Quick Reminders about Presentations

You should already have, via text, a copy of our presentation schedule. If you're not on it, be prepared to go Thursday, since that's where we have the only open slots. By the way, I'll have some treats for class; feel free to bring something if you like, on any of the presentation days :) We will of course be in A271, our "normal" classroom.

Some reminders, then:

• Look at the assignment to be sure you're meeting contract requirements. I've already shared the rubric, but here it is again (click to expand it):

• Practice your talk so that it fits within the 3-5 minute range. There are word count speech calculators online, but some of it depends on how fast you talk. Try not to talk fast, please! If you speak at an "average" rate, according to the calculator above, you can fit 500-600 words in the 3-5 minute mark.
• For the slideshow part of this, here's a quick example of what I'm expecting. That's it! Just the photo, filled out on the screen, so we can all look at it while you tell us about it. No text or talking points (feel free to have notes, cards, whatever helps you--we just don't want you to read to us). I would be okay with you having an additional slide or two if a close up of the image is relevant, or if an alternate take or two is relevant. 
• More help: the example photo I shared was of Baby Jessica, famous years ago for falling down and being rescued from a well. One of my online students is writing about the photo, and here's her rough draft of her talk. Probably, it will highlight for you many challenges of the project. Using the rubric above, you can see how this one does. I think it's a very strong draft so far, from someone who is an A writer in that class. It's very specific, organized and focused, for one. It cites sources as we would in a speech, for two. But I do think it's missing a key content feature: it doesn't explore much the composition of the photo, and ultimately why the photo, in combination with the story, make that image so famous. She's going to work on that (she got bogged down, as I'm sure many of you are, in the details of the related story). Also? This is probably too long, clocking in at 750 words or so. Concision is key. My advice is to stay true to the focus, and cut out the things that aren't relevant to the conversation.
• Finally, on the day of your talk you'll submit a copy of your photo to me, along with your Works Cited page. I don't need your notes or slideshow link. Just those two documents!

Just So It's Posted

Here's the slideshow from class the other day; it has no text, but it's at least a reference point for those of you who were there :)

Revising the Narrative: Structure

This is a slideshow we'll work with in class today to help you refine the structure of your Project #1's, where you're shaping a story about an object that's important to you.

On Writing Captions from a Perspective, and Citing Sources

We'll use this slideshow today in class, and I've written notes into it that explain the slides.

Editing Helpers for the Photo Essay as Well as the ePortfolio

As we get moving with polishing our writing, here are some editing helpers for you to work with on your own . . .

But in class we'll work with the following slides to think about editing issues.

Also, here are some tips on what to capitalize in the titles of your photo essay as well as of individual photos.

More Caption-Writing Help, and Some Work on Slide Order

In this morning's survey, it's clear that many of you want some additional pointers on the writing of the captions. I think looking at a prior student's draft of the project can help. This is Summer's photo essay on Chinatown, from an historian's perspective. There's a lot to like about this piece, but I'm hoping you'll notice, based on what we've been working with, how some key aspects of the work need some attention.

As a reader, try to notice whether Summer helps give you any context for what the piece is trying to do. Take the title and first slide, for instance. If you just came across this photo essay online, what kinds of guesses would you make about what its purpose was? And how much would you really want to get into it and read more? Second, see if you can make some sense of the order of the slides—is there a way to take this content and make a logical progression for readers? Finally, do you think some of the material is coming from a source? Do we have a responsibility to tell readers where the information is coming from?

In class, we're going to try to work with these issues, and the following links are to examples we'll discuss together and analyze:

• Summer's Photo Essay, reordered.
• Summer's Opening slides, rewritten.

I think you'll notice a few things, namely that the original photo essay has a random order to the material. Consider as well that the captions are about history—but ultimately none of them help readers understand a history of Chicago's Chinatown! Too, I think you can see with the rewritten slides the value of setting a context for readers somehow. As you work on your own projects, please just try to imagine real readers coming across this thing. What are we going to learn?

Also, as we said in class, please remember that this photo essay is clearly plagiarizing some material from a source. The rewritten first slide shows you (as did the Whole Foods examples) how you can handle any source material you deem necessary to include :)

Slideshow on Perspective

Here's something we'll use in class today to help you see ways to write the captions . . .

Lab Helpers Today (3/8)

I have a horribly sore throat today, gang, and I will try and speak as little as possible today. You're going to have some time to work, and here's our plan:

1. I do want you to share your draft with your "row": so whoever is sitting in your lab row, please set up shares for the profile draft. As we did last time, go into those other drafts and leave some comments, but try to focus on what you think might be "missing" in the draft. If there aren't a lot of quotes, leave a simple question about that (Will you add more?). If there are no stories, you can comment on that (A story would really be great . . .). If there's no organization, or the structure isn't engaging for you as a reader, you can probably find a way to say something about that (I got most engaged in X section . . .). Please don't just leave a lame pat on the back. Or say, "good draft!" Offering up ONE or TWO serious comments would be better than leaving platitudes strewn about; plus, even though you think you're being polite with that kind of thing, you're actually being a bit of the opposite. 
2. I do have a handout with tips on how to punctuate quotes and edit them. You can Google to find answers to other questions you have, when you have them. It would take you 30 seconds, likely, to get an answer about how to use quote marks. Figure it out.
3. Continuing on with editing, here's the slideshow we worked with today on TRANSITIONS!
4. The final draft of the profile, because it involves you citing research (your interview!), requires a Works Cited page. Here's how to do that entry, since you won't find an example for it on Fister (that MLA guide that's our required text for the course):
   
   Smith, Jane. Personal interview. 12 Oct. 2014.
   
   Remember, at the end of that essay, you should make a Page Break (find that on the Insert menu), since a Works Cited page needs to be on its own page at the end of your paper. At the top of that page, type "Work Cited" (since there's only one "work"!), then give us your entry after that. 

Interview Question Workshop

Here's the slideshow from today's class.

What You Should Do for Tuesday, 2/23

There's no survey for next class, but I want you to continue with the work we started today. Given that it would be ideal to interview someone next week or next weekend at the latest, you should consider:

• The time frame for the project (in fact, READ the project now, posted under "Project Requirements" in the menu above, if you haven't already). 
• Your possible interviewee's and your schedule—can you make it work, given the deadlines?
• What focus you'd have with that person. If it's their job or some other activity they do, is there a chance you could interview them at that location? It would be helpful for some of the observable details you'd have for inclusion in the piece.
• How close you are to the interviewee. That is, be forewarned that interviewing a significant other, a parent, a sibling . . . can be a challenge. Sometimes the piece ends up being more about YOU and how much you love/admire them. A profile isn't about you. Sometimes the piece ends up being unfocused, because you're so close to the person you can find a focal point, and so write about everything. If you interview someone close, try to be as objective as you can, and still set up a formal interview time. Also, word of advice: keep yourself out of the essay. 
• Get working on writing questions. In fact, I'd like you to BRING A DOZEN QUESTIONS, TYPED. I'LL BE COLLECTING THEM AND COUNTING THEM AS AN ACTIVITY. If it helps, here are the sample Q's we looked at in class, and here is the slideshow, too.

Slideshow from Class 2/16 on Profiles

This slideshow captures some of your survey comments, but it also presents some of the features of a written profile . . .

Slideshow from the Lab, 2/11

We'll shift to revision and editing today, and the activities we'll do in the lab are captured in this slideshow. We're working with larger to smaller concerns as a little introduction to revision, so we'll examine things like structure as a whole, but also sentence level issues as well--especially those that pertain to style and not just mechanics.

Commenting on Drafts, Inserting Photos

Two things from class today. One, here is the slideshow we used in class re: leaving comments for others in Drive.

Also, here are steps for getting a photo into your draft for tonight's 11:59 PM deadline. The easiest way is to use the Google Drive app on your phone (there's a link off the blog to the app, under Tech Tools). If you have the app, you can simply touch the add button within it, then choose your photo. It will copy the image to your drive. Alternatively, you could email the file to yourself, then add it easily to your Drive.

Once the image is in Drive, you can go into your draft file, then go to INSERT--IMAGE. There are the usual options for selecting the picture.

Once the image is dropped in, you'll want to probably make it smaller (just drag the corner handle on the image), and place it on either the left or right margin. To wrap the text, click the image, then choose Wrap Image (that command will appear below the image). Don't place the image in the middle of the page, as we can't read the text easily if you do so.

That's it! Be sure to share your file with me by 11:59 PM. :)

Lab Materials from Class 2/2

Group, I'm just sharing with you here the slideshow on writing about an object, as well as the draft of my "raft" story. Hope they help! A few comments about both:

• the slideshow is really pushing you to think about what to do once you're in the process of generating all those details about your object and it's story. In other words, how might you use that "prewriting" to make an actual draft for a reader? There are several approaches there, along with my own examples. My object in that case is a book about how to write in shorthand.
• the "raft" example features two attempts to write a draft. The first one I would consider my initial draft, and even though it's organized, I think it's not as interesting as the beginning of the second one. The tip here is to consider the TIMELINE of your narrative, and to realize that telling everything in chronological order, from the beginning, might not be that interesting to a reader. The second version starts in media res, which means it starts in the middle of the action. I think it's a lot more engaging because of that, and maybe you do, too.

The PowerPoint on Written and Visual Communication

Just so you have it, I'm sharing the presentation from class today . . . right here.

Working with Captions, Organizing Photo Essay Material

Here's the slideshow from today's class, that features several examples of slides and captions written from different perspectives. The last slide illustrates how you can handle source material you bring into the file.