technology autobiography and webfolio
 multimedia authoring: exploring the new rhetorics
engl 355 fall 2006

overview: webfolio
The Webfolio will consist of a Portal Page (entry page to your DTC/ENGL 355 work) and links to all of the major assignments you complete for this course. At this point, your Portal Page can be as simple as a page with a title and a link to the Technolgy Autobiography. By the end of the semester, your Portal Page should be a more formalized page that sets the tone (in design, text, and style) for the Webfolio and provides an introduction to the Webfolio.

At this point, however, all you need is a simple page with a title and link to your Technology Autobiography. The URL for your Portal Page will be listed on the course website, so that other students in the class can peer review your work easily. If you are willing, it might be helpful for students in this class to use a standardized naming convention for the Portal Page. The Portal Page file name could be your last name (or a portion of it if you have a long last name) and the word "portal" separated from your last name by an underscore. If we used this convention, my Portal Page file would be named "ericsson_portal.html." (Remember that blank spaces sometimes cause problems for servers, so it's always a good idea to use and underscore rather than a blank.)

Overview: technology autobiography
You will write a brief autobiography about one technological "moment" in your life. This autobiography should be long enough to recount the story of one rather simple, yet important, technological encounter. Your account does not need to be lengthy. You will post your autobiography on the web and others will have the opportunity to comment on it. This is a graded assignment that can be revised for inclusion in your Webfolio.

Think of this autobiography as a persuasive story. Most narratives (stories) have a persuasive goal and your technology autobiography should serve to persuade through the story itself and details.

As you put this assignment together, keep in mind the articles we've read so far. We're just not reading them to talk about them in class. They're meant to influence the way you think about composing for the Web; they're meant to push you into composing in a different way. Think about your audience and purpose, about the database movie (essay), looping, and other ideas presented in Vertov's movie and Manovitch's disucssion of it; think about Helfand's ideas about typography and Solomon's ideas about punctuation. Don't just think about these readings and ideas, put them to work in your TA!!

Specific Details

  • The TA consists of a brief recounting of one technological encounter.
  • Your audience is this class.
  • Your purpose is to tell the brief story of one encounter with technology that made a difference in your life somehow. How it made a difference should be at least partially obvious through the recounting of the encounter. Extra explanation of how this encounter with technology was important in your life can be included, but must not be the focus of the technology autobiography. Remember this is a persuasive story.
  • You must be aware of and incorporate the ideas about links, punctuation, typography, and argument that we have covered so far in this course.
  • The TA must be linked to your Portal Page
  • This web page must include
    • A background color (not an image)
    • More than one paragraph
    • At least one graphic that helps tell your story
    • At least two links to web sources that enhance your autobiography--these shouldn't be just links to have links--they should provide more about a topic or idea than you can provide in your autobiography. You should be able to expain why you chose the links you did and what kind of rhetorical strategy you employed in your choices.
    In order to have a sample of this kind of assignment, take a look at a TA on lawn mowers. It is just the bare bones of a TA, composed without much consideration of the kinds of rhetorical issues we've been discussing in class. It also has links that are a bit ineffective. It would be graded at about the C- level. It fulfills some of the requirements, but just barely; other requirements (like using ideas from Solomon, Helfand, Manovich, and others) are totally missing.

Dute dates:
Draft due and peer editors notified by Oct. 1 at noon;
Peer review due by noon Oct. 3;
Final draft due Oct. 5

Peer Commentary Requirements

 

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