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The Syllabus GEN 230 Creative Expression: Poetry - Spring 2007 other pages welcome | course | case | bistro | reports arts | user content | media | software tools | copyright this page schedule at a glance | required reading day-by-day January 17 | 19 | 22 | 24 | 26 | 29 | 31 February 2 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 21 | 23 | 26 | 28 March 2 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 19 | 21 | 23 | 26 | 28 | 30 April 2 | 4 | 11 | 13 | 16  | 18 | 20 | 23 | 25 | 27 | 30 toolkit

This is a good page to bookmark.

The links on this syllabus will take you on divergent paths. I don't expect any of you to read -- or to need -- all of it. However, if you're going to progress towards the course objectives, I do expect all of you to read -- and to need -- much of it. It's up to you to balance your learning style against these resources.

Schedule at a Glance

Note | The eight assignments and dozen days highlighted in pale yellow -- January 31, February 2, March 5, 7, 9, 26, 28, April 2, 4, 18, 20, and the final exam day -- involve activities that will contribute to your final grade and cannot be made up. If you those activities, you will get a zero for that assignment.

Day-by-Day

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
-- Winston Churchill

Wednesday, January 17

Introduction to the course

getting to know you - questionnaire for you to fill out while I take your picture for the reports page

funny video - Perfectly Aligned

overview of course - schedule at a glance - assignments

The course web at Ricci Street

Most of the webs you have visited were designed for the first-time or one-time visitor. Many were designed to draw you through a product catalog toward the check-out page. They provided few off-site links to let you stray once they had you in the store. Lots of pictures. Some flashy wizbang. Slick and quick, lean and mean were the design mantras.

Ricci Street is more of a customer service web, perhaps customer service library is more accurate. It was designed for the captive audience -- you! It has mostly text, not many visuals. Some of the pages are verrrrrry long. There are tens of thousands of off-site links. It encourages exploration and discovery and reflection and contemplation.

Designing it, I had the luxury of building an elaborate navigation metaphor. It takes a while to learn, but once you do, it's much easier to navigate because you can use the Ricci Street metaphor as a memory palace, which is why it's named after Matteo Ricci in the first place.

Think of it like moving to a new city. You can study all the maps you want. The only way to learn the city is to walk and drive around. With Ricci Street, that means to keep clicking. The best place to get an overview is the Ricci Street home page at < http://RicciStreet.net >. It would be a good page to bookmark.

If you expand the menus on the right and left columns of the home page, you'll be able to see two or three levels into the hierarchy. Plunge in anywhere.

A good place to start is this course web's Welcome page. Note that the course web has several other pages -- course | case | reports -- in addition to the one you are reading now: syllabus. These are the pages on Ricci Street that are unique to this course and contain the information that I would hand out on paper if I weren't using the Web. Note the URL (web address) for all of them:

http://RicciStreet.net/dwares/lane/gen230/

The syllabus page (the one you're reading now) is another good page to bookmark. It and the reports page change all the time; they are what I did as oral lectures and paper handouts before I started using the Web in 1995.

Introduction to the projects

Making the transition

One goal of this course is to help you through the transition from passively consuming media to also actively making it. Between them is a transition -- a mindset, a way of looking at media, a critical stance -- that may be new and uncomfortable to you.

What this course is not ...

not a course where we read and analyze fiction and poetry

not a course where there is one correct answer to every problem

not a course where everyone takes the same final exam

This is a creative writing course, an art course, one of the very few you take in your formal education. As such, it can be a little scary. Instead of analyzing stories and poems, you're going to write them. Your learning will diverge, not converge.

first transition | the PC as a fancy book to the PC as a fancy pencil

It's the transition from reading to writing, from consumer to maker. It requires you to learn a new toolset.

second transition | giving yourself permission

For most people, the first transition is relatively easy. The second is harder. Not only am I asking you to make something, it has two problems: it's the arts, and it's school.

The audience for your work in this course are those people who have stumbled on it linked to your resume near "Skills" or via a search. They may be in a position to hire you or admire you, and your online projects will let you strut your stuff for them. Go for it!

The Play Fair, Inc. case is designed to make you see how this creative stuff can relate to a job you may have. It is also designed to move you further into the new and fascinating world of user-generated content.

If you look at the list of deliverables, you'll see that I'm asking you to make several mash-ups of other people's words, images, and music as well as write your own words (fiction and poetry) and augment them with your own audio-visual content.

Toolkit

software

Several tools and techniques are required for this course. All four software programs below should be on the PCs in the classroom. The first two should be on your personal laptop or PC. If they aren't, check with Chet Klimek in the Huber lab; he may be able to give you a disk with FrontPage and other Microsoft products. I have provided links to the audio and image editor in case you need to download them to your personal computer. If you already have software that performs these functions -- and you know how to use it -- check with me to make sure.

Software tools

FrontPage - web page maker and site manager
Windows Movie Maker - video editor
Audacity - audio editor
GIMP - image editor

email attachments

During this course, you will have occasion to get one or several relatively small files to me. The best way to do that is by attaching it to an email. If you have more than one file to attach, put all the files in a folder, compress (or zip) the folder, and then attach the zipped file to an email.

USB drives

Please feel free to you use your personal laptop for this course; bring it to class to use instead of the classroom machines. For everyone else, you will be moving large files between computers -- yours <--> the classroom's, yours <--> mine; the classroom's <--> mine. The easiest way to do this is with a small storage drive that goes by many names: thumb drive, jump drive, etc. The common denominator is the USB connection to the laptop or desktop.

Get the largest one that you can afford. A gigabyte or two would be a good idea, and you should probably be able to find them for around $20 per gigabyte.

Do not use the USB drive for storage. Use it only for transport. Think: is the copy of this document on the USB drive the only copy? If so, STOP and re-organize your file naming and file management so that if you should ever lose the USB dive, you will always have at least one other copy of every file on it.

file management

This is a complex topic that I can't fully address in this course. By file management, I mean how you name files and where you keep them.

The biggest impediment to efficient file management is confusing your tool and your job.

tools vs jobs

I recommend that you put everything for this course -- your jobs -- in one folder either on your personal PC's desktop or My Documents. Keep another copy on the College's network, which you can access as My Documents on the classroom and computer lab PCs. Use the USB drive as a way to sync the two, often.

By sync, I mean work on the course project at home or in your room. Save it to the GEN230 folder on your desktop. Copy the folder to your USB drive. When you come to class, first thing, move the GEN230 folder to the classroom PC's My Documents folder. Open it to work from during class.

Important!

Never work directly from the USB drive.

Use the USB drive only for transport.

How will you organize the sub-folders and files in the GEN230 folder?

That's up to you and there will be as many ways of doing that as there are students, but I suggest that you have a the kind of subfolder structure shown in the image on the right. You can make your own or you can download this one and modify it to suit your work flow.

to do before the next class on Friday

Explore this syllabus page and the rest of the course web on Ricci Street: welcome | course | case | reports

Register at Ground Zero Bistro and introduce yourself Fiction | Poetry at the GEN 230 General Discussion forum.

At the Bistro, write a weather report for Wednesday, January 17 Fiction | Poetry; read everyone else's. How did it go today? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Read fiction/poetry, watch video, listen to music as a maker rather than as a consumer.

Email me with your Bistro user name to add to the class directory. This will also get you into my address book. Picture re-takes on Friday.

Friday, January 19

Introduction to the process

to do before the next class on Monday

Make sure you did everything on the to do list for last Wednesday's class

At the Bistro, write a weather report for Friday, January 19 Fiction | Poetry; read everyone else's. How did it go today? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Read fiction/poetry, watch video, listen to music as a maker rather than as a consumer.

Read articles on the vocabulary and concepts of fiction, poetry and other arts

Monday, January 22

The elements of the literary arts: fiction and poetry

analytical view in literature classes - ways to understand and appreciate

creative view in this class - ways to make decisions and solve problems

How many stories did you hear this weekend? Who heard the best story? What makes a good story?

to do before the next class on Wednesday

At the Bistro, write a weather report for Monday, January 22 Fiction | Poetry; read everyone else's. How did it go today? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

How geeky are you? How do you compare to your classmates? Remember that questionnaire during class last Wednesday? I tabulated the responses and posted them as a message at the Bistro. Join the discussion. Fiction | Poetry

Wednesday, January 24

Connecting poetry and other arts

I made a terminology change in the list of deliverables due for this course. The category that was called "readings" is now "community participation" to reflect the variety of opportunities you have to fulfill this course requirement.

For example, you will get credit in this course for having a singing/acting role or for being sufficiently engaged backstage in the College's production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Auditions are this Saturday, January 27. See the Ricci Street welcome page for more info.

Preview of Jeopardy game on Jan 31, next Wednesday.

The questions and answers will come from the web pages in this zip file. You should bring them with you on your laptop or on disk (we can borrow a laptop from the library) on paper (gasp!). You will be able to use these resources to play the game.

Meet with your team.

Don't leave class until you have a team name and captain.

to do before the next class on Friday

At the Bistro, write a weather report for Wednesday, January 24 Fiction | Poetry; read everyone else's. How did it go today? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Friday, January 26

Example of augmented poetry: let's look at, critique, and think how to improve this performance: KISS

Connecting poetry and other arts

performance critiques

For the community participation requirement of this course, you are going to attend and preferably participate in any art event of your choosing over the next few months. Note the emphasis on event, which indicates some sort of live performance.

You must write performance critiques of two of those events. By that, I mean 300 - 500 words looking at the performance from the point of view of the events' producer/director who is deciding what aspects of the event to change to make it more effective.

Analytical frames: critique, evaluation, assessment, feedback, response

performance critiques
peer critiques
self-critiques

formative vs summative

presentations - categories and extremes

oral presentations as theater: acting and dance; poetry readings and performance criteria

critique format

What did you see? (categories and extremes)

What worked? What didn't?

What would you change? What would you change it to?

What would be the trade-offs of that change? What would you lose? What would you gain?

to do before the next class on Monday

At the Bistro, write a weather report for Friday, January 26 Fiction | Poetry; read everyone else's. How did it go today? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Read Wikipedia pages linked from the Arts page in preparation for next week's games

To continue our theater analogy, you're the producer and director of the show of images your words are going to create in each reader's mind. You're starting with a empty stage. Now fill it.

Backstory

Start collecting information about your characters and narrators: images, wardrobe, habits, attitudes, demographics, bio

Start collecting information about your scenes and settings: images, names of objects, colors

Make lists (Bistro)

Monday, January 29

Fiction by Sara Greenslit

Poetry by Daniel Borzutzky

How to write fiction/poetry

User-generated content: augmenting fiction and poetry with hypertext links, images, video, voice, and music

to do before the next class on Wednesday and Friday

Read Wikipedia pages linked from the Arts page in preparation for this week's games

Wednesday, January 31, and Friday, February 2

Game 1:

Game 2:

Teams (see reports page: fiction | poetry)

Readings: fictionreadings.zip | poetryreadings.zip

Write Thing writers - Thursday, February 1

to do before the next class on Monday

Sign up for your first conference with me to look at your lists, plan your project, and discuss your writing.

Monday, February 5

mash-up 1

use my assets - script, music clips, video clips, pix - get from my orange USB drive

Movie Maker - how to

Sign up for your first conference with me to plan your project and discuss your writing.

to do before the next class on Wednesday

work on your first mash-up

Wednesday, February 7

review of Movie Maker how-to

to do before the next class on Friday

work on your first mash-up

start collecting media for your next two mash-ups

Where to find media assets: poetry, images, audio, and video

Friday, February 9

I'd like to look at your mash-ups today during class.

to do before the next class on Monday

collect media for your next two mash-ups

Monday, February 12

mash-up 2 *: get your own online - I provide script, you provide images and music

gathering material: text, images, sounds, and video

Where to find media assets: poetry, images, audio, and video

GIMP

Wednesday, February 14

continue working on your projects

Friday, February 16

3. Conference 1

more on image editing

Andy's Volleyball Story

Wednesday, February 21

mash-up 3 *: make your own - you provide script, images and music

Audacity

Friday, February 23

4. Performance attendance 1: fiction | poetry

Mix and Mash Film Contest

The Mix and Mash Film Contest invites you to create and remix Creative Commons and Public Domain digital content into a short video. All entries will be judged by a panel of experts and the best films will be screened at the National Film Theatre and featured on Google Video UK.

to do before the next class on Monday

finish 3 mashups

Monday, February 26

course project -- you do it all, minimal use of other's assets

developing your projects: forms, techniques, and themes; models and features

brainstorming and troubleshooting proposals

concept maps for proposal report next week (March 5, 7, 9)

due

5. Mashup 1 (.wmv files)
6. Mashup 2
7. Mashup 3

to do before next class on Wednesday

150-word project proposal due March

proposal report next week -- March 5, 7, 9

sign up for your oral presentation - schedule

Wednesday, February 28

project concept pitches: think, pair, share in 3's

using Org Chart for concept maps for proposal report week of March 5, 7, 9

due

8. Performance critique 1 (email)

to do before next class on Friday

9. 150-word project proposal (email) due March 2

Friday, March 2

mental models

What is the Internet?

World of Ends
The Paradox of the Best Network
Rise of the Stupid Network
We Are the Web by Kevin Kelly, Wired 13.08, August 2005

Ricci Street

New Media aka Distributed Networks
What is the Internet
Who Runs the Internet?

What is the Internet? In your head, what does the Internet look like? How do you visualize it? If you were to draw a picture of the Internet, what would you draw? How has your mental model of the Internet changed after reading these pages?

Most importantly, what makes it so disruptive to business models and organizations? Remember my mantras: the Internet is the computer. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. If the Internet is just an agreement to exchange information according to openly developed free protocols, how can it have so much power?

The Internet is a network of computers with several features that distinguish it from other networks:

digital as opposed to analog (C-A-T as opposed to a picture of a cat)

binary, which means two (ones and zeros; on/off pulses), as opposed to other digital systems such as DNA, which has four "letters", or our English alphanumeric system, which has about forty if you toss in a few punctuation marks.

Yes, DNA is a four-letter digital language. It enables organic growth. So does the Internet. Most organizations aren't organic; they're top-down hierarchical machines. The Internet is the driving force; the organization's structure is the restraining force. Which force are you aligned with in your organization?

packet-switched as opposed to the telephone's circuit-switched

distributed heterarchically like a fishnet as opposed to hierarchically like your employer's org chart

standardized on openly developed (as opposed to proprietary, secret) protocols such as transmission control protocol / Internet protocol (TCP/IP) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)

The Internet is an open-source self-organizing adaptive many-to-many peer-to-peer international file-sharing public collaborative agreement based on human goodwill, which means it's teetering on anarchy. In the last forty thousand years of human culture, this commons has been the fertile ground of cultural innovation. In corporate terms, an agreement to share is a threat to hierarchical control structures, like record labels.

In this sense, the Internet differs from most business organizations, which are top-down, inflexible, information-hoarding, for-profit corporations with legal status. These organizations have been built over the last hundred years with legal protections and sanctions. The commercial code of laws and the regulations supporting them are voluminous, contradictory, overwhelming, confusing, and hard to follow in practice. And expensive. The cost is measured in the billions of dollars annually. Business has never been as regulated in the U.S. as it is now.

In contrast, the Internet has no legal status. You can't sue it. You can't enjoin its behavior. It is not regulated. Maybe I should say that it's not regulable, if that's a word, although many governments are trying. Your corporate network is regulated. The Internet is not because it's not a thing; it's an agreement to share.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, March 5, 7, 9

proposal report * (8 min each)

Each of you will stand in front of your classmates and tell them what you are going to do for your project. Pitch it as though they have approval over your time and budget. Pretend you need their approval to proceed, so "sell" the project to them.

due

10. Proposal report (oral) w/ concept map of project parts and attributes (email) due March 9

Spring Break !!! week of March 12, 14, 16

Monday March 19

We're a little over halfway through this course, and there's still a lot to do. In fact, we're going to step it up a notch.

Show and Tell Theater - this page is the portal to your projects. Each of you will have a web with all your project materials, assignment #23.

Readings

Assignment #13

It's time to write your stories and poems. To motivate you, we are going to produce two readings. If you aren't sure what one is like, there will be one in the Library this Thursday evening.

Typically, a reading is an informal theatrical presentation. I say informal because readings have some of the fundamental parts of a theatrical production:

a stage or open area for the reader

seating for the listeners

As you can see in the pictures on the right and below, a reading also involves theatrical features such as costumes, lights, and props. The expectations for these are low, however, and the audience is usually small enough that microphones, amplifiers, and speakers are way overkill.

a reader and a text

The reader is an actor. Note the book. A reading is just that, a reading. There is no expectation that readers have memorized the words. That still leaves ample opportunity for the readers to use their voices and bodies expressively.

We are going to stage two readings. They will not be in our classroom. You will take turns getting up in front of the others and reading a story or poem that you have written.

The assignments for critiquing these readings (or other events) asks you to take the role of the producer/director who is asked how to improve the reading for the next time. Now I am asking you to apply that mindset to your own presentations. Improve yours.

You must all step it up compared to what you did in the classroom before Break. Those presentations were not the kind that would get you a raise or a promotion. Most of them would hurt your chances of getting hired.

I am requiring you to go to readings or similar events in the community so that you have a model for your reading. I also note that many of you perform well in costume and in your role on the court or field. Many of you are going to be teachers or marketing reps making presentations all the time.

Thus, I have every expectation that you will perform better for this reading than you did for the pitch in class before Break. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me.

Writing

Assignment #14

stories (GEN 230 Fiction)

You're slowly expanding your story:

you pitched it orally to the class

you summarized it in 100 words or so email to me

you wrote a TV-guide synopsis for the Theater

Now you want to write out the story, all of it or a scene from it. It's a work in progress, so it will be uneven and incomplete. That's ok.

We are looking for the essential "beats" of the story, along with thumbnail sketches of the principal characters.

To follow the example of Andy's volleyball video, he has imagined a suspenseful, exciting game. For the reading, he is going to tell the story of that game. There may well be a game-within-the-game, too. Who are the major characters? What are they like? What happens to them in this game?

When I look down the list of projects at the Show and Tell Theater, I can see a story to be told in every one. If you are unclear about what your story is, this reading will be your motivation to get it told. Please email me if you don't see your story clearly.

poems (GEN 230 Poetry)

When I look down the list at the Show and Tell Theater, I see a list of topics, all of which could be the proper subject of a poem.

Now's the time to write several poems. You will take turns reading them. I expect that we'll have time remaining for some discussion.

The World Wide Web

deconstruct and reconstruct a web page

to do in class

follow the directions to hand-code a web page

due

11. Conference 2

You and I need to sit down and look at the status of your project. What have you done? What do you still have to do? What are the problems you need to solve?

sign up for a time

Local Arts Community

Bistro forum: participation in the local arts community fiction | poetry

One of the requirements of this course is participation in the local arts community in a way that have not before. To satisfy this part of the course requirements, you have several options.

In response to my message at the Bistro forum participation in the local arts community, post your own message about what you are doing to satisfy this course requirement. As you attend more events, you can edit your message to include your recent activity. Then I can fill start filling in columns 4, 8, 18, and 24 on the reports page.

Write Thing | Karen Volkman, Thursday, March 22, 7 PM in the Huber Hall Library.

Karen Volkman has been called "one of the leading poets of her generation" by renowned poet/New England Review editor C. Dale Young. Born in Miami, Volkman is the author of Spar (University of Iowa Press, 2002), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Crash’s Law (Norton, 1998), which was selected for the National Poetry Series by Heather McHugh. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Montana at Missoula.

In an interview with Poets&Writers, Karen discusses prose poetry and the impact of landscape on her work.

Wednesday, March 21

web: FrontPage

Your lastname folder is going to be a "FrontPage web", that is, a folder that has some subfolders created by FrontPage that has information that helps FrontPage perform its tasks.

Your FrontPage web needs to be self-contained. That is, all the HTML files and all the images displayed on the pages need to be inside your lastname folder.

Download a .zip file with a template for the lastname folder.

Friday, March 23

storyboards: PowerPoint, OrgChart

turn the proposals into storyboards and link maps

12. Storyboards and link maps

Monday and Wednesday, March 26 and 28

reading * (5 min each)

due

13. Presentation/reading (oral) March 26, 28

14. Fiction/poetry 1 (email) March 28

Friday, March 30

copyright and new media

Shift Happens

Lessig video

15. Web's welcome page (folder with .htm and image files) March 30

Monday and Wednesday, April 2 and 4

The second set of Jeopardy games.

Question topics: what is the Internet? Copyright and new media

The questions will come from these eleven pages, most of them on Ricci Street.

our course web

user content
media
software tools
copyright

elsewhere on Ricci Street

New Media aka Distributed Networks
What is the Internet
Who Runs the Internet?

elsewhere on the Web

World of Ends
The Paradox of the Best Network
Rise of the Stupid Network
We Are the Web by Kevin Kelly, Wired 13.08, August 2005

Wednesday, Friday, and Monday April 11, 13, and 16

video production

web making

conferences - what you still need to do to finish your project

Show and Tell Theater - check yours - does it have an accurate synopsis (TV Guide listing)?

Assistant Professor Ethan Paquin's brand new book, My Thieves (Salt, April 2007) is favorably reviewed in the current issue of Artvoice (April 5-11). The review coincides with his book launch reading/reception at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Delaware Avenue, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 25.

Wednesday and Friday April 18 and 20

in-class reading of narratives / poems * (5 min each), showings of videos, webs

Show and Tell Theater - check yours - does it have an accurate synopsis (TV Guide listing)?

Monday April 23

post-production:

effects, filters, and transitions for still and moving images

sound and music integration, balance, and equalization

troubleshooting your projects

First Year survey

Wednesday and Friday April 25 and 27

License, back-up, burn to disk, upload, and submit to me and to Prelude

license at Creative Commons

burn as a data disk

burn as a playable CD or DVD

put on mySpace, upload to Metacafe and YouTube, make torrent

Monday April 30

Final presentations - schedule

You are going to have about ten minutes to present your project to the class. Think of it as show and tell, just like in fourth grade. Show us what you made. Then tell us about it and how you made it. Why did you make the choices that you did? What is it supposed to accomplish? How could the parts be re-purposed to other uses?

If you don't fill the time, that's ok, because then we'll have time for questions.