Introduction to Finality

Work to have done: Submit final-for-now group project, with source files

Plan for the Day:

Reorient; reflect. (5-10 min)
Transferring ownership of large file storage
Review: course goals and final portfolios (10-15 min)
Studio: make plans for final portfolio, introduction
EXT: Start homework

1. Reorient; reflect. (5-10 min)

Congratulations on reaching the final week of classes! Over the last fourteen weeks, you’ve composed with sound, with image, with code, and with each other.

As I’ve said before, one of my biggest goals is to help you feel more empowered to learn digital skills across contexts, not just for particular applications or tools. And, as I’ve also said before, one way to think about that is through metaphor (or, more specifically, simile).

What was it like to compose as a team? To what other activities might you compare it? Let your mind wander for a minute, and see what comes to mind when you start off thinking about the process of working collaboratively on your proposal, managing the project through interim plans and check-ins, and building or revising the product itself.
Would you use the same metaphor for the other kinds of digital composing you've used this semester? If not, what other metaphor would you propose?
Within the metaphors you've come up with, what strategies would help you continue improving? What strategies might that suggest in real life, i.e. outside of the metaphor?

Take 5ish minutes to think on the page. I won’t collect this, but I will suggest that you return to these when writing your end-of-semester reflection – over the next week! – and I will ask for some volunteers to share in a few minutes.

EXT: What personal skillsets do you feel like you now possess, that you might offer to a team of digital media composers? Has this changed over the course of the project? The semester?

Let’s hear at least 2-3 of these before we move on; they might spark some ideas for others!

2. Transferring ownership of large file storage

The main thing to work on today is preparing for the final portfolio, but there is one more thing I’d like to accomplish by the end of the semester – and today’s as good as any to start.

Apparently when you fork a project on GitHub that uses Git-LFS for large file storage, the data stored by every downstream fork counts against the storage quota of the owner of the original repository. In other words, I’m currently storing all the large files for your soundscapes and visual arguments. I’m fine doing that for one semester, but I can’t maintain it in perpetuity, because it starts to add up to real money.

So I’m asking you to “detach” your repositories from the fork tree before the end of the semester. Here’s how:

Open each project repo you forked from an assignment and copy its URL.
In the GitHub taskbar, at the top right, click the + menu and choose the "Import repository" option.
Paste in the URL from step 1, give the project a name, and begin import. It'll take at least a few minutes.
When you're notified that the import is successful, open it up to confirm that you still have your full project history.
Finally, delete the forked repository you started with in step 1, confident that you're not losing any of your work. To delete, go to the Settings tab, and head all the way to the "Danger Zone" at the very bottom.

3. Review: course goals and final portfolios (10-15 min)

The final reflection prompt, which we discussed last time, asks you to do two related things:

articulate your learning in the class, focused more on transferable skills than individual tools; and
introduce the specific projects in your portfolio, in the process illustrating or providing evidence for the first part’s claims.

In the interest of helping you connect that challenge to my own goals for the course, I’m re-copying here the major goals for each unit:

1. to learn how to capture sound and edit it using digital tools, and
2. to explore the affordances of sound as a medium, with particular attention to its ability to communicate immersive environment and narrative pacing and change;
3. to learn how to ethically obtain images and edit them using digital tools, and
4. to explore the affordances of still images as a medium, and especially their ability to direct attention and help make ideas memorable;
5. to learn how to manage a composite project made up of multiple interlinking files, and
6. to explore the affordances of the web design stack as a medium, and especially its ability to flexibly render content for multiple audiences or reading priorities;
7. to practice managing a complex project involving multiple team members, and
8. to assess your own skills as a digital media composer, to find ways you in particular can best contribute to a joint project

The main goal of the final portfolio is to help you integrate and consolidate the skills you've practiced across the semester.

I’m hoping that putting those goals in juxtaposition will help you find some throughlines and some axes of difference you can draw on as you reflect on the course as a whole.

4. Studio: make plans for final portfolio, introduction

Go to! If you have revisions of earlier projects to work on, now’s a good time.

Or if you want to start the reflection, get started!

And if you’re not sure what else to work on, you can get started on the homework below.

HW for next time

Read Paul Ford’s brief “Letter of Recommendation: Bug Fixes” from The New York Times Magazine (June 11, 2019).
Ford writes, “I read the change logs, and I think: Humans can do things.” Read back through your own change logs, i.e. the commit histories of your projects; skim through the lesson plans. What things have you done this semester?
Choose something from the course that you want to remember beyond this semester: a thing you or someone else made, or said, that struck a chord with you. Write this down somewhere; we’ll briefly share these next time.