Assignments
From Mizzou Wiki
Assignments:
Wiki Notes: (100 pts).
You will use your wiki space to post notes and ideas relevant to your project. On the schedule, you will find specific instructions for what to make notes about.
Presentations: (100 pts/ 50 pts each)
You will give two presentations on your work in progress. Each presentation is worth 50 pts. Presentations explain where you are in your work, what you are learning so far, and what you will do for the project you are presenting on.
Participation: (100 pts)
Come to class ready to participate. Take notes on readings and bring ideas to discuss. This class is not a lecture class, so your participation is mandatory. Learning is a collaborative experience, and your participation will strengthen that experience for yourself and others. You may not sit quietly during our classes.
Project One: IPod Narrative (100 pts)
The chapter “Identity,” from Steven Levy’s The Perfect Thing, introduces a media-based idea in its early pages: “Playlist is character” (207). Levy’s point is that an iPod playlist is a public projection of one’s tastes, interests, and ultimately, identity. Levy presents a number of examples that explain his claim: celebrities and non-celebrities whose playlists exemplify their personalities.
For your first project, you will create a playlist that demonstrates some aspect of your identity. Whether you own an iPod or not is not important for this project. The playlist, we will say, is virtual. You will make it up. Each song in your playlist, however, must come from a different singer/group.
For each song on your playlist, you will isolate one or more of the following:
- A theme
- An idea
- A symbol
- A metaphor
- A belief
And you will demonstrate how that item reflects some trait you demonstrate. To do that, you will make connections with anecdotes (memorable moments in your life), experiences, what you’ve read, what you’ve seen on TV, what films you watched, places you’ve been, people you’ve known, and so on.
After reading through your playlist, we should get another idea of who you are, an idea that, hopefully, allows us to see you anew. Your goal, then, is to use your playlist and the connections it generates to demonstrate your identity.
You need 10 songs for your playlist. Your project should be organized by songs (one titled section for each song).
Your project will be 2,500 words and will include images.
Project Two: The Alter Ego Project (200 pts)
Steven Johnson claims that the complex narratives and stories we find in video games, TV shows, and media in general are influencing the ways we think. In other words, exposure to complex structures allows us to construct complex ideas, make complex decisions, and perform a variety of complex tasks. This project asks you to use writing to engage with complexity. One aspect of the complexity Johnson writes about involves identity: character development on specific TV shows, first person shooter games, and the ways viewers interact with media. One type of complex identity many of us are familiar with is the alter ego.
For your project, you will create a “complex” idea by:
1. Creating an alter ego
2. Using that alter ego as the basis of your writing
The alter ego is not a far-fetched identity; it is based on experiences and ideas you already are familiar with, but that you have not yet put into relationship with one another. In other words, you have not seen yourself, yet, as complex.
Thus, you have two tasks to perform.
1. The first asks you to research four areas of experience that make up who you are:
- Your major (what you are becoming an expert in)
- A personal anecdote (a memorable moment or story)
- A popular culture figure or item
- An idea that has influenced you
When you have thoroughly researched each area, you look for a pattern – what idea, point, image, phrase repeats. That which repeats will be your alter ego.
2. The second task is to use that alter ego to make a statement. That statement may appear in the beginning of your project, or it may appear in the end. The choice is yours. The evidence which supports your statement is the work you did with the four areas of experience. That evidence will comprise the body of your project.
For example, following Johnson’s ideas, we see that Marshall Mathers, influenced by media, adopts an alter ego – Eminem – who, in turn, adopts another alter ego – Slim Shady. These two alter egos allow Mathers to write about issues relevant to hip hop, Detroit, being famous, and so on.
Or: If you watch The Colbert Report, you see that Steven Colbert is an alter ego (a Republican news anchor) based on a specific media representation, whose writing (what he reports and the words he comes up with) is based on that representation.
Your project will be 3,000 words. It will be done in the wiki , and it will include images.
You must have a Works Cited.
For your research, you must use any combination of:
- articles
- books
- films
- TV shows
- essays
- songs
- ads
- comics
but you cannot use Angelfire, Geocities, Songmeanings (or related sites), Wikipedia, or any other site
- whose credibility is questionable (a Geocities site)
- is designed only for encyclopedia or dictionary purposes
You cannot use only Internet sources. You must have a balance of Internet and non-Internet sources.
From the Internet, essays and articles are the preferred print media. If you have any questions about using blog posts or other non-visual sources, please ask.
Grading Scale:
600-550 : A
550-530: B+
530-500: B
500-480: C+
480-450: C
450-430: D+
430-400: D
400 - E
