Introduction to Finality

Work to have done: Submit final-for-now website, with source files, and reflection (turning in by midnight is also okay)

Plan for the Day:

1. Creative writing as a tool for critical thinking (15 min)
2. Final Portfolio Preview and Consolidation Unit Goals (10-15 min)
3. Generative Writing and Self-Assessment (15 min)
4. Studio time: website or a new proposal (30 min)

1. Creative writing as a tool for critical thinking (15 min)

Congratulations on reaching the end of the web unit! The unit reflection is due tonight at 11:59pm; I know some of you have already finished it.

Whether you have or not, I’d like you to take a few minutes to think about the process of composing this way, and of learning to compose this way. And I’d like you to get loose and have a little fun with that thinking, so I’ll ask you to use metaphor (or, more specifically, simile): to read your learning, or your composing, as something else entirely.

To wit:

Generate comparisons (3-5 min)

Take 3-5 minutes to think in writing through the questions above. Then I’m going to ask you to share in your small groups, working to answer a third question:

Use comparisons as leverage (5 min)

I won’t collect this, but I will ask for some volunteers to share when we get back from groups… and I suggest that you return to these when writing your end-of-semester reflection.

EXT: If you’re waiting for the rest of us, consider: what personal skillsets do you feel like you now possess, that you might offer to a team of digital media composers?

Share and enjoy (5 min)

Any volunteers? Any insights? Any questions?

2. Final Portfolio Preview and Consolidation Unit Goals (10-15 min)

The final portfolio for the course is due in just two weeks (¡…!), on Tuesday, April 27. (That’s our exam slot, which nominally runs from 12pm-1:50pm.)

Portfolio contents

As we have for each individual unit, for the final portfolio I’m asking you to write reflectively about the course and your work in it, crystalizing what you’ve learned – and how you will go on learning – about composing digital media.

As with previous reflections, I encourage you to include these screenshots and thumbnails wherever they make the most sense, rather than feeling like they need to be segregated from the rest of your thoughts.

Consolidation / integration unit

Rather than draw out your reflection for as long as possible, I’m hoping you’ll be able to use these last two weeks to help digest and apply what you’ve learned over the last 12 weeks. As I put it in the schedule,

In this final unit I’ll ask you to build on what you’ve already made: a revision, an extension, or a combination, of the modes and media you used in earlier units.

The unit goals, then, are:

1. to integrate and consolidate the skills you’ve practiced across the semester
2. to assess your own skills as a digital media composer, to find ways you in particular might best contribute to a collaborative digital project (perhaps in the future)

What might that look like?

On the most straightforward level, this could literally be a revision of one of your existing projects. Were there stretch goals or aspirations that you think you didn’t quite figure out how to achieve? Did you write in a reflection about what you might do with more time? Well, now you have a little more time! We might call this a baseline option, though of course excellent work is still worth rewarding.

Another, more ambitious option would be to make a second project in the vein of one you’ve already done: another sound-editing project, another visual argument, another website. You’ll have less time than you did originally, but you should also be higher on the learning curve. In this same vein, you could try an alternate program for the same genres: e.g. AdobeSuite parallels like Audition (for Audacity) and Photoshop (for GIMP) – or vice versa, if you started with Adobe. See what happens when you dive in again, and reflect on the differences!

A third, also aspirational, option is to build a new project that builds on what you know to make something different: e.g. you could try or next-level tools like Inkscape for vector graphics (the Adobe parallel is Illustrator) or Ableton for music mixing (there’s a free trial); or try for one of the ideas you’d already proposed on the Issue Queue, like a comic, a zine, a narrative with audio and image (you might look into Twine[1]), or a flipbook-style animation, any of which might be a collaboration that represents all its members in its pages.

And now, studio time.

Use the shared google doc to state your goals for the working session, and come back to add an exit note at 4:00, as usual.

Generative writing

If you’re planning for the consolidation/integration project, I suggest you start by working through the prompts below. Use my recording to async this process; it’ll take about 15 minutes.

(This exercise adapted from Sondra Perl’s Guidelines for Composing)

Take a breath. Close your eyes. Put down your pen, or take your hands off your keyboard. Find a way to be present to yourself, wherever you are, and know that whatever you write for the next set of questions will not be collected: it’s for you alone.

1. Start by making a list: What’s on my mind? what have I been meaning to do lately? When you feel yourself answering, begin to write.

2. Set that list aside – it’ll wait for you until you’ve finished here – and ask yourself again: What skills have I been building in this class? What do I feel I’ve leveled up on, or that I’m on the verge of leveling up on? What am I on the edge of accomplishing? As before, just make a list, like an inventory: don’t delve too much into any one item.

3. Now ask yourself: Is there anything I’ve been trying to do in this class, but haven’t yet done? Any aspirational goals I meant to achieve, but just ran out of time for? Did any of the ideas above sound both fun and achievable, a way to make these last couple of weeks more celebratory than stressful? Again, take a quick survey; you’ll have time later to expand.

4. Take one more moment to consider: Is there anything I’m forgetting, that could go on this list? If you came to this exercise with a project already in mind, make sure to add that to your list.

Take a moment now to read back over your lists. Is there something that stands out, that says, me, pick me? Choose one thing to work with, at least for today, and mark it in some way. Then copy it into a clean page.

With that chosen subject, write again:

1. What terms or images come to mind when you think of this subject? … Think about categories of words: actions vs things. Descriptors (adjectives).
2. Is there anything you’re forgetting to add to your list? A line from a song? A color?
3. Who else might be interested in this? Who, that is, could be your audience?

See if you can summon up the whole of this idea, like it’s right here in the room with you. Where does it live? Is it above you? Inside you? In the palm of your hand? Just sit with your idea for a moment, feeling where you connect to it.

From processing to proposing

Now that you’ve spent some time discovering your thoughts for yourself, it’s time to share them with others – and, possibly, to recruit some likeminded co-travelers.

Taking public notes now in the google doc, work your way toward developing a task list for your project:

• What are the parts of the project?
• What assets will you need to find?
• What do you already know how to do, and what will you need to learn?
• Would some tasks be easier to outsource or split with a partner, and if so, who might you ask to partner with you?

EXT: If you have time now, you can get started on implementing your plan. We’ll have mostly studio time for the next three classes. (Next Tuesday, if possible, we’ll try to gather some shared baseline criteria toward achieving the unit goals that might work for all the projects. So aim to have started something by then.)

Exit notes

By the time 5 minutes remain in class, please come back to the plan you wrote at the beginning of studio time and update it with your progress and/or plans for next steps.

Homework for next time

• Preparing for the final portfolio:
  • Read Paul Ford’s short “Letter of Recommendation: Bug Fixes” from The New York Times Magazine (June 11, 2019). (Pitt Library link)
  • 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.
• Preparing one final project or revision:
  • By the end of next class, you should decide (together, if working on a team) what would constitute a minimum deliverable project for the consolidation/integration unit, and what series of stretch goals you’ll try for beyond that minimum.
  • When you’re ready, make a new repository (GH, Box, or Drive)[2] that all members of your team can edit, containing:
    • a brief overview of your project goals
    • a task list for your project
    • proposed roles for your team members, if you have a team of more than one
  • Post your project proposal, with a link to the repository, on the Issue Queue.