Week 7 : Frameworks and Theories

Frameworks and Theories: Computer-Mediated Communication and Hypertext

Agenda:

• Discussion Leaders
• Discussion: What Is The Digital Tragedy Of The Commons? + Skype
• Projects (gradesheet updated)

Discussion Leaders

• Corey, Josh, Louise, Madeline, Tarja (Hardin)
• Like last week, comment on two DL posts (one that you heard, one that you did not)

Discussion

• What is the digital tragedy of the commons? What are the roles of Google/Bing, Facebook/Twitter? What institutions are most affected and why?
• MSFT + Skype : what does it mean? why is it important? how does Skype or the purchase fit into course theories on prototypes, diffusion, adoption?

Projects

Project Presentations

• Week 9 (ideally 8 presentations) and Week 10 (ideally 17 presentations). TypeWith.Me signup sheet.

Criteria:

• Maximum of seven (7) slides; title and credit/contact slides are required
• Maximum time – 10 minutes including questions so prepare for 7-minute talk
• Use principles from Presentation Zen. Points deducted for a “traditional” PPT presentation
• All presentations are to be shared on Slideshare.net, and there should be a blog post announcing the upload.
• How to Embed SlideShare presentation into WP.com blog

Project Mechanics : WordPress Sites

• Review project page details
• Demo how to set up a new WP blog (“My Blogs” -> Register A New Blog)
• Demo how to set the home page to be a page, not a blog (Dashboard: Settings -> Reading)
• Demo editing About page – how to add new pages – how to make “children” pages
  

Theoretical Foundation

Project “buddies” – today’s posts on framework

1. Adv/Mkt: Mike, Navni, Teri
2. Biz: Lara, Mandy, Tarja
3. Community: Karen, Lisa, Rachael
4. Entertainment: Evan, Josh
5. Finance : Joanna, Zanna
6. Media: Cathy, Derek, Louise, Madeline, Ting (break into two groups!)
7. Mobile: Coco, Corey
8. Music: Elise, Eric
9. Politics: Ruba, Thor
10. Tech In “Space” : Dominique, Jackie

Observations on Annotated Bibliographies

• Write clearly, concisely and creatively. Don’t start each annotation with “This book” or “This article” or “This resource”.
• Remember to link the source to your research in the narrative; this may be easier to do at the end than in draft.
• Journal articles: unless you read the paper version, you must cite it as an electronic version. That means you need to include the DOI with the citation or if a DOI is not available, per APA, a link to the journal homepage. I’d prefer that you link to the abstract itself; if you link to the abstract using the UW database, be kind to your readers and tell them it is the University of Washington. Please make these links “hot” (clickable).
• Books: if you read an electronic edition like the Kindle that does not have page numbers, you need to indicate this if you are going to directly quote from the book. Why? You won’t have page numbers, you’ll have section numbers. Eeeek!
• Publicly available web documents : not only link to the resource but give us the access or retrieval date. Thus, if someone tries the link and it’s 404, they will have a bracket of time when they know that the link was live.
• APA style: remember that the purpose of a citation is to make it easy for those who follow you to recreate your work. Following a style (template/format) means that all of your relevant parts will be included in each reference.
• Purdue has great resources for APA (and writing)

Observations on Book Reviews (in context of projects – assessment criteria)

• Most leaned more towards “report” than “review.”  The “review” is your opinion, which should rest on evidence. Your course projects should have a clear point of view (“argument”) that is supported by evidence (all of the sources you’ve found). Exemplary:
  • Coco: The Victorian Internet
  • Corey: The Master Switch
  • Elise: The Victorian Internet
  • Eric: The Victorian Internet
  • Jackie: The Victorian Internet
  • Mike: Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising
  • Lisa: We The Media
  • Louise: A Tower In Babel
• Be careful with assertions that include “would/will” – do you have evidence for the claim?
• Be careful with “may be”  - eg, He may be playing on Sunday not “maybe” (I saw this more than once)
• Be careful with “it’s” and “its” (I see this a lot)
• Pick verbs carefully – make sure your subject can “do” the verb you assign; remember active tense rather than passive
• “Strong/ly” is a “weak” adjective/adverb : overused, often improperly used (“strength”), a thesaurus is your friend!
• Be wary of extensive direct quotes -> looking for “you” in your writing, a synthesis of ideas
• With direct quotations, you need page number references. You do not need page number references when you paraphrase. For long quotations (more than a short sentence), but sure to offset the quotation (“block quote”).
• Decades are plural not possessive (eg, the 1990s not the 1990′s)
• Be careful with possessives: when you are talking about the impact of such-and-such, unless such-and-such is actually a so-and-so, you probably want to avoid using the possessive!
• Remember basic structure when writing your papers:
  * Intro: Tell us what you will tell us  (in a longer paper like your projects, this should include a roadmap)
  * Body: Tell us what you believe and back it up with evidence (follows the roadmap laid out in introduction)
  * Conclusion: Tell us what you told us – the conclusion should not introduce new information, should link directly to the introduction and should rest soundly on evidence/arguments in the body

Book Review Word Count

Assignments

• Regular weekly reading assignment – EC opportunities weeks 8 and 9
• Discussion Leader extra-credit oppty: reflection on experience by Friday – see assignments page
• Discussion Leaders 
  Presentation: Maximum of seven (7) slides including title and closing credit/contact. All will be shared on Slideshare.net
  DL Group 5: Coco, Derek, Eric, Dominique, Mandy