A significant percentage of your grade for this course will be built on online participation and interaction. You will be expected to maintain good "netiquette" throughout the course in your online discussions with your teacher and your fellow classmates. Skim "The Core Rules of Netiquette" at albion.com to give yourself an idea of what constitutes proper "etiquette" on the Internet.
Take a moment to introduce yourself to your classmates.
Rathing than send you directly to written advice on how to design a website (or webpage), I have chosen to start this unit by asking you to look at websites and evaluate them using your own best judgment.
Find three websites that you like. Link to these sites from your "blog" or "wiki" page, along with brief descriptions (3-5 sentences) explaining what you like about their website designs. These websites can be on any subject you choose, provided that they remain school-appropriate (i.e no pornographic and/or virus-riddled sites). The focus of your analyusis should be on the page of the site that you link to directly (which does not need to be the home page), but you are welcome to also discuss the site design as a whole, should you choose a site with multiple pages.
Browse through some of the links your classmates have posted. On a minimum of four of our class "blogs," post ratings for the websites your colleagues have chosen. Use a scale of 1 to 5 "stars" (5 being exquisitely well-designed and 1 being an assault upon your optic nerves). Include a brief description (1-2 sentences) with each rating, explaining why each site received the score that it did. As you comment on your fellow students' posts, remember that our goal here is to make sure that everyone in the class receives feedback on their selections, so try to comment on the "blogs" that have the fewest comments first.
Once you have received at least two "comments" on your blog post, examine your website selections once again. Did your classmates' comments offer you any new insights? Come to class on Friday prepared to discuss your choices from the standpoint of website design.
Your first major writing assignment in this course will be a "Review Essay." Taking the reviews that we look at in class as examples, write your own review and post it to your PB Works page. You may critique anything you choose (a movie, book, newspaper, restaurant, apartment complex, etc.) as long as it meets with approval by the instructor. While the essay itself will be used primarily as a diagnostic tool to help me familiarize myself with your writing styles and abilities, the essay is mandatory and not completing the essay will negatively affect your participation score.
For starters, a review should include, at minimum:
How do you explain your opinions about something? One option is to examine your criteria for success. For example, if you are reviewing a film, criteria for that film might be:
However, you cannot limit your evaluation to simply saying, "It had a good cast, a good plot, gorgeous scenery, etc." That's taking the easy way out. You must also establish how you define a "good" plot and "intelligent" dialogue. What makes something good? What makes something beautiful? Does "beautiful" have a different meaning when applied to the elements of a movie than it does when applied to, say, the design on a T-shirt or the composition of a painting?
Feel free to write your review from your own perspective. Don't worry about making your review sound dry, objective and academic. (One of the best-kept secrets of academia is that the best academic papers aren't "dry" anyway.) If you believe that your response to a particular novel, TV show or piece of performance art is strongly influenced by your own personal experiences, you are welcome--though not required--to mention them.
Carefully read the Orpheus and Eurydice poems listed on the "Readings" page of this site. Come to class this Wednesday prepared to offer 3 well-thought-out comments or questions about the readings. As you look over these poems, I ask you to think about how reading the modern versions affects your reaction to the Ovid translations and how, conversely, the Metamorphoses excerpts influence your readings of Atwood, Doolittle and Graham.
Select three poems. For the purposes of this assignment, we will be defining "poem" as broadly as possible. Your poems can be classically structured verse, modern free verse, song lyrics or anything else you can successfully argue constitutes poetry. I will be choosing from among your poetry recommendations to use in this Friday's in-class assignment. If you are feeling particularly brave, you are welcome to turn in poems of your own creation, but keep in mind that, if you do so, you are automatically giving us the option of analyzing and critiquing your pwork this upcoming Friday.
Send me copies of your poems and their sources OR send me a list of your poem choices accompanied by links that I can use to find your selections.
The final deadline for this assignment is 3 pm Thursday.
As a group, decide on the overall plan for your Small Group Project. Individually, submit a 2 page project proposal that outlines both the project itself and your personal responsibilities in the production of the project. This proposal is due Monday, February 1.
Write one substantial response (one or two well-structured paragraphs) on Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush" or the musical Into the Woods. Post it to your PB Works page. Read the PB Works comments of three of your fellow students and post responses to them by Wednesday, February 3.
Go to the Gatorlink web site. (You will need to sign in remotely if you are accessing the site from off-campus.) Click on "modify." Click on "Web Page." Follow the instructions for setting up your web space.
"Webcomic Blogging Posts": Write short responses to 3 webcomics. Remember to think about format and presentation. Only 1 of the 3 webcomics you discuss in these responses can be from the list you received in class; you must "discover" the others on your own.
You might want to take advantage of some online webcomic lists/search engines, like Online Comics and The Webcomic List. Warning: The Online Comics site is down a lot.
Read the handout on "the fidelity issue" and "classifying adaptations" excerpted from the 2006 McGraw-Hill textbook, Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature by John Desmond and Peter Hawkes.
Look up the following terms using your Adaptation textbook and the IMDB Film Glossary. You are not required to write down the definitions, but feel free to take notes.
Now watch (all or part of) a movie, television show, etc. Give yourself at least ten minutes, and try to mark the beginning and end of one full "scene." What kind of camera angles (and other techniques) are being utilized? Are there any close-ups, long shots, pans or tilts? What are their functions? Do they help the scene or hurt it?
Come to class on Friday prepared to talk about your discoveries.