HW 20 - Big Paper Revised Draft - Nov 6

Please post your complete and revised mini-exhibition style Big Paper 1 by 8:30am Friday November 6.

HW 19 - Big Paper 1 Suggestions - Nov 4

Please encourage your triangle partners and make helpful suggestions of ideas, structure, and wording on their Big Paper 1 Rough Draft by 9pm November 4th.

Leave the comments on their drafts and copy and paste them to your own blog.

HW 18 - Big Paper 1 Rough Draft

Revise your outline based on your triangle partners' suggestions. Then use it to write a rough draft of a big paper on some aspect of the digital-representational-experience.

This paper should be a mini-exhibition - 5 pages or more. Should include a clear and interesting thesis, 2-4 major arguments supporting the thesis, and cited evidence supporting the major arguments. Should also include brief sections on "Connections", "Opposing Viewpoints", and "Significance". Should include a works cited list.

Your revised draft will be graded using the Revised Social Studies Research Rubric for exhibitions at SOF. You can find it here to download.

The rough draft should be spell-checked, printed, read, edited, and then posted online by November 4th at 8:30am.

HW 17 - Outline Suggestions - November 2

Please leave comments on your triangle partners' outlines (and copy and post to your own blog) that encourage and make useful suggestions of ideas, wording, and illumination. Please do so in class Monday, or at the latest, by 4pm on November the 2nd.

Your grade on this assignment will be based on the helpfulness and insight in your comments. No particular structure is required (as an experiment).

HW 16 - Big Paper 1 Outline - Nov. 2

Big Paper 1 Outline should be posted by Monday 8:30am for comments by triangle partners. The outline should include a clear and interesting and sharp thesis addressing an aspect of the digital experience - a paragraph each of several major arguments supporting the thesis - and identification of evidence that will support the major arguments.

The History of Representational Devices

In this unit - Digital - I started by thinking we were exploring our current addiction to electronic-digital-representational devices. Through reading blog posts it has become clear to me that "its not the phone - its the friends on the phone." Thus, the real obsession isn't the tool, it is what the tool provides - the chance to experience chosen aspects or simulations of reality - to open ourselves to particular sources of information, entertainment, and communication - immediately and magically and entrancingly.

So, this final "handout" is a timeline of when these modes of re-presenting (or simulating) reality were invented. I don't mean this to be a final word - just a starting point for your own thinking and research!

Prehistoric Representations of Reality - The Ability to Experience (Sometimes the Same Way Twice) That Which Isn't There And Maybe Never Was!

1. Awareness
   
2. Imagination
3. Dance
4. Language
5. Story-telling and chant
   
6. Painting & Sculpture
   
7. Theater
8. Song & Music
9. Optical Telegraphs - such as smoke signals!
   

Historic Representations or Simulations of Reality

1. Written language
2. Printed Stories and Poems and Novels and Non-Fiction
First woodblock printing around 200 PE

3. Telescope and microscope - first lenses around 800
   
4. Recorded sound - 1st machine sound maybe 800s - first recorded and replayable acoustic sound around 1878 (the phonograph)
5. Photography
   
Camera obscura - ancient - first permanent photograph 1825

6. Telegraph - Representing the language of a reality far away, almost instantaneously - 1833
7. 3D Pictures - 1838
8. Telephone - 1876
9. Movies - 1878
   
10. Radio - Big controversy over who started it - but around 1894
    
11. TV - 1934
12. IMing - 1960s
    
13. Videogames - First commercial success 1971
14. Mobile stereos - First the boombox in the mid-70s and then the Walkman 1979
    
15. Shared computing - 1978
16. Online Social Networks - 1985
17. Internet Browsing - 1987
18. Texting - 1989
19. Mobile Phones - 1991 - My father had an early second generation model
20. Mobile computers with internet access - The smartphone in 1993?
    

Three questions came up while I was researching this post.
What date should I use for the timeline - invention, commercial use, mass use? I didn't come up with a good standard.

What counts as a "representation or simulation of reality"? Perfume? Furs? Special gardens that are remade every year?

Finally, what is it about these representations or simulations of reality (variously defined) that is so fascinating for us? Is it partly because our consciousness is itself a kind of representation of reality?

HW 15 - ABCDEF 3 - Treasure Hunting

Please read your triangle partners' posts 10-14.

Find and identify the best part(s) - unusual insights, beautiful use of language, moving personal connections, sturdy arguments, sharpest evidence, etc. Especially consider what "best parts" might help your partner construct a great essay and/or a great art project, at the end of the unit.

Then write an ABCDEF letter to each partner which does the regular (or better than the regular) and emphasizes the best part(s) of 10-14.

If you want to just focus on your partner's best post that's fine - if you want to focus on several or all of the posts that's fine too. Please post the letter as a comment on your partner's blog and as a post (HW 15) on your own blog.

Please post by Tuesday 9pm.

2 Miscellaneous Points - Grades and Recommendations

Now that I've given you all your grades, please share them with your family, as I've already asked most of you to do, along with your plans to improve, maintain, or decrease (jk) your efforts.

Several seniors have asked me about college recommendations - I'm glad to write them, particularly if you feel like you've done well in my course and that I might be able to help you achieve your college goals.

Here's my process:

1. Student writes a rough draft highlighting major points that (s)he wants addressed and lots of specific details (quotes, stories, moments, class discussions, exhibitions, personal conversations, etc.) that add flavor and emails it to me. The letter of recommendation should tell a story of who you are as a unique person and impressive student.

2. I edit, add, subtract, reshape, reword your rough draft and email it back to you.

3. Student edits, adds, subtracts, reshapes, rewords and emails it back to me.

4. Repeat steps 2&3 until both people are satisfied, at which point I sign it and you send it.

This process ensures that you get a recommendation that includes what you need and that I don't have to write 40 of them from scratch. Don't worry that it won't include my real opinions and my perspective - I always write them honestly.

HW 14 - Second Text

For this 14th HW assignment please read either the two short excerpts or the long excerpt (which includes the two short ones plus some more material), depending on your reading skills and college aspirations.

Long Excerpt

Short Excerpt 1 TV

Short Excerpt 2 Video Games

Hopefully you will need a password to download the text(s) - it was provided in class today and is the name of the current unit.

If you open the downloaded files with Acrobat Reader it will automatically rotate them correctly - Preview (on Macs) seems less good at this. If you don't have either of these programs download them or find another way of opening the PDF files.

After reading the material please:

1. Write a single 1-2 paragraph summary of the main argument(s) of the text(s) you've read.

2. Write a paragraph or three about your mix of reactions to the arguments and evidence in the book. What perspectives do you think are useful - what might be faulty?

3. Add a paragraph or two that addresses the ways the argument of this author contradicts Feed. In what ways didn't he? In what ways were the two authors talking about two very different aspects of digitalization?

Please post by Sunday, Oct 25 at 8pm.

Thanks.

HW 13 - Feed B

Feed B: Feed is a great example of Revelatory Art (for a book about that sort of thing, consider this possibility). What moves does Tobin make that you think are worth considering (even if not using) in your own art about digitalization (which will be final project 2 for this unit, final project 1 will be a long essay)?

Some more specific questions to help you think through the artistic decisions he made - What about his use of allegory? Of a familiar plot? Of tragedy? Of the special and self-aware (becoming yet more self-aware) narrator? Of emphasizing the problems but not offering a solution? Of maintaining chronological order? Does he speak to a mainstream adult audience or is this young adult fiction? Was the book successful, and by what criteria? What about him making this as a linear-text novel rather than as a hyperlinked website or a film?

I'm asking you to consider Feed as a work of art - from within the mind of the maker especially - to help you get prepared to make your own artistic choices on a related topic.

Bert Brecht supposedly said that, "Art is not a Mirror with which to reflect the World. It is a Hammer with which to shape it." Can a mirror be a hammer? What is Feed? Why? Would you want your art to be a hammer or a mirror?

(suggested length 3 paragraphs) - Should be posted by Tuesday, Oct 20 at 8:30am.

HW 12 - Feed A

Feed A:

Using Feed as the springboard please compare and contrast aspects of the novel and aspects of your current lifestyle as digital teens today. Draw on class discussion but don't just rehash stuff from class - take the best of what was said and then go deeper with that using your mind and heart to think with (and your fingers to type).

Some questions to get you started (don't answer all these, just use them to start thinking) -

(suggested length - 3 paragraphs):

1. If Feed is supposed to be an allegory or a parable of modern teenage life - is it on target?

2. Feed is written as a tragedy - what are the various tragic elements in the book, and how do they all collide, and is that how your life is too?

3. Does Feed miss the point? Are Titus and crew actually living brag lives and the Professors of the World are just behind the times and irrelevant and scared of something new?

Should be posted by Monday, Oct 19 at 8:50am.

HW 11 - Self-Experiment 1

Vary your digital routine in a conscious and thoughtful way, pay attention to the experience, write up a post describing your efforts and analyzing the effects.

You may either select an idea from class (digital fast, digital doubling, contrasting digital and reading, digital-free after 8pm, etc) or make up your own.

Have fun.

Please post your description and analysis by Thursday night, Oct. 8.