Category: Lectures

It has been a good semester, and I appreciate you all working with me thus far in our class.

This is the last weekly lecture, but I will still hold office hours this week and then I will be available by email or appointment in the days leading up to the final due date for everything in the class: Monday, Dec. 21.

Remember to refer to previous lectures 11-14 and the corresponding Weekly Writing Assignments for models and useful information for the Collaborative Project.

If you would like to take advantage of the extra credit offer from last week, you can still catch videos of one of those events–the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium. I posted videos there of each panel. Choose a session video, watch it from start-to-finish, and write a 250 word summary of who spoke and what they spoke about. Email your summary to me by Monday, Dec. 21.

Good luck in our class, your other classes, and your lives. When we can return to in-person classes, stop by my office sometime for a conversation in Namm 520.

Lecture

Due Dates

The Collaborative Project is due by Monday, Dec. 21. No work will be accepted after that date as I need time to grade and submit grades. As an incentive, I am offering 1 bonus point per day that your team submits your collaborative project early up to 7 points (essentially one week early). If you need until Monday, Dec. 21 to complete the project, I want you to take it, but if your team is done early and feels good about your deliverables, you may turn it in early and receive the bonus points.

Any individual projects and weekly writing assignments are also due by Monday, Dec. 21. If you haven’t done a project, please get it done and submit it (remember: something is better than nothing). If you have any questions about this, please email me at jellis

Student Website Examples

Remember, yours will be slightly different due to the different affordances and constraints of our current situation during the pandemic. Yours should have a landing/first page that includes your presentation video embedded on the page, a shared/viewable link to your analytical research report, and brief description of your project; a problem page summarizing your research; a solutions page summarizing your research; and an “About” page with short bios for each team member.

• Solar Panel Waste
• Subway WiFi
• Subway Contactless Payment System

Presentation Recording

The links below last week’s lecture might be useful, too.

• Local recording of Zoom meetings

Reminder

Review the lectures and links for the previous weeks that relate to the collaborative project.

Lecture

Analytical Research Report Presentation

• Life After Death by PowerPoint (what not to do with PowerPoint and other presentation software like Google Slides, which we will be using)
• Zoom Help > Audio, Video, Sharing, and Recording
• YouTube Help > How to Upload a Video

Analytical Research Report Website

• How to create a project on the OpenLab
• Help > Sites (look at the section on Building Sites)
• Your site should have:
  • a landing page with your presentation video embedded (copy and paste the link into the content section), a link to your Research Report Google Doc (Share > Anyone with the link), and a brief description of your project
  • an about page with bios (and photos if you choose to include them) of all team members
  • a problem page that briefly describes the problem and its background
  • a solution page that briefly describes/lists the solutions to the problem that you found

00:00 City Tech Writer Opportunity (Deadline extension to Nov. 30)
07:28 Using Doodle to Coordinate Team Meeting Times
23:35 Research Report
01:10:00 Weekly Writing Assignment

Greetings, all!

Make sure you watch and take notes on this week’s lecture. It covers submitting your Instruction Manual Project and beginning the Collaborative Project. Scroll down our OpenLab Course Site for detailed instructions and screenshots to help you with those things, too. And, watch for my emails that will announce your new teams for the Collaborative Project.

Office hours will be Nov. 4 from 3:00-5:00pm. I’ll post a link above beforehand.

In this week’s lecture, I review the Instruction Guide Project and introduce this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment: peer review of your Instruction Guide. Listen to the whole lecture for details.

00:00 Grades, Advisement, Vote, Jobs, Lynda.com
15:20 Instruction Manual Review
37:37 Weekly Writing Assignment

We’ve made it all the way to week nine! Woo-hoo! Pat yourselves on the back for hanging in there thus far!

In this week’s lecture, I discuss grades, time spent on the class, the instructional manual project, and this week’s weekly writing project. Here are the time stamps for the major points:

00:00 Grades, Time Spent on Class
25:44 Instruction Manual Readings
45:39 Instruction Manual Examples
01:25:22 Weekly Writing Assignment

Remember to scroll down to see posts below on this week’s weekly writing assignment and more information about the instructional manual project.

Take notes from the lecture and review the materials that I reference before jumping into this week’s weekly writing assignment.

Visit office hours from 3:00-5:00pm or email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu with your questions!

Greetings, all! I hope that you used this past week to get caught up on the Expanded Definition project and get some peer review feedback. As described in this week’s lecture and detailed in the new posts below on our OpenLab Course Site, I give you directions about submitting your Expanded Definition project and then discuss our next project, the 1500-2000-Word Instruction or Training Manual. At the end of the video, I go over this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, which is also detailed in a new post below. Remember to watch the lecture, read the new posts, visit office hours on Wednesday 3pm-5pm, and email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu with your questions!

This week, I propose shifting the scheduled work to Week 8 and using Week 7 to catch up on the 750-1000-Word Expanded Definition Project. This means, I want you to use the time that you would have spent watching a longer lecture to work on your Expanded Definition: complete your first draft, give and receive feedback via peer review, get additional peer review during your drafting (as per the short lecture above), and complete a final draft of your Expanded Definition, which I will give you instructions for submitting next week.

There’s no additional Weekly Writing Assignment–complete peer review by giving and receiving feedback to receive that credit.

We will pick things up on submitting your Expanded Definition and beginning the Instruction Manual Project next week. If you have questions after watching the lecture above, email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu or stop by my office hours on Wednesday, Oct. 7 between 3:00pm-5:00pm or by appointment.

Grades are almost ready on the Article Summary Project. I’m very proud of the work many of you put into your work. Of course, I hope you will all consider revising your writing to make it even stronger before it goes into your professional portfolio or for a publishing opportunity.

Also, check out the Opportunities link in the navigation menu on the left for some things that I talk about in the lecture that would be beneficial to you.

In this week’s lecture, Prof. Ellis reviews the Expanded Definition Project so far, discusses searching for definitions and context sentences in greater depth, and explains this week’s weekly writing assignment posted above.

00:00 Housekeeping and Review
00:30 Searching for Definitions and Context Sentences
01:15:00 Weekly Writing Assignment