time, read through what your readers have suggested, and do some googling to see if you can make those changes.

To Do

No class on Thurs, 12/01.

1. Mon, 12/05, 4:00 pm: Post your digitized essay as “Public” to Medium. If you wish to apply for extra credit, send me an email in which you (a) provide the URL for your piece, (b) outline the important ways in which you have digitized your essay [10 points], and (c) point to substantive additions you have made to your actual writing [10 points].
2. Tues, 12/06: Bring a laptop with you to class. We will have an arcade in which we look at one one another’s digitized essays.

Class, Thurs, 11/17

Affordances

An affordance is a suggested use—something that an object or technology allows you to do easily or well.

Digital Writing

Writing on Medium.com

Some Examples

• Cassidy Crawford, “Body Positive or Body Shaming?“
• Brianni J, “The Source Material“
• Marissa Norris, “Investigating Ambiguity“

In workshop groups: Look together at one of these essays. How does the writer use the affordances of digital writing to say or do something onscreen that she could not do on the page?

Formatting on Medium

To Do

1. Class, Tues, 11/29: Post your e1 or e2 to Medium as an Unlisted post. Come to class with your laptop. We will work on your pieces in class.

 

Digital Writing

For your final assignment for this course, I’d like you to revise one of your two final essays in ways that make thoughtful use of the affordances of writing in a digital space. An affordance is something that a particular medium allows you to do easily or well. The affordances of digital writing include

• incorporating images into your writing;
• linking directly to other online texts;
• quoting audio or video clips in your essay; and
• adding audio or video clips that you have produced to your essay.

Your task is to use some of these affordances to revise and re-present your second essay on Medium.com.

I will be especially impressed if the changes or additions you make lead to some new writing. If you insert an image into your essay, don’t let it just sit there—comment on it, analyze it. If you link to other texts, tell us what it is you want us to notice about them. If you use audio or video, be thoughtful in editing the clip; go right to the moment in the song or film that you want to focus our attention on.

Be creative. Take some risks. If you try something and it doesn’t work—no worries, your grade won’t be affected. Simply for doing this assignment, you will receive 10 extra points. But if you rethink or develop your essay as you post it to Medium, you will receive 20 extra points.

To post your work to Medium, you will need to set up a free account on the site. I will walk you through the actual mechanics of posting in class—it’s straightforward and easy—and we’ll also look at some examples of what other writers have done on the site. I’ve also posted a brief set of hints on Formatting on Medium. I hope that, like me, you’ll find Medium an elegant and appealing platform for writing.

Post your essay on Medium by 4:00 pm on on Monday , 12/05.. Please email me the link to your essay, and bring your laptop with you to class. If you feel you have significantly revised or developed your piece, please outline what you have done in the body of your email.  I will review your note to see if I agree that you  have earned an extra 10 points.

We will use much of our class on Tuesday, 12/06 to view your digital essays in a kind of electronic “arcade” .