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There are five main assignments, or "Tasks," in the course.
Keep track of all tasks you complete. Keep copies of all documents you write and keep records of all you do for the class. You (not the teacher) are responsible for documenting and summarizing your own performance.
Email a summary (less than one page) of your course performance to the teacher before the last class. Include your name, section number, and a brief evaluation of the quality of your work. Focus both on what you learned and what you achieved.
Task 1: Help Others
Interactive multimedia is a rapidly evolving medium which demands a lot of the men and women who wish to become proficient at it. We will all learn more by helping each other.
Here are some ways you can help promote the class learning environment.
- Attend every class.
- If you see that a classmate is stuck, volunteer to help him or her.
- Read the class discussion board regularly, and respond to classmates who send in questions or comments. Also, you should post the URL of each assignment you finish to the bulletin board. (Questions about enrollment should be emailed to the professor, not to the class discussion archive.)
- Look at the work of other students in the class, and comment on it.
- If you learn of an effective technique, share it.
- If you find useful computer resources on campus that are available to students, tell all of us.
- If you find a helpful Web site, let us know, by posting it to the class discussion board.
Task 2: Simple Project
Due Week 3
Write an organized web essay on the topic described below. Your essay should be no bigger than 1 megabyte.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
You should post the URL of each assignment you finish to the class discussion board. You should also give the instructor your site as computer files, either on disk or through the network.
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Topic: "What was in my pocket?"
Use the real or imagined contents of a pocket in your jeans as a starting point to explore a subject of interest to you. For example, you might find a shell in your pocket from a recent walk on the beach, and use it as a starting point to explain a facet of marine biology that fascinates you. Or you might find a Mexican peso, or a ticket stub, or someone else's phone number written on a matchbook, and that object might lead you to a story or an explanation or an argument. Your essay may be serious or whimsical, personal or formal, heavy in text or heavy in graphics--but it should in some sense represent who you are or who you can imagine yourself being. Focus on a narrative or a theme or a point, not on a general self-introduction. Avoid writing a vanity "home page" document.
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Task 3:Complex Project
Due Week 7
Write an organized and complex web presentation on the general topic described below. Clear your particular topic with the instructor before you begin. Your presentation should be no bigger than 3 megabytes.
"Complex" means that the issues dealt with in your presentation can be understood better through hypertext, animation, or multimedia components than they can through simple linearity, or through print.
This is a group project. Form your own group of three or four people. Look for group members whose skills complement yours. A project done by three people should be commensurately more developed than a project done by one.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
You should post the URL of each assignment you finish to the class discussion archive. You should also give the instructor your site as computer files, either on disk or through the network.
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Topic: Create a teaching website for an academic course or department at Cal Poly or elsewhere, or for a K-12 classroom, or for a nonprofit organization or club. Consult with your "client" as you create the document, to make sure that it meets their needs. |
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Task 4: Student Presentations
In a group of three people, prepare a presentation on a topic selected from the list below. The presentation should take sixty to ninety minutes, and should include computer-based presentation materials (including an online web site) as well as lecture and discussion. You should post the URL for the presentation to the class discussion archive before the presentation. You should also give the instructor your site as computer files, either on disk or through the network.
You can sign up for a presentation through the existing threads on the class discussion board. The first three people to sign up for a topic become a group; the fourth person will have to choose something else.
A presentation will earn full credit by providing an interesting, useful, and informative sixty to ninety minutes for the rest of the class. Each person will be graded for his or her visible efforts at achieving that end.
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Report Topics:
Ethics and Legality on the Web. Property rights. Privacy. Freedom of speech. Pornography. Hate Literature. Plagiarism. Slander. Fraud. Cheating. What's wrong, what's right, what's legal, what's not?
Week 4
Using sound in your document. What are the sound formats?How do you record sound files? How do you insert them into your document and then control them? Includes lab component.
Week 5
Cascading Style Sheets. Show us how to create styles that can be applied to all the pages in a site. We should all be able to do it when you are done. Includes lab component.
Week 6
Live real time communication and bulletin boards--Voice? Live chat? Threaded discussion? How can you tie these to your site--and why you should or shouldn't. Show us.
Week 7
E-commerce. Precisely how do you go about setting up a website that takes money? How does a page process credit cards? Or CyberCash? Show us how to write the pages; how the links are made to Visa and MasterCard; what software tools are generally used, how the records are kept and shipping orders generated; how security is maintained.
Week 8
Careers on the web. Where do you find jobs doing web work? What is freelance work like versus corporate? What do web jobs pay? What do you have to know to get one?
Week 9
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Task 5: Deep Project
Due Week 11
Write an organized, complex, ambitious, and deep web presentation on a topic of your choosing. Your topic may be serious or whimsical, fictional or informational, poetic or technical--it's up to you, but clear your topic with the instructor before you begin. Your presentation should be no bigger than 2 megabytes.
"Complex" means that the concepts dealt with in your presentation can be appreciated better through hypertext, animation, or other multimedia components than they can through simple linearity, or through print.
"Ambitious" means that in your presentation you are reaching beyond the technical or rhetorical skills you employed to create the first two projects in the class. Perhaps you are using 3D graphics, or highly interactive sound, or mathematical scripts which calculate results with variables that your reader enters. Perhaps you've used Shockwave to put a Director project on the Internet. Perhaps your document includes a self-scoring quiz, or an interactive game. Perhaps you've created particularly efficient hypertext information retrieval methods.
"Deep" means that the topic of the presentation is covered in detail, to a depth of specificity that is satisfying to readers. Superficial coverage will not suffice.
This may be a group or individual project. Groups should be no more than four people. Look for group members whose skills complement yours. A project done by four people should be commensurately more developed than a project done by one.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
You should post the URL of each assignment you finish to the class discussion archive. You should also give the instructor your site as computer files, either on disk or through the network.
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