mfh writes "The BBC is reporting that approximately a million news stories from the 19th century are going online. The project will cost roughly $3.6 mil USD (converted from UK pounds) and include 100 years of news and images from publications that are no longer copyright protected, and currently only available at the Newspaper Library in Colindale, North London. 52000 newspapers and magazines will be included and the project should take 18 months to complete."
EN106ers commandeered the course two weeks ago; they organized, mobilized, demanded an opportunity to take the PowerPoint sequence one step farther by siphoning two speeches of historical import into slideshows...
We switched into groups for the speech conversion activity; they worked in clusters to remake Ursula LeGuin's "A Left-Handed Commencement Address," and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech into PowerPoint shows (admitting, along the way, that such gross reductions felt irresponsible). Their essays--due Tuesday--are framed loosely as critiques of the process, critiques of the other group's work at identifying key bits in the speeches. Here are their shows, if you're interested.
If I did this again, I would build in a round of peer response--some kind of interchange and revision for polishing the shows (this part of the process was left off due to time constraints in the semester). The best part of the sequence was our class session the other day when we started to talk about the process by borrowing the premise of the extreme makeover programs on television lately. We had a good time working through the transformation in light of the mad-dash grab-n-fix that is so popular on the tube. The Extreme makeover: discourse trope was fun and seemed to be an incredibly rich pop culture pass-card toward theorizing what PowerPoint does--and in ways we didn't appreciate as fully when we worked from the smattering of articles.
Note, the assignment is in Norwegian, but perhaps Jill will provide an English translation. (I looked for a babelfish-like tool to translate, but could not find one that handles Norwegian-to-English).
I wanted to point to a few resources for blogging among teachers and scholars in literature, composition and rhetoric that have emerged since the CCCCs conference. First, a list of blogs by teachers and scholars in composition, literature, and rhetoric hosted by Kairosnews.org. Second, a listserve growing out of the CCCC SIG for "comp/rhet/lit folk devoted to exploring the personal and professional applications of weblogs and wikis in teaching, writing, and research."
And I recommend her blog. Her tagline is, "Useful tools, sites, references, and opinionated commentary about technology, with particular attention to Instructional Technology and the Humanities, from the perspective of a Digital Medievalist."
Photos from a letterpress workshop that (I think) do a pretty good job of documenting the basic process of setting type, locking up the press, and the kind of equipment one sees in a print shop.
Awesome set of lesson plans, mini-lectures, and hands-on exercises for anyone interested in Oulipo, dada, electronic media, or other forms of experimental writing from someone named Siegel out of Virginia Tech.
We made haiku machines in class the other day. ;-)
To follow up on my previous offering of very basic web-page and weblog instructions, here are some further tips about blogging that I am about to distribute to my class of neophytes (introduces incorporating basic HTML, and adding links, comments, and Blogrolling).
Syllabi for my spring courses are now online. I'm teaching ENGL 467: Computer and Text for upper-level undergraduates and ENGL 668k: Introduction to Digital Studies for graduate students. The Computer and Text course, which is being served up with Liz Lawley's spectacular MT Courseware, has been overhauled to include more of an emphasis on procedural texts, interactive narrative, and gaming. I'd particulary like to have some feedback on the Choose Your Own Adventure assignment.
The Digital Studies course will get a vanilla MT blog some time soon; there still may be a little nip and tuck on either syllabus.
Recent Comments