Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Project 3 Workshop

Class Topic: Revision Workshop

Class Topic: Project 2 Skill Test: NPCs

In class, use Inform 7 to create an NPC that responds to player actions that I provide. Include two or three significant objects, and a handful of likely conversation topics. Include a "test me" line.

Class Topic: Project 2 Skill Test: Setting

In class, use Inform 7 to create a simple setting based on a prompt I provide, comprising three or four rooms, with appropriate things and scenery. Include a "test me" line.

Class Topic: IF Authoring Workshop

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Exposition in Interactive Fiction''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/gallery/exposition.html

Class Topic: Nonlinear Storytelling

Class Topic: IF Workshop 3

Assigned Text: The IF game you and a partner agreed upon during IF Workshop

With a partner, choose a game that the two of you will play together and discuss on your blogs. (You don't actually have to be in the same room together when you play).

You can start with Baf's Guide to the IF Archive, which lets you scan mini-reviews according to genre (humor, fantasy, mystery, etc.) and rating.

If you find a few games that you're interested in playing, go to the IF Wiki's FAQ page for help determining whether you will be able to play the game. (The vast majority are free, but many will require you to download interpreters -- software that lets you play the game. You might also across an entry for a commercial product that hasn't been released on the internet.)

I will be happy to help you get started.

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Ask the Adventure Dwarf''

We will go over this in class. I e-mailed it to all students Friday morning.

Class Topic: IF Authoring Workshop

Assigned Text: Galatea

Emily Short's "Galatea"

Assigned Text: Photopia

Adam Cadre's "Photopia"

Class Topic: IF Workshop 2

Discuss assigned texts; discuss assignment that's due Friday; also preview IF Authorship.

News: Setonain Seeking Online Linker

One of the Setonian editors sent me this message recently:

At the editorial meeting today we were discussing having someone on the staff that would create and place links in the online edition of the paper for Evan. Can you reccomend anyone from your EL 236: Writing for the Internet class that we might be able to contact?

Assigned Text: Storytelling in Computer Games

Storytelling in Computer Games

Class Topic: Interactive Fiction Workshop

Class Topic: Introduction to Interactive Fiction

Interactive fiction is a kind of text-based computer games. The genre has been around since the mid 1970s, dating from an era in which computers typically displayed their output on long streams of folded paper rather than on a video screen.

In the late 60s, when the internet was created, computer interfaces were designed to do only one thing -- accept typed command from the operator, and display a textual response.

Command Line Interface

The command line interface (CLI) was a huge advance over stacks of punch cards. Although it seems antiquated and strange to most people today, anyone who used computers would have been trained to understand the CLI, and would in fact have considered it a natural and effective way of communicating with the computer. There weren't home PCs at this time, so the only people who would have come into regular contact with computers would be researchers, academics, and other professionals who had work to do that they couldn't do any other way.

We have already spent some time looking at how the special characteristics of the World Wide Web have changed the way people write. Let's experiment with the command line interface, and then consider how the special characteristics of this medium led to specific kinds of electronic writing. Our goal is to look closely at a medium that will be very unfamiliar to most of you, so that we can focus on the relationship between writing (and reading) and the medium in which the text exists.

Assigned Text: It's a Wild Wikipedia World: Seigenthaler; Goodin; Orlowski

Short articles about Wikipedia.

Siegenthaler: A false Wikipedia 'biography'

Goodin: Nature: Wikipedia is Accurate

Orlowsky: Nature mag cooked Wikipedia Study)

An item that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in June:

Speaking at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Mr. Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

See also Wikipedia's own entries about the Siegenthaler biography controversy.

Class Topic: Wiki Workshop

A wiki (based on the Hawaiian word for "quick") is a kind of hypertext document that is optimized for quick edits by multiple authors.

Wikipedia is the best-known example of a Wiki, but see also Muppet Wiki or Lostpedia. Maybe there's already a wiki out there on a subject you know a lot about. If so, you are welcome to work with that wiki instead of Wikipedia for today's exercise.

For today's exercise,

1) start by scanning through the Wikipedia tutorial
2) find two or three articles on Wikipedia (or some other wiki, if you wish) on topics that you know a lot about, and improve those articles. You might correct a mistake, add a citation, or put a note that says "citation needed" if you think a claim is unsupported. You might instead choose to start a brand new article.
3) in a few days, go back and see whether anyone else has modified your work.
4) write a blog entry in which you describe what you did and what you found (with links)

Class Topic: All about Wikipedia

Assigned Text: Tognazzini, ''How to Deliver a Report Without Getting Lynched''

http://www.asktog.com/columns/047HowToWriteAReport.html

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Usability Testing: What is it?''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/usability/intro.htm

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''(Meme)X Marks the Spot''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/resources/blogtalk/index.html

Class Topic: Usability Testing

Class Topic: Project 1 Skill Test: HTML

In class, I will ask you to demonstrate your HTML skills, by coding and uploading a simple website according to the guidelines I provide. (In the past, I have asked students to make a website for a person who is obsessed by the color green. I have also shown students a broken website and asked them to fix it.)

News: Fall Break

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Fisking as a Rhetorical Construct''

Fisking as a Rhetorical Construct

Class Topic: Project 1 Skill Test: Content Revision

In class, I will ask you to demonstrate your writing skills, by revising a sample text and optimizing it for the needs of an online audience. I might bring in a brochure or other paper document, and ask everyone to revise the text for an online readership.

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Skim chapters 14, 15, and 16. Post a single blog entry that includes interesting quotations from each chapter.

Class Topic: Project 1 Workshop: Content Revision

Practice Writing skills. You may work in groups or alone to sharpen your revision skills, by working with a sample text I give you.

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Skim chapters 11, 12, and 13. Post a single blog entry that includes interesting quotations from each chapter.

Class Topic: Project 1 Workshop: HTML

Practice HTML skills. You may work in groups or alone to sharpen your HTML skills by solving a problem I give you.

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Chapters 9 & 10

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Titles for Web Pages''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/titles.htm

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Navigation: an often neglected component of web authorship''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/navigation.htm

Class Topic: Titling and Organizing

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Chapters 7 & 8

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/blurbs.htm

Class Topic: Linking and Blurbing

Assigned Text: Castro, Creating a Web Page with HTML

Read all of chapter 3.

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Chapters 5 & 6

Class Topic: HTML Workshop

Assigned Text: Bush, ''As We May Think''

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

Class Topic: Networked Thought

Web pages exist in a context of links, which you can think of as conversations or encoded knowledge.

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Chapters 3 & 4

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Online Projects: What You Should Know First''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/web_projects.htm

Assigned Text: Castro, Creating a Web Page with HTML

Skim all of chapter 2.

Class Topic: HTML Workshop

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Writing Web Pages: Top 5 Conventions''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/conventions.htm

Assigned Text: Price and Price, Hot Text

Chapters 1 & 2

Assigned Text: Nielsen, ''How Users Read on the Web''

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Class Topic: Chunking and Bolding

News: Random House uses interactive fiction to advertise books....

THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS - ONLINE ADVENTURE

Online Adventure is unlike most modern games. While it is interactive, what drives it is your imagination. Much like reading a novel and imagining the action and characters with your own personal vision, you'll enter the world of this game with your mind's eye, illustrating the scenes as you would like to see them. We have created the game in this way to give you closest experience possible to actually walking inside the world of the book.

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Clueless Usenet Newbie''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=2802

Assigned Text: Silberman, ''Your Thoughts: A Permanent Public Record''

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10780,00.html

Assigned Text: Wikipedia, ''Eternal September''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_September

Class Topic: History of New Media

I remember when the 'net was young… but every medium was new once.

News: Helping People Online

This isn't an assigned article, so you needn't blog about it, but I didn't have time in class today to do justice to a good question about how it might be possible to use the internet to help people online. My quick response was that most social work programs seem to be regionally based, and since it's hard to identify the location of people who use the internet, there would be no way to ensure that the help you were offering was helping people in your community. But here's an article about how universities are starting to reach out to their own students through online resources.

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Using the Web to Prevent Suicide

As questions of institutional liability after student suicide have received much more attention in recent years, many health officials have called for improved suicide prevention strategies. But carrying out such efforts is not the easiest of tasks when no one knows for sure what will push one student instead of another to want to take his or her own life.

Assigned Text: Onion, ''Recently Unearthed E-Mail Reveals What Life Was Like In 1995''

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48970

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad? (via Jerz's Literacy Weblog)''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=4257

Assigned Text: boyd, ''Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?''

http://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html

Class Topic: Tracking a Moving Target: Studying Emerging Social Software

News: Interactive Fiction Writers Wanted (Eventually)

Someone I've never met, but whom I've known virtually through the interactive fiction community for many years, is floating ideas for starting a company that produces short works of interactive fiction for the middle-school educational market. Although he's not ready to start hiring yet, I'm blogging this because I think this is a company to watch.

Google Groups : Westfield Chandler Publishing I don't plan to generally ask the IF community for help here. In all of my conversations with the community I have been led to believe that no one is interested in writing short games in a corporate setting. A few people have expressed interest and I will pursue working with them.

So to fill in the gaps I plan to seek writing talent outside of the
community and guide them on what deliverables I seek. I feel strongly
that over time I can find talented writers willing to sign
work-for-hire contracts for short works of fiction. I can develop a
pool of writers large enough to keep content flowing.

Assigned Text: Castro, Creating a Web Page with HTML

Read all of chapter 1.

Assigned Text: Follow-up on first HTML workshop

Here are some tips that I’ve come up with, after watching our first HTML workshop with Castro’s book.

Class Topic: HTML Workshop

Class Topic: Introduction to HTML

Assigned Text: Castro, Creating a Web Page with HTML

Introduction; pages 2 & 3.

Assigned Text: Enemark, ''It's all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood''

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p13s01-stct.html/

Class Topic: Links and the New Media Economy

Assigned Text: Young, ''Seton Hall Adjunct Professor Lahes Out at Student in E-Mail Message''

http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i27/27a01202.htm

Assigned Text: Young, ''The 24-Hour Professor''

http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i38/38a03101.htm

Assigned Text: Glater, ''To: Professor @ University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me''

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/education/21professors.html

Class Topic: E-Mail Etiquette in Academia

Assigned Text: Stafford, ''Why parents must mind MySpace''

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11064451/

Assigned Text: Haddock, ''Online Danger Zone''

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/12/INGU9H51EF1.DTL

Assigned Text: Long, ''Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone''

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70214-0.html

Assigned Text: Golub, ''Passion for Paper''

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/09/golub

Class Topic: Alternative Views on Digital Literacy

When does nostalgia for the good old days become fear of the new? What would a TV news show stand to gain from airing a segment that stokes parents' fears about the internet? What would a new media journalism specialist have to gain from asking you to be critical of TV news coverage? (Please don't simply post a brief answer to each prompt; use these prompts to guide your thinking, as you weave the assigned readings together.)

Note: On Corey's blog, there's been some interesting discussion of free speech. Has anyone else participated in a good online discussion that they'd like to publicize here?

Assigned Text: Jerz and Bauer, ''Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/e-mail.htm

Assigned Text: Shackner, ''Blogs Redefining Free Speech''

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05359/627794.stm

Assigned Text: Epstein, ''The Many Faces of Facebook''

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/15/facebook/

Assigned Text: Kushner, ''Laura K. Krishna is a Plagiarist''

http://www.aweekofkindness.com/blog/archives/the_laura_k_krishna_saga/000023.html

Class Topic: Boundaries and Warnings

It's always been good idea to think before you speak, think before you write, think before you publish. But the nature of online communications magnifies the immediacy and the intensity of the consequences. Sometimes this can be good. Other times…

Assigned Text: Jerz, ''FIRST SMILEYS (APRIL 1979) (via Jerz's LiteracyWeblog)''

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=2797

Assigned Text: Jones, ''The First Smiley :-)''

http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Smiley/Smiley.html

Assigned Text: Wikipedia, ''Emoticons''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons

Class Topic: Language in Cyberspace

How are our tools affecting the way we think about the world?

News: Labor Day (No Class)

Assigned Text: Kilgore, ''The Hill is Alive… (with manufactured identity)''

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/Setonian/015219.html

Assigned Text: Sjoberg, ''You and Your LiveJournal and You''

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71142-0.html?tw=wn_index_16

Class Topic: Wide Networks and Personal Identity

Faces, profiles, and other angles.

Assigned Text: Lehre, ''MySpace: The Movie''

Watch it on youtube.

Class Topic: Writing for New Media

How does the nature of writing change, when the medium changes?

Class Topic: Course Overview

Welcome to EL 236, "Writing for the Internet."

The course website is located at http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DennisJerz/EL236. I will update the online syllabus periodically, so the printout I give you is only for your convenience on the first day of classs. The offical version of the syllabus is the online version (though I will notify you in advance of any significant changes).

Topics for today:

• Review syllabus.
  
• Writing for the internet is first and foremost writing (not coding or design).
  
• Computer-mediated writing depends on computers (and computers can be frustrating and demanding).
  
• What is print culture?
  
• Histrorical context exercise.