Course Recap for Monday, November 26, 2012

Tips for a Great Unfamiliar Genre Project

• Take very specific and detailed notes in your journals.  It will make the other parts of the assignment a lot easier.
• Attach your examples or give me detailed information about each example so they will be easy for me to refer to.
• Make sure that you establish the essential elements for your genre before you start creating it.
• I'm not expecting perfection but I want you to create as close to a replica of your genre as you can get.  If your genre requires photos, make sure it has photos.  If it's set up a certain way on the page you need to try and find some way to make that happen. 
• Create your how-to guide as if you're writing it for an alien.  Someone who knows nothing about your genre and its inner workings.  Don't take things for granted.  Don't just say things like come up with an interesting topic.  That could mean anything.  Give examples or provide tips that can help the reader get to an interesting topic.
• Include specific examples for your journals in your how-to guide.  It'll help back up your steps and give your readers more guidance.  You studied several examples of your genre.  Your reader did not.
• If you don't know how to begin the how-to guide simply start by describing your own process.  What did you do first?  What choices did you make and why?

Remember the elements you want to look for in each example

• The audience-How does the piece appeal to that audience?
• The purpose-How does the piece achieve its purpose?
• The tone-what is the mood the piece gives off.  Look for words that describe emotion here.
• The attitude-what is the author's stance.  Is the author simply providing information? Are they being critical? Are they praising the topic?  Offering an opinion.  Is the author or speaker fond of what they're speaking about?
• The design-what does it look like on the page.  This is also a good place to take note of any things you notice about the language of the pieces or how it flows from one subject to the other, how is the plot structured, etc.
• The medium-this is only important for those of you who are allowed to use both print and online sources.  How does the medium change the rules of the genre?
• Make sure you keep track of similarities and note any major differences you see from example to example.

Extra Credit Opportunities
You can gain extra credit by taking your fairytales and transforming them into teen vampire dramas.  Your new piece should contain most of the elements that we came up with in class.  This is due Friday.
If everyone in the class fills out a course evaluation for this course by the last day of class, everyone will receive extra credit.  Please fill these out.  They are very important to me.  I want to know what you liked about the course, what you didn't like, things you think I could've done better, topics you're happy I covered, and things you might've wished I had gone over.  Make sure you fill out the comment sections and not just the multiple choice options.  These help me make the necessary changes to the course to make this class better for future students and helps me improve as an instructor.  I spend a lot of time critiquing your work, here's a chance for you to critique mine.

Introduction to Project 4
You picked your groups for Project 4 and starting brainstorming topics for the piece.  You will be writing a historical narrative.  You will be splitting the research amongst yourselves and then will take everyone's research to create your narrative. We will be revisiting the annotated bibliography and will be learning how to do footnotes. (See Class Documents for Project 4 Assignment Sheet.)

Homework

•  Project 3 Assignment (Due Wed Nov. 28)
• Extra Credit Assignment-Genre Transformation (Due Fri Nov. 30)