Mid-Semester Check in

Last FRIDAY, you completed your first major project. Congratulations!

You should feel proud of yourself for making it past the first hurdle of this class. Now that you are used to navigating Wix, Twitter, and Canvas, you should feel more confident about the remainder of the course this semester. You are getting the hang of this 2135 thing.

THIS WEEK's TWITTER ASSIGNMENT: Listen to an episode from the Song Exploder podcast and tweet the things you learned about all the elements of composing an audio composition as opposed to a text-based composition.

We are getting into Project #2 now, and the first step is building your curation. It should be diverse: don't just post 10 movies, but also TV shows, podcasts, short stories, novels, webseries, flash fiction, and more.

How to finish the curation:

Once you have decided on your subgenre, define the 10 conventions of that subgenre, and located 10 examples, you must create a visually appealing hub for all your examples on your Project 2 page.

You are persuading your reader that your subgenre is the best and your examples are representatives of the best of that genre. To be convincing, your reader will need to easily be able to click on each example view its source.

You will be graded on:

Understanding of Conventions of the narrative subgenre and the Persuasive genre (is your convention definitions accurate? Are your examples plausible? Do your 50 persuasive words for each example convince the reader?)
Style and Design (Is it pleasing to look at?)
Accessibility (Do the link buttons work? Is it easy to find everything? Is it easy to read?)
Whether the curation fulfills the prompt (Do you meet the word counts? Do you have all 10 definitions of the sub-genre conventions? Do you have all 10 examples on the page?)

In the meantime...

Perhaps you don't feel super confident about how you did on Project #1 Draft 3. I have assembled a Revision Memo which you can complete for an opportunity to revise the paper again. On it, you must explain in your own words the feedback you received on the third draft (which you will receive in about two weeks or hopefully less) and explain what changes you wish to make in order to address that feedback. A revision could make up half of the points remaining, but only if you make substantial revision in accordance with the feedback. Don't expect to earn all the points for the placement of one comma. If you lost points because you submitted something late, those points cannot be made up.

Revision Memos should be emailed to me before 11:59 pm on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30. I will reply with further comments and the deadline for the final revision. (Revisions will eventually appear on your Wix page with all your other drafts).

Many of you might be ready to collapse under the heap of assignments coming at you, not just from this class but from all classes. Most of you are taking full course loads and--because of the nature of the semester--you likely have many deadlines next week. Because of the multiple looming deadlines, tempers might be short, sleep might be non-existent, and relationships may suffer.

Make time for sleep. Eat your veggies. Drink some water. Download a meditation app and be guided to bliss while you stand in the Starbucks line. Whatever you have to do to get through it, but don't take it out on each other.

REMEMBER: If you have questions about your grade, you must contact me via video conference during office hours. I cannot talk about grades via text-based digital communications. Additionally, any email that you might send in the heat of the moment after viewing your grades is going to come across as hostile, even if you are trying very hard for it not to be. I always ask students to wait 24 hours before emailing me about your grades, but honestly, the best plan of action is to set the video chat appointment and get some sleep. We can talk about my feedback when cooler heads prevail.

Don't forget: