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Media-Specific Analysis
For this project, you will learn a specific writing technology in order to examine the various affordances and constraints this technology poses for writing and writers. One of the important challenges of this project will be locating resources for technical information and support (we will discuss some strategies for tracking down such support in class). Your learning will culminate in two distinct projects: 1) a presentation using the technology that addresses the ways your particular technology intervenes in the act and experience of writing; and 2) a two-page written reflection describing your experiences learning the technology and what opportunities and challenges it poses for writers in the university and beyond.

Collaborative Wiki Project
Building very closely on the Media-Specific Analysis project, the Collaborative Wiki Project will bring together a handful of students working on similar writing technologies (e.g. within larger categories such “Image Editing”). Working closely with technology specialists from Doit as well as two other UW writing instructors, each group will collaborate to write and/or revise a wiki entry detailing information about their category relevant to the study and teaching of writing. In addition, each student will also individually author and/or revise a wiki entry based on the specific writing technology he/she learned in the media-specific analysis project (e.g. “Photoshop”). The goal for this project is to continue the project of building a public and interactive new media resource for writing instructors and students at UW. Each group will present their individual and collaboratively authored entries to the class during the final week of class.

Research Project: Technology in the Disciplines
The goal of this project is to research and examine the role a specific technology plays (or played historically) in determining what researchers and/or teachers in your field have come to know about their subject(s) of inquiry. This project will have five parts: 1) a pre-proposal, presented to the class using the technology you learned in the media-specific analysis project (see above); 2) a final written proposal submitted to me; 3) an annotated bibliography; 4) a complete first draft; 5) a final draft, 8-10 pages double-spaced and including a works cited page.

Blogging
The goal of this assignment is to have a way to gather and share information and ideas regularly over the course of the semester. I will ask each of you to create a blog on one of the major commercial hosting sites and to use it to comment on our work, experiment with ideas, and to point others to interesting information.
• Post at least once a week, addressing something related to the course (see below)
• Read and respond to each other's blogs
• Be creative

Participation
Active participation is an important part of any course. But what does participation mean? Most obviously, participation means arriving each day on time, prepared to discuss and ask questions about the that day's reading. More specifically—and perhaps less obviously—participation suggests active and empathetic engagement with the issues and perspectives being addressed during a class period. I firmly believe that the best way to learn is through questioning and collaboration. In this course, we’ll learn from each other and we’ll learn by coming together and working through complex ideas as a class.

There are many ways you can participate during a given day. You may: respond to the day’s reading by agreeing, objecting, and/or complicating the arguments presented therein; draw comparisons between one text and another read in or outside of the course; offer an example or illustration that further develops and/or contradicts positions made in the text; suggest possible applications for writing in digital domains; ask questions of the instructor and other classmates.

Assessment

There are four projects and assignments for this course. To pass the course, you must complete and turn in all of the projects listed below. The percentages will be distributed as follows:

Assignment	%
Media-Specific Analysis	20
Collaborative Wiki Project	20
Research Project	25
Blogs	20
Participation	15
Total	100