Project 1: Writing the Brain

ENG1101 | Spring 2015 | Dr. Jason W. Ellis

 

 

Introduction

 

Writing the Brain is an opportunity for you to exercise your rhetorical choices across a series of multimodal artifacts that you will assemble ultimately into a blog post on our class website. You will practice some of the things that we learn about the brain (mindfulness, reflection, and multimodal synergy) and build WOVEN artifacts using all of the main modes of modern human communication: written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal.

 

Through the Writing the Brain project, you will collect your thoughts in writing, express your most important thoughts visually in photos, and reflect on your thinking in a long-form essay. Each part leads to the next and the final component—a blog post on our class website—ties all of the parts together into a unified whole.

 

Audience is an important and necessary consideration for any communication and composition that you endeavor. You should imagine your audience to be your peers—other beginning college students. However, you also need to consider the genre conventions of each medium: handwriting, photos, essay, and blog post.

 

To receive credit for this project, you must complete it in its entirety and meet the process-driven deadlines. This is a writing-intensive project that I have designed to be done over time. Each part is spread out to give each student the time necessary to complete it before moving to the next component. It is important for your personal success on this project to proceed according to the schedule below.

 

 

Part 1: Thinking in Writing

 

Choose a full day to carry your notebook (or notepad) with you. At least once every thirty minutes (at the top of the hour and at the bottom of the hour), spent a few minutes writing down what you have been or currently are thinking about. Include meta-information that provides context, such as where you are, what you were doing, what time you had that thought, whom you were with, etc. At the end of the day, you should have several pages of notes recorded. Some of your thoughts will be mundane, others might be insightful, and others might be daydreams about the past, present, or future. Try to capture as many of your thoughts as possible—those about surface matters and those of deeper importance.

 

Look for patterns in your thoughts. What do you see think about more often? What do you give little attention to? On reflection, what should you give more time and energy to thinking about? Write a 250-500 word comment to the appropriate blog post on our OpenLab site that addresses these questions. Discuss those patterns that you identified and include some of your thoughts in your short essay in quotation marks, and give each of those quoted thoughts some explanation using your contextual meta-data that you scribbled into your notes. Also, discuss what thoughts you think should receive more or less attention from you.

 

 

Part 2: Thinking Visually (i.e., Represent Your Thoughts as Photos)

 

With your short discussion essay in mind and the thoughts you described (those present and those not present/deserving attention), take photos with your smartphone or camera that represent those things to you. At a minimum, you should have three photos representing things that you think about a lot and three photos representing things that on reflection deserve more attention. Of course, you can have more photos. In fact, I would recommend taking many, many photos for this assignment, but you should select those that best represent your thoughts.

 

Using a public-facing photo sharing site of your choice (e.g., Instagram, Picasa, Flickr, etc.), share your photos and copy the sharable links for those photos. Write a comment on the appropriate blog post on our OpenLab site and include at least six links to your photos as described above. Also, write a 2-3 sentences below each photo. You should include one thought in quotes that the photo represents, and some description about the photo (e.g., where was it taken, when was it taken, and why you think it represents your thinking).

 

Please note that all photos for this assignment must be new photos made by you. Do not use photos found online, taken from your family photo albums, or selected from past events. Think of your photos captured for this part of Project One as a visual form of composition. Just like you cannot recycle your writing from high school on this assignment, you cannot recycle images that you did not take consciously and specifically for this assignment.

 

 

Part 3: Thinking Reflectively (i.e., Reflect on Your Thoughts and Plan Your Future Thoughts in an Essay)

 

Using your recorded thoughts, discussion, and photos, you will have an opportunity to weave these thoughts into a self-reflective essay of at least 1,250 words (about five pages, double-spaced) that responds to this question: Imagining yourself five years from now, what would you like to recommend to your present self to think about and focus on to achieve the things that you want in life? Quote your previously recorded thoughts as spring boards to demonstrate how you are thinking now and how your thinking should change, intensify, or lessen. Discuss the photos that you took as illustrations of your thinking.

 

While there are different ways to write you essay, I recommend this overall layout: First, begin with a paragraph introducing yourself, the fact that you have been reflecting on your thoughts, and your argument for the essay based on your answer to the question posed above. Next, write subsequent paragraphs that support your argument by drawing on specific examples from your day of recording thoughts and photos representing your thoughts. Finally, conclude your essay by drawing together the examples that you have discussed and explain in your own words how you plan to put your future self’s recommendations into action.

 

You will write a draft of your essay using word processing software or services like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. This will allow you to run spelling and grammar checks on your writing before bringing it in for peer review. On the day that we perform peer review, you will print out three copies to give to your teammates for in-class review and feedback. I will help you with this process of peer reviewing.

 

 

Part 4: Assembling the Pieces

 

To submit your project for grading, you will create a blog post on our OpenLab website following these guidelines:

 

1. Login to OpenLab and navigate to our class’ site.
2. Mouse over the + sign on our site’s gray menu bar and click on “Post.”
3. You will now be on the Add New Post page.
4. Where it says, “Enter title here,” click and type in a meaningful title for your post: “Writing My Brain Project by [your first and last name].”
5. In the large white box beneath the title, you can type or copy-and-paste the writing that you have done elsewhere. This is where you will write your Project 1 blog post.
6. Your post should have these main section headings with your response beneath each one:
   1. Introduction
      1. Write a 3-4 sentence description in your own words of what you did in Project 1. Do not frame this in terms of, “Professor Ellis had us do this and this.” Instead, take ownership of your project. For example, “In this project, I reflected on my thoughts and planned how to think with a sharper focus going into the future.” Also, explain how your project is divided into the following categories. Carefully proofread what you write in this section.
   2. Thinking in Writing
      1. Copy and paste your discussion from part one.
   3. Thinking Visually
      1. For this part of the blog post, copy and paste your photo links and discussion from part two. Make your links active as I will show you how to do during class.
   4. Thinking Reflectively
      1. Copy and paste your revised essay from part three (after peer review and further editing) in this section.
   5. After you have reviewed everything, click on “Publish” on the right. Navigate to our site to confirm that your blog post is visible there. If not, you should try again. If there seems to be a problem, contact me as soon as possible. Do not wait until the last minute, because I will be unable to reply in time for you to successfully complete the assignment.

 

 

Project 1 Schedule

 

Week	Day	Date	Reading/Announcements	Work	Due
	W	2/4	Neuromyths (all 10 linked on this web page: http://www.brainfacts.org/neuromyths/.     Introduce Project One.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Plan the day that you would like to record your thoughts according to the instructions above.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.
3	M	2/9	Michael O’Shea’s The Brain chapter 1. Download from OpenLab. Bring a printed copy to class.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Reminder: Record your thoughts over one day from the time that you wake up to the time that you go to sleep.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.
	W	2/11	Gary Marcus’ Kluge chapter 1. Download from OpenLab. Bring a printed copy to class.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Discuss taking photos for next phase of Project One and sharing them using Instagram, Flickr, or another public-facing photo sharing service.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.   Type and post a selection of your day of thoughts as a comment on our OpenLab site. Look for patterns. What thoughts appear the most often? What thoughts should you give more attention to? What didn’t appear in your thoughts that on reflection you should give more attention to in the future? Type this up into a comment of about 250-500 words in length and post to the appropriate blog post on our OpenLab site.
4	M	2/16	No Class: Presidents’ Day
	W	2/18	John Medina’s Brain Rules, Introduction	Share photos in small team and discuss what they mean to you.   Discuss the next phase of Project One: the essay.	Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.   Type descriptions and post links to six photos that you have shared online—three about what you think about the most, and three about things that you want to give more thought to—on our OpenLab site.
5	M	2/23	John Medina’s Brain Rules, Exercise.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Project One essay in-class writing.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.
	W	2/25	Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Witchery of Story.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Project One essay in-class writing.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.
6	M	3/2	John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sleep.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Project One essay in-class writing.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.
	W	3/4	Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Riddle of Fiction.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Project One essay in-class writing.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.
7	M	3/9	John Medina’s Brain Rules, Stress.	Project One essay peer review session.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.   Bring three printed copies of your Project One essay to class for peer review.
	W	3/11	Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, Hell is Story-Friendly.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Demo on creating your Project One Blog Post that collects each part and presents it as a unified whole.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.
8	M	3/16	John Medina’s Brain Rules, Wiring.	Student-led introduction to the reading.   Introduce Project Two.	Three-ring Binder: Notes on today’s reading.   Blog: Comment on post for previous class’ reading.   Project One Blog Post Due on OpenLab before class begins.

 

 

Holistic Grading

 

I grade your work holistically. First, this means that your work must be complete, on time, and done using the writing process. If these components are not met, you will likely lose points. Second, I evaluate your work using the attached grading rubric. I deduct points from a maximum score of 100 based on the weaknesses that I might find in your work. I will include constructive criticism and advice with your grade. This feedback will be useful for your final portfolio. Third, your grade will likely be higher if you can develop more revisions of each part, because each revision is like a mathematically iteration bringing you closer to being a very effective communicator. However, this process only works when your revisions are substantial—going back to the foundations of your writing, composing, and ideas. Simply copyediting or proofreading in the revision process will help with the Conventions section of the rubric but not likely the other parts of the rubric. Carefully consider how you do use the revision process.