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ancient rhetorics & dp

I love this book (Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students). I felt I was limited to just one book for the course, so I picked more of a how to with digital publishing software. But if could have another….it would be this….maybe I can just build lectures around it to give in class and scan a chapter or two.

Where is the scanner at PNC? I have a lot to learn about the campus tomorrow….

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working toward a doable schedule

For my course, I know students need to master the four basic principles of design:

  • repetition
  • contrast
  • proximty
  • alignment

Not really all that difficult, right? Along the way, I’d like them to engage with writing and theory–theories about the space and genres they’ll work in to achieve projects while incorporating the four design principles.

With that in mind, I’m thinking of several projects:

  • research and create a website about some space/place in the local community (including images, video, drawings?, & text)
  • a wikipedia article
  • a newsletter (maybe for a department on campus that doesn’t have one, if such a department exists)
  • I’m also considering having them write around one central topic and compling these into a *free* text to be published on Amazon–but this is ambitious, and no topic has been chosen
  • if possible, I’d love it if they’d be open to writing a short story to compile, but that may be reaching for the stars
  • finally, they will create a digital portfolio of their work in the course, and I’d like this to include their resume

This is a lot, so I really have to whittle it down to maybe 3 projects + portfolio. Which ones would you want to do if the choice were up to you?

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from scholarly/cultural or cultural/scholarly–tons of great resources for dp

I’ve run across a few more forward thinking sites….

booktwo: I like this site even if I’m not sure I can fully understand it all of the time.

Text from dog: I enjoyed this, and it’s quite true. 🙂

Dan Cohen: Again, a great site for thinking about concepts related to dp–and bonus! Victorians.

Jep: a scholarly journal on electronic publishing–quite a few readings could be used in class to begin to think about different texts and how to work within and beyond textual parameters.

Workshop Digital Publishing Resources–what can I say other than wow? The list of free software resources for writers here is amazing. However, I would caution readers that it’s not as easy as it seems. For example, I have worked with Scribus–it’s dang hard! The documentation is not all that it should be. Perhaps this is a project for tech writing students…..

At some point, I’m going to have to start boiling this down into a firm syllabus with definite readings. Feel free to chime in with what you like and what you’d just ignore…..

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A Good Example and Possible Projects

Kairos is a great example of a digital publication: http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/

It’s also a great place to spark ideas! Now I’m considering a project on place/space in the local community and bringing that together in the digital place/space. It could be a problem in the community, or just research about a place and the politics (gender, economic, and so on) that relate to the space. Hmmm….the possibities are endless! These could then be brought together in a digital publication.

On another note, Wikipedia is certainly a digital space and a place where writing intersects in very real ways with a wider audience and critics. Teaching students how to negotiate, revise, and articulte the value of their writing and research in such a discussion about their writing with anonymous critics might be time well spent.

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Resources I’ve Found Helpful

Parker, Roger C. Looking Good in Print. 6th ed.

 

 

 

Williams, Robin. The Non-Designer’s Design Book. 2nd ed. (This really covers the four design principles in depth.)

Nielsen, Jakob. Writing for the Web. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html  (This is an online text. Any new writers even thinking about Writing for the Web should read all of the links. You betcha–my students will be!)

Planned Obsolescence. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence/ (a more scholarly online text about dp).

Ross, Marylin and Tom. Self-Publishing Resources. http://selfpublishingresources.com/  (Online site with tons of great information and links.)

I am sure this list will continue to grow–I haven’t even really started adding material for blogging, so more helpful resources are in the future!

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WTF is Metadata?

Honestly, I don’t know if this is above and beyond the 390 level or not: http://getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.html

Do we need to get into Metadata? Probably we do, but I’ reluctant to bring up the whole concept because it’s tough to get a handle on it.

So what is metadata, really? It’s really a slippery term, isn’t it?  Depending on what field you’re in, you might see the definition as something totally different from my definition.

Let’s work together and define metadata as “data about data.”

Still confusing? Geesh, I think so.

Think about a library catalogue or database–what you look up is information about the book–not the book. Ah, so it’s data about the data.

boo

For example, look at the image. The metadata for this image is not the picture itself but what is in the picture, the autor of the picture, and so on. Data about the data.

When we’re building a website or page, we’re usually concerned about the layout first–so there really may be no data(content) to be about. Ugh! So here, we’re talking about the data about the container or site.

I think we have it! Of course, we have yet to cover Metadata tags, but that’s another story on another day.  I realize that this is a very difficult concept–the reading might or might not help. I’d love to hear what you think about the reading in terms of assigning it in a class.

This is an important concept for any type of publishing, but especially the type of multimodal publishing we’ll be engaging with in the course. You’ll need to be able to discuss your metadata in a scholarly manner–so be sure and get it down now!