Reminders for ENG 1101, M9/17

Project #1 was due by the end of the day last Wednesday, 9/12. Be sure you submitted it on the FYLC site, choosing “2018 Spevack and Rosen” as your category.

The Project #1 Cover Letter was due by Thursday, 9/13, in my mailbox in N512. I only received a few. Please have these available for me at the start of class.

For Project #2, we got off to a slow start because we didn’t have time to draft in class. Some of you have started drafting on our site, which is great. Take some time to draft on your own, and we will do some in-class drafting on Monday 9/17 as well. Please have spent some time thinking about all parts of the assignment, and have chosen an avatar. When you write about it, it would be good to include a larger version of the image than the thumbnail of you in your avatar, if only for the purposes of analyzing the image.

You will have completed the viewing part of your homework before tomorrow: Watch “Ways of Seeing” Part 1video. However, we have not discussed our blogging guidelines. Please come to class prepared to discuss the video, and we will discuss our blogging guidelines for the semester.

Finally, I asked that everyone be up-to-date with glossary entries. Since tomorrow starts Week 3 for us, that means you should have completed 2 glossary entries so far. We will do some critiques, so it’s essential we have a good supply to work with!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reply here or to get in touch with me directly. Thanks to anyone who asked questions because that helps me know what isn’t clear.

See you soon!

Writing about Avatars

For Wednesday’s class, I’ve asked everyone to read three pieces about avatars: “Professional protocol when choosing a Skype avatar“; Chad Renando’s “An avatar analysis: Choosing your profile picture“; and Michelle Venetucci Harvey’s “Design avatars that make sense — and be more inclusive in the process.” These are different types of readings, from message board to researched article. What ideas stand out to you? Think about this both from the point of view of someone choosing an avatar as well as from the point of view of a design student.

To complete the written portion of the homework assignment, add comments to this post that respond to this question: What ideas from these readings stand out to you as you consider choosing an avatar that represents you on the OpenLab, and as you are now officially Communication Design students. Choose two ideas to write about in a comment, and if someone has already written about the idea you wanted to write about, find something to say that adds to what that classmate (or those classmates) have written, rather than just repeating. You can use the @ to refer to someone else in the class ( e.g. you can mention @jrrosen when asking me a question), so please use that feature to refer to previous points or to bring someone back into the conversation. That means that you should expect to come back into the conversation, commenting on at least 2-3 classmates’ ideas.

We haven’t yet discussed our blogging guidelines and goals, which means we also haven’t set when work for our class is due online. Let’s say for this time, you should add your comment with enough time for classmates to comment back by the start of our class–we will adjust that deadline in the near future for upcoming work.

 

ENG 1101: Class notes

How do we annotate a text?

  • highlighter: important words; phrases you can use as evidence; words you don’t understand; main idea or main argument
  • notes in the margin: summary; make connections; definitions of words you learned; your opinions/ideas in conversation (or argument!) with the author’s; questions (clarification OR springboard)
  • underline
  • double underline
  • squiggly line
  • star
  • bracket: something you agree with or want to call attention to, etc
  • + and – for pros and cons
  • circle: words to look up; key terms
  • arrows: addendum to margin notes; connect ideas across the page
  • notes at the end

What are our ground rules for collaboration?

  • clear communication
  • ask questions
  • make sure everyone understands you
  • time management
  • be open to different ideas
  • roles: work an equal amount, but not all in the same modes
  • challenge ourselves
  • teamwork: we all bring different strengths together to reach our goals
  • enjoy
  • be respectful

Look at avatars on the OpenLab.

  • what do you think individual members’ avatars represent? groups’ avatars?
  • first look at the image, then at the profile

Introducing ourselves

Although we introduced ourselves in class briefly, and we’ll introduce ourselves more formally in Project #2, please write an introduction here as a way to help us get to know each other better. Aim to write 250-300 words. This is your chance to say all the things you forgot to say in class, or to say again all the things you crafted and said brilliantly. You might add what your academic interests are, what the highlight of  your high school experience was, what you hope to find at City Tech, etc.

If you have successfully created an OpenLab account, log in before you comment so the system can recognize you. Otherwise, fill in the required information and get started!

Check back again and reply to at least 3 of your classmates, asking questions or letting them know about shared interests.