WCW Syllabus Spring 2013

Tues 15

Intros
Required text Jonathan and Lisa Price. Hot Text: Web Writing that Works. New Riders, 2002. Amazon.
You will need Price by the weekend.
Optional but useful: get a markdown or plain text editor for your computer. Do not use MS Word for materials that will end up in TIO.
Intro to the wiki
SettingUpAWikiNamePage
GettingStarted
FormattingRules

for Tues 22 Jan

Read Price, chaps 1 - 2: Niche audiences, personas, relationships with readers.

Tues 22 Jan

Review your wikiname pages
Questions about images, alignment, borrowing code ...
Review Price, chap 1 - 2

First writing project: personas

Start a new page on your wikiname page, titled AutoBiographies - followed by your initials (as in AutoBiographiesMCM). On that page, draft three 250 word autobiographies for your online writing, following advice from Price about persona, stance, and attitude, pp. 31 - 34. Include an image if possible (link to image on Facebook or elsewhere.) One or more of these, or a variation of one or more, revised, will eventually be published on TIO.

Thurs 24 Jan

Review work with personas: PersonaAnalysisExercise. You should finish this by the end of the class meeting today.

for Tues 29 Jan

Next week, I want to start generating ideas for TIO: What kind of articles to add, what else to do. Over the weekend, visit TIO and read a few pieces - critically. Make some mental notes.
Also, make some written notes. Go to ArticleIdeasForTIO and list 6 - 12 or so ideas. It's a wikinotes page, and you're not committing to writing them. But add some, comment or add to other ideas already there. Add your initials to those you wish to take credit for. Or leave them off.
Read Price, chap 3 - 4: A psychology of reading on the web: considering the constraints of reading on the web, and focus as a payoff.

Tues 29 Jan

Price, chap 3 - 4: A psychology of reading on the web: considering the constraints of reading on the web, and focus as a payoff.
Proposing articles: ProposalTemplate
Ongoing: ArticleIdeasForTIO as they occur to you.

Thurs 31 Jan

Workday: Proposals. Plan to have at least one proposal ready to look at by the end of the day. Earlier is better, and we can look at those that you finish during the workday.

Tues 5 Feb

Workday. I'll look over proposals that need approval and set deadlines.

update 6 Feb 9:30 pm

Work day.

Prof Morgan is ill. Face to face class cancelled. Continue working on drafts. I'll comment if possible. Try logging into TIO. Check this page again about class time on Thursday.

I'm still snowed in. I have commented on drafts that were posted by this morning so you can continue drafting. I won't be in, but you are, so you can use the time drafting, helping each other out, and getting ready for Thursday.

I'll monitor my email (mmorgan@bemidjistate.edu) and Twitter (@mcmorgan, hash tag #en4169) from 12:00 - 1:15 if you have questions.

Editing fix: Upped privs to writers to Publisher. Can post, save, etc from the front-end w/o further permission.

If you haven't posted a draft to the wiki, please post it to either the wiki or to TIO do so we can both look at it.

What Needs To Be Done

All the articles I've seen need links. You can prepare them on the wiki, or move your draft to TIO and link there.
All the articles I've seen need to be focused on an audience of one. They are addressed too broadly to make purchase on the web, where commitment to attention and commitment to continue reading is low. Price, pp 26, pp 31, pp 78. Attitude. "Lust, greed, envy, curiosity, ...ambition, rage, vanity ..." Price, 79, or more moderate consideration, singular interest. But, above all, a focus on a small group, an audience of one. All under your control. You're writing for a micro-sector. You have something else to offer that differentiates what you're writing from the 1000s of others saying much the same thing.

Thur 14 Feb

We'll move articles that are ready for tighter editing to TIO so you can begin to add images and heads.

Tues 19 Feb

Workday > publish: edit, tighten, refine
Review bios in context. May want to tighten them.
Add email link at end.

Thurs 21 Feb

Workday > publish: edit, tighten, refine
Articles that are ready will go out on Friday, 22 Feb, by 6:00 pm.
Not ready, wait until next issue.

Deadline

Deadline for articles on wiki or in TIO: 14 Feb. We'll move articles that are ready for tighter editing to TIO so you can begin to add images and heads.
To publish on 19th 21st 22nd.

for Tues, read chaps 5 and 6.

Tues 5 Mar

workday
new articles started
notes on promotion. Thanks to Matt.
Use @thisisonline and #BemidjiState. #en3177 for Weblogs and Wikis. Others?
Time your promos to upcoming events.
spring break coming. book buying coming. speechifying coming?

Thurs 7 Mar

Work from home day

Tues 19 Mar

promote via Twitter, tied to registration
Deadline of 22 Mar for 1 April
review chaps 5 - 6
Work time: serious editing with a consideration of Chaps 5 - 6

Thurs 21 Mar

workday
Near-complete drafts up on TIO and ready to review by Friday. Place in Ready to Publish.
Check TIO Sunday or Monday to see if yours has been returned to Being Edited.
Final day for April is Mar 26, end of day.

for Tues, read Price. Chap 7: Links

Tues 26 Mar

Review and workday
Some review of articles. Log in and you'll be able to see your drafts as published. Some need visual editing.
Some need formatting and metadata: See below
Final versions for April issue are due at end of day.

21 Mar: ready

CM Punk
My Peace Corps Journey
First-Time Travel Writing

Thurs 28 Mar

Price. Chap 7: Links: Discussion
You will find Price's advice on links violated all the time, and that contributes to difficulty reading on the web - not because it's inherently difficult but because we don't know how to make it easy. We've had 600+ years of print to figure it out. Spaces between words, punctuation marks, line length, fonts, page numbers, paragraph markers, tocs, indices, footnotes, sidebars, running heads, page size, kinds of paper … We've had 20 years of the web.
Next article: Articles that make interesting use of links. Comb Price, chap 7 - and especially chaps 11 - 15: Genres for ideas. Comb the web for ideas.
Proposal on the wiki by Tuesday, Friday, 5 April.

Tues 2 April

work time

Thurs 4 April

Update: 9:00 am

Prof Morgan is ill. Face to face meeting of the class is cancelled until Tuesday. But please take the time to review some of the ideas below to develop an article that makes interesting use of links. Comb Price, chap 7 - and especially chaps 11 - 15: Genres for ideas. Comb the web for ideas.

- Proposal on the wiki by Tuesday, Friday, 5 April.
I'll check for proposals on the wiki Thursday and Friday and will respond.

Tues 9 April

Heavy Linking

Next article: Articles that make interesting use of links. Comb Price, chap 7 - and especially chaps 11 - 15: Genres for ideas. Comb the web for ideas.
I've reviewed and commented on some proposals. Check RecentChanges. I'm developing a page on HeavyLinking to help us think this through. I'll work with you individually today to get things moving for this last article.
Bring HotText. I might want to refer you to the chapters on genres.

Thurs 11 April

Workday
Give yourself time to develop this article closely and carefully, over repeated passes.

Tues 16 April

work day. Deadline coming Thursday.
writing for interaction
Drafts in TIO by Thurs 18 April

Tues 23 April

draft feedback

What I'm seeing in drafts

The links seem to be providing exposition to the main ideas rather than spelling them out as we typically do. The semantic/semiotic connection between where the link leaves and where it ends up is suggested rather than stated. That means that the leaving point of the link has to somehow direct how the connection is interpreted. (Linking shows just how much we do interpret the connections and how much work we do for readers.)

You can see how this juxtapositoning works to create and re-create meaning in Anna's disney princess, second para, with placement of doll next to text describing dinner at the Green Mill (pink - green - duh!). It's that kind of richness I think we can achieve through linking to other material outside the essay: the idea is placing elements/artifacts that must? can? be interpreted in contrast to the main essay. (That runs against we typically use links.) See Anna's links to Mulan, et al.

Suggest: open links in the same window.

The stress point is in how to get a suggestion of the direction to take things in the link text or surrounding text. Another might be in locating a source that works, throws the focus on the source you want the focus to take: eg, the Disney Site v the text of Grimm's version of Rapunzel.

Might try suggesting where the reference is going by quoting a bit from the target. by alluding to where the link is going. by adding an in-line image. by calling out the link in a list or some other way ...

work day
final versions ready by end of day Thursday

Tue 30 April

donuts and debriefing
final final (ahem!) edits due by midnight, 30 April
(I'll be evaluating by what and how much I have to edit.)

Deadlines

Drafts in TIO by Thurs 18 April
Final drafts by end of day Thurs 25 April Fri 26 April. Sentence-level editing for concision and impact. Use heads for ditto,

Heavy Linking Ideas

Most of these links point to materials on hypertext essays - essays made of chunks that link internally. I'm asking more for a single text that links out. However, there are starting points in these materials.

http://www.mshogue.com/ce9/hypertext/htx_essay.htm
http://21centurytext.wordpress.com/glossary/vol-i-no-1/text-and-hyptext-in-the-digital-age-by-yosef-gotlieb/
Hypertext essay assignment, c. 2002. Many of the links are defunct. You might be able to find the links via google.
Hypertext gardens, Mark Bernstein.
Hypertext Patterns, Mark Bernstein.

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