announcements – CIS3810 Principles of New Media

Your Final Project

Ok, folks, so here we are at the end of the term. Below are your instructions for the final project. Please feel free to post questions in the comments section. As discussed in class, a project proposal is due in class on Monday, 11/19.

Your final project will consist of two parts:

1) An individual OR group digital project (this can be video, or audio, or a wiki, a website, a gallery of images, or whatever else — we will generate some ideas in class) that somehow engages some of the ideas, concepts, or thinkers we’ve been discussing in class.

You might, for example, make a short movie that explains the Creative Commons, or a multimedia tutorial on Manovich’s theory of new media, a brief radio program around the idea of “the medium is the message.” Be creative. Take a chance. If you need to borrow audio/video equipment or need help with software, etc. please do not hesitate to let me know. I will do what I can to help you through this process. We’ll discuss all this in detail in class.

2) An individual (you only) 5-8pp essay that discusses, in detail, the process of creating your final project as well as on the ways in which it speaks to our readings and the broader themes of this class.

Consider the following in composing your essay: (You don’t need to address every single one of these, but use them in composing your essay).

Why did you choose to do approach your project the way you did? Was this a group or individual decision? In either case, describe the process of coming up with your project idea and with your initial plan. What role did your teammates play in the initial planning?

Which concepts or broader topics did you reference or address in your project? Why? Why did you choose your particular topic or concepts? How does your project speak to, draw on or engage them? What, in other words, does your project say about the ideas you chose to explain, satirize, revise, mock, etc.?

How does your project engage our readings? How did any of the assigned readings influence your thinking about your project and how you carried it out? Which readings were especially useful? How and why? Feel free to discuss, if briefly, any specific ideas from our readings that you feel influenced you.

Discuss the process of carrying out your project in as much detail as possible. What was the planning like? If you shot video, where did you shoot and when? Who was involved in the shoot? Why? What role did everyone play? What were some of the challenges you encountered? Did you have to deviate from your original plan? Why? How? How did that affect the end result? What happened after you shot your footage, made your images, recorded your audio, etc.? Who did what? What was the post-production process like? Did you encounter any snags along the way?

How and to what extent does the project you turned in resemble the one you had in mind when you first started working on it? Why do you think that is? Did you end up with something you did not expect to end up with? How might you explain that? Does it offer any insights for similar projects you might undertake in the future?

You get the idea. We will brainstorm some in class as well.

Both parts of this assignment are due at the start of our final exam session on Monday, December 17.

Next Blogging Prompt: Reflect on Your Writing Process

So here’s your next prompt:

Reflect on the process of writing the short paper due this Wednesday. Consider some of these questions in crafting your response. You don’t need to answer every single one in your post. rather, use them as a guide in preparing your post:

What were the steps you took in writing your paper? Did you create an outline or take notes? Why or why not? Did you write multiple drafts? Why did you choose to write on what you chose to write about? What choices did you make in constructing your argument? Was it difficult to write the piece? Why or why not? If it was difficult, what might have made it easier? Did writing the piece give you new insights into McLuhan? Why or why not? What might you say about the role of digital tools and media play in the composition of your paper?

Please feel free to post any questions about this assignment in the comments section of this post. Also, please be sure to comment on two other posts in response to this assignment. You can access your classmates’ sites by clicking on their names in the right sidebar of this site.

Response Paper: Significance Statement

Double spaced, standard 12pt font (Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, etc.), approximately 2 pages.
Due Wednesday, Sept. 12 in class.

The assignment:
This is a more formal version of what you did in your first blog post. Choose a short passage (1-3 sentences) from one of the assigned readings (McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage and excerpts from Understanding Media), or Williams) that you found particularly interesting, illuminating, provocative, or otherwise significant and write a brief essay discussing your interpretation of this passage and why you think it is important to your understanding to the central arguments. Please include your passage at the top of the page and be sure to note the author and the source, including page number.

Consider the following questions and use them to help you formulate a response; you don’t have to answer every one. What does the passage mean? Does it mean something different on its own than it does in the context of this essay? Why? How are the ideas in the passage related to the author’s main argument? What can you say about the meanings of individual words, particularly the technical terms? Do particular words have more than one meaning in the sentence? Try to really dig into the quote you’ve chosen — look at it as closely as you can.

Some Tips:

Before you start writing, take some time looking at your quote, taking notes, looking up words, or whatever else you need to do to formulate your argument. Try to have some sort of idea of what you will say before you start writing. Good planning is a large part of good writing.
Support your arguments with evidence from the text, your own experiences, or other relevant sources. Make sure you back up your assertions.
Don’t worry about impressing your reader with fancy vocabulary and sophisticated syntax; big words and convoluted sentence structure do not necessarily make good writing. Don’t use a thesaurus and make sure that you know the meaning of each word you use. Work to get your thoughts across clearly and accurately rather than to impress your reader. Substance is much more important here than style but proofread carefully and avoid careless mistakes.
If any of this is unclear, or if you think you might have misunderstood the instructions, be sure to let me know. You can post a question in a comment if you’d like or email me.

We Need Your URLs, CIS 3810

In order to syndicate your blog posts on this site, I need your URLs. Please post your URLs into a comment and share with us the title of your site, the theme you used, and why. Your comment might look something like this:

I’ve titled my site “Joe Blow’s Really Cool Site” and used the Pagelines Platform theme because I want to customize my site and the Pageline theme allows that without changes to CSS or other theme files. The URL is: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/reallycoolsite.

You can make your URL a live link in your comment by using the following HTML tags in the comment:

<a href=”yoururl”>youururl</a>

Welcome to CIS3810

Welcome to the online home of CIS3810: Principles of New Media. Make yourself at home, introduce yourself.

Here’s what you are in for:

Course description (from the About page).

This course will offer a survey of key ideas in media studies and will explore how interactive media technologies are changing the ways in which we communicate, consume, create, do business, learn, make knowledge, and act individually or collectively as citizens. We will approach new media from a cultural perspective, with a focus on how media technologies figure in practices of everyday life and in the construction of various social relationships and identities. We will work from a broad definition of “social media,” considering social network sites, smartphone apps, and online games, among other electronic media. We will likewise explore how interactive technologies enable us to become producers as well as consumers of content. We will approach the Internet as generative and will ourselves create and share various media including images, video and audio. We will, in other words, actively participate in the phenomena that we study.

Course Objectives

1) Students will be introduced to the key principles and theory of new media
2) Students will critically engage the development of computer mediated communication
3) Students will explore the social implications of the proliferation of new media as well as the ways in which they figure in and shape the practice of everyday life
4) Students will become familiar with and proficient with online tools, resources and techniques for production and sharing of electronic media including images, video, and audio.

Here’s to an exciting semester!