Tag Archives: course news

[Course news] Final reminders for submitting the Remix video

Some final notes about posting your videos:

Be sure to carefully review the procedures for posting the videos to the portfolio page of your personal website on the Week 11 Detailed Schedule page.

One thing to remember: If you have never shared a video through a video sharing service before, keep in mind that it may take some time to upload the video (depending on the file size), and it can sometimes take a few (or many) minutes for the video to appear on the site after you upload it.

For these reasons, think about your file size when you save your video. If you have a slow internet connection, don’t max out the quality settings so that the video is >1GB, or it will never upload. And allow some extra time for the video to convert on the sharing site after it is uploaded.

As always, let me know if you have questions.

[Course news] Week 11 updates

I hope you all had a wonderful spring break. Here are some general updates.

Week 10 Grade Reports and peer review
Your week 10 grade reports are now available in your Google Drive folders. Please let me know if you have any questions about them. I saw much improvement in the quality of your peer review documents; there was a lot of excellent advice and helpful feedback. I am looking forward to seeing the final videos that you all produce.

Remix projects
Your remix videos are due before midnight on Friday. Because there are no other assignments due this week, I will delay posting your week 11 grade reports until I have finished grading this assignment.

Please consult the week 11 detailed schedule for information about posting the project to the portfolio page of your personal website.

If you have any last-minute questions about the assignment, please let me know. I will hold my regularly scheduled office hours this week and I will be available for other meetings if you are not free during that time.

Looking forward
Next week we will begin our final project, a collaboratively-produced website devoted to a compelling issue or cause. This group project will require you to bring together the various skills you have practiced during on your other assignments—creating a WordPress site, identifying (and practicing) rhetorically effective multimodal communication, video production—in a larger assignment that will allow you to also practice effective group work.

Your groups for this project will roughly reflect your hangout groups from Week 10. I will send an email to all of you at the beginning of week 12 identifying your group members and providing more details about the collaborative aspects of the assignment. Please begin reviewing the assignment description and the schedule for weeks 12-15 and let me know if you have any questions about the assignment or the group work process I have outlined.

In general, I think you all are doing excellent work in the class. We have entered a busy point of the semester as more and more work is coming due in your classes. Keep your focus and continue to work hard in the course so that you all can finish just as strongly as you have started.

As always, let me know if you have any questions for me.

[Course news] Hangout #3 agenda

Here is the agenda for Hangout #3.

  • Review video remix assignment description
    • Assignment requirements
    • My expectations
  • General video notes
    • Cellphone video dos and don’ts
    • Scrolling text legibility
  • Discuss style examples
    • Animation
    • Cutting
    • Movement
    • Detail
  • Discuss revision practices for videos (from W/D)
  • Discuss personal website submission 2
    • Don’t forget about this project
    • Be sure to review the assignment description
    • Considerations in moving your site
      • Moving portfolio
      • Updating me with new location

[Course news] Rubric updates for Remix assignment

As you prepare for your Remix assignment and get ready to review each other’s storyboards, I want to direct your attention to the rubric for this assignment. Specifically, I recently added additional description to the “Quality” and “Remix” descriptors on the rubric to make what I will be looking for in your videos and how they will be evaluated more clear.

These descriptors can be found on the course assignment page under the heading “Chapter remix grading.”

[Course news] Updates related to Doodle poll for Week 10 hangouts

I have emailed you all a link to the Doodle poll for the Week 10 hangouts. You should receive the email at your MIX address. As with the last poll, please add your name (no one else will see your schedule except me) and select all the time slots in the poll that you are available.

I have also updated the Week 8 detailed schedule with information about the time line for completing the poll. Your responses to the poll are due before midnight on Thursday, 3/5.  Please check the schedule for the complete details.

The time period when we will compete the hangouts is Saturday, Mar. 14 – Wednesday, Mar. 18. I will be traveling for a conference the following weekend, so I included the Mar. 14-15 in the poll to allow for some flexibility in our schedules.

 

[Course news] Personal websites due today at 5 p.m.

Wordpress logo

Remember, the first submission of your personal website is due before 5 p.m. today. You will submit the site by posting a link to it as a reply to the topic I created for this purpose on the “Personal Websites” forum. The complete instructions are on this week’s detailed schedule page. If you posted your link as a topic in that forum, please delete the topic you created and re-post your link on the topic thread per the instructions.

Remember, if you fail to post a link to your site before the 5 p.m. deadline, the project will be subject to the late penalties described in the policies section of the syllabus.

Some additional notes: I will not grade these projects until after 5, so they will not appear on your grade report this week. Unless I am unable to complete the grading before next week due to some emergency, your grades for this assignment will appear on next week’s report.

After I have graded your site, I will place my comments and completed rubric (outlined in the “Personal website grading” section of the assignment description) in your “Grades” folder on Google Drive. If you have not yet created this folder, you should do so immediately so you will not miss these reports.

You have until 5 to edit your sites, so please revisit the assignment description on the assignments page and make sure your site conforms to the requirements for the first submission of this project.

[Course news] Last chance to share schedule for hangouts

A multicolored, origami calendar

If you have not completed the Doodle poll indicating your schedule for Week 5, you will have two more days to do so.

If you do not complete the poll before Friday at midnight, I will be unable to take your schedule into account when creating groups for the multimodal analysis project, and this may make it more difficult for you and the other members of your group to schedule a common time to meet with each other.

I have sent a copy of the Doodle link to your MIX email accounts.

image via: Philip Chapman-Bell

[Course news] First grade report, quizzes, forum threading

Identifies reply button in BBPress forum postings

I sent the text of this post to your MIX email address.

  1. If you created your folders on Google Drive per the instructions here, I placed your grade report in your “Grades” folder. Please let me know if you have any questions about it. If you created this folder and did not receive your report, it is possible there was an error when you shared it with me. Revisit the instructions for creating and sharing these folders (located on the Week 2 detailed instructions) and if you still have problems with the folder, please contact me immediately.
  2. I have graded your quizzes. I created a copy of your quiz file in your “Quizzes” folder on your Google Drive with my comments and your grade. The file has the suffix “-jmj”.
  3. I was very pleased with the forum discussion on the readings from last week. Great work, everyone! I have turned on message threading on the forums to make it easier to reply to each other and follow conversations in the future. If you want to reply to an individual post, click the “reply” link above the message you want to respond to (see the image above).

If you have any questions about any of the above, please let me know. I will have in-person office hours and be online with Hangouts this afternoon (1/26) from 2-3:30 and be online tomorrow (1/27) from 10-11:30. If you need to speak to me, and you aren’t free during those times, either email me your question or schedule an alternative meeting time.