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Midterm Reflections

Work to have done:

  • Your final-for-now Visual Argument / Rhetorical Collage (and a reflection on it)
  • Download and install the Atom text editor

Plan for the day:

  1. Midterm reflection (10-15 min)
  2. Share and discuss reflections + questions (30-40+ min)
  3. EXT: Reminder / reintro to Atom (10-15 min)

Midterm reflection

First, breathe for a minute. Be proud of what you’ve achieved!

And now I’m going to ask you to write just a little bit more, and then we’ll spend most of today in conversation. Sharing the writing itself will be optional, but I do hope everyone who can be here synchronously will share some thoughts aloud, using your notes as a starting point.

You've just written a reflection specific to your visual-rhetorical project; now, take a few minutes to write a broader reflection on the semester as a whole. Start with the question that speaks most to you right now, and then move on to others as you finish answering. We'll take about 10 minutes here.
  1. In the syllabus, I asked you to think about "the affordances of digital media: that is, what’s made possible by working with bits instead of paper, even when we are still working with words[...] How do the answers change, or shift, as we move beyond words into aural and visual modes?" Now that you've digitally crafted both sounds and images, you're in a better position to answer:
    • What's afforded (i.e. enabled, foregrounded, suggested) differently in these different media?
    • What strategies carry across them?
    • How do they extend or complicate your usual composition strategies in writing?
    EXT: What do you expect the affordances of a website will be?
  2. What, if anything, has surprised you over the course of the units so far (What Makes Digital Media New; Soundscapes and Soundwriting; Visual Rhetorics and Argument)?
  3. What changes, if any, have you found in the way you consume digital media? Have you found yourself noticing anything new, or differently?
  4. What questions are surfacing for you about the course content or assignment sequences?
  5. See if you can finish one of the following similes:
    • Writing with {sound, images} is like...
    • Writing with {Audacity, GIMP} is like...
    • Writing with version control (i.e. git/GitHub) is like...
    • Writing all these reflections is like...
    It's okay to be a little wacky here. Follow your instincts. If you have time, explain the connection.

EXT 1: If you have a solid metaphor or simile, something that feels true, what does that metaphor suggest you might do in the real world to continue learning and ‘leveling up’? If you don’t have one yet, go back and try to write one now.

EXT 2: Reflect on your goals for the course: given your goals and expectations when you began this class, what have you begun to learn? Combined with what you now know about our projects and scheduling patterns, what would you give yourself as a goal for the rest of the term?

Again, I won't collect these directly, but I will ask for volunteers to share as part of a discussion in today's class. That said, you should also keep them to help you develop your pitch for a consolidation/integration project, and as a snapshot of your progress to look back on (and possibly quote) in a final reflection for the end of the course.
To get credit for asynchronous participation,
  • Set yourself a 10 minute timer and do the writing above. Then
  • Head into Canvas to record a quick Flipgrid video – more than 30 seconds, less than 3 minutes – about one piece of what the writing got you thinking about.
    • (GitHub's issue queues are not equipped for streaming media, alas.)
    • Feel free to watch the class recording first, so you have the option of responding to what someone said in class!

2. Share and discuss reflections + questions (30-40 min)

Any volunteers to share?

Anyone have a different response?

Any outstanding questions, please post to the shared google doc

EXT: Reminder / reintro to Atom (10-15 min)

If time allows, we can start looking more closely at some of the affordances of Atom for multi-file project management. We’ve actually already done a little of the “what do you notice?” “what’s made easy?” questions, back in the day, so we don’t have to get too deep into those.

But I do want to share some of my favorite features:

  • Split panes
  • Markdown preview (which also includes the idea of extending Atom with packages)
  • Close current tag (same)

For next time:

No homework tonight! Wednesday is a pi.tt/selfcareday. Feel free to attend one of the many activities the university’s planned – or, conversely, to not schedule yourself up. (Weird, I know.) Do what feels right!

When we get back on Thursday, I’ll introduce the new unit: Webslinging with Markup.